Airports Slot Allocation (Alleviation of Usage Requirements etc.) Regulations 2025

Lord Empey Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Grand Committee

I say again how much I support what is happening here, by and large. The industry is going through considerable difficulties. Airports are under enormous pressure; we have a shortage of pilots worldwide, which is very difficult to fill, and we have a great shortage—although it is not mentioned anywhere here—of professionals who work in air traffic control and other areas of the running of our important airports. So, I welcome this, but I would be grateful for some more reassurance from the Minister on the points I have raised.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I have been following these issues for some years, and I find myself in broad agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope. He mentioned air traffic control and the fact that restrictions are regularly placed on flights coming in and out of Heathrow, in some cases because of the absence of qualified staff.

I welcome the end of ghost flights, which were a nonsense not only environmentally but economically for the airlines. It was ridiculous having flights with half a dozen people, or none, going around, so that is a perfectly sensible provision. However, I want to draw it to the Minister’s attention that on two occasions I brought the Airports (Amendment) Bill to this House. It passed through this House twice. The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, who was the Minister at the time, said that the problem, from the Government’s point of view, was that because of our membership of the European Union, we were not able to address the matter that I was raising.

That matter was the slots at London airports. Let us face it—Heathrow is the primary national hub, though I accept that other London airports are important—but there is no requirement to ensure that the main regional airports have access to Heathrow. We in Northern Ireland do not have much in the way of an alternative; in fairness, Boris Johnson promised us a bridge, but that has gone the way of all flesh so, in practical terms, we are left primarily with one way of getting here. You can get a ferry—but that can take a couple of days.

This applies to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester. The Secretary of State does not have the ability to guarantee that the main regional airports have access. This is all to do with national connectivity. The primary clause in my Bill was:

“The Secretary of State may give to any airport operator a direction requiring him (according to the circumstances of the case) to do, or not to do, a particular thing specified in the direction, if the Secretary of State considers it necessary to give such a direction in the interests of ensuring sufficient national air infrastructure between hub and regional airports”.


It was to give the Secretary of State a power to deal with this. Even if competition is improved by these regulations, which I would support, that has nothing to do with where those slots are allocated. Maybe they are allocated to an airline, but they can fly anywhere. There is still a gap here. Now that we are not bound by the European regulation, will the Minister reflect on this? I appreciate that it is not in these proposals, but I am sure that he can see the rationale of ensuring this.

At the moment, we are well served—I have no issue with that. There are a number of airlines, albeit the competition has narrowed recently—but we are entirely at the mercy of the airlines. We have no ability to ensure that they travel on that route. It is a bit like the 80:20 rule; most of the time it works fine, but there could be circumstances in which it does not. We can also see that competition is limited and our fares are high, so there is a link to the consumer. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, made that point; the consultation was wide, but consumer interests perhaps did not dominate to the extent that they should have.

I broadly support these proposals, but I ask the Minister to consider that with his department, because there is no guarantee that our key regions will have access, particularly to Heathrow. In those circumstances, the Secretary of State should have that power.

Road Transport (International Passenger Services) (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Lord Empey Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his detailed introduction. There is a long background of negotiations on this legislation. The Explanatory Memorandum says that this SI

“will in effect maintain the status quo”—

that status quo was very hard fought in the days after the Brexit referendum. We have spent many hours in this Room debating the fallout from the detail of that situation.

Paragraph 5.4 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that the instrument will

“update the UK’s domestic … legislation by removing assimilated EU legislation”

on road passenger transport. Of course, UK bus and coach operators will continue to operate within the context of the framework of EU and international legislation generally. As the Minister said, there are three types of commercial bus and coach services: the occasional, the regular and the special regular services carrying specified categories of passengers, such as pupils.

It is good news that there is now a right for bus and coach operators to transport passengers through the EU to Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Are new signatories to the agreement likely to come on stream in future? This is a fairly limited market as it stands.

The key change in this SI relates to cabotage—the carrying of passengers in the UK by foreign-based operators. Paragraph 5.10 of the EM explains that international operators participating in the UK

“are currently permitted to undertake cabotage”

under assimilated EU law. This right is being removed. My second question is: how many services, roughly, are affected by this? How common is the operation of cabotage by EU operators? I assume that the answer is that it is not very common, because one thing that slightly surprised me was the fact that there was no consultation on this SI. I declare my interest as a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Is this an important new right, or is it a marginal benefit?

As always, it is in Northern Ireland that the really intractable questions arise, following the Brexit vote and its implications. I am pleased that Northern Ireland operators will be able to operate cabotage within the island of Ireland, and vice versa. That is the only logical thing to do. I recall that, a few years ago, when I was a member of the EU sub-committee, we took evidence from a bus operator—although not in relation to this specific issue, of course. The bus operator said that his scheduled service crossed the border 13 times from one end to the other. The proposal at the time, from some enthusiastic Brexiteers, was that Britain should flex its muscles post Brexit by changing our clocks in the spring and the autumn on a different day from the EU. Businesses in Northern Ireland, and indeed in the Republic of Ireland, were very exercised by the practical issues, and the bus operator pointed out how impossible his timetable would become if we operated in a different way with time zones.

This is possibly not an SI of the greatest significance, but it is nevertheless one to be welcomed because of the common-sense approach in relation to Northern Ireland and the fact that British operators will now be in the same commercial position as EU operators for cabotage.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I have a question for the Minister about this generally positive instrument. It is about electronic travel authorisation. If a bus comes from Great Britain to the Republic and into Northern Ireland, electronic travel authorisation will be required, as I read it. Can the Minister confirm this? Many of us see this as a disincentive and an obstacle to tourism. People visiting Ireland from outside the EU and from outside Ireland need, as I read it, electronic travel authorisation to come into Northern Ireland—that is effectively a visa. Can the Minister confirm that? If he does not have the information available, he can write.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for arranging a helpful briefing with his officials this morning. This is, I imagine, one of those very rare occasions where I find myself more in sympathy with the proposal from the Minister than with the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, who seemed determined to reopen all sorts of arguments about Brexit and who did what when.

This is, in my view, a sensible and necessary disentangling of our laws from the pernicious effect of EU legislation, so that we stand on our own feet with our own laws, making international agreements—such as the Interbus agreement—and adhering to, and adopting, in this case, its protocol relating to these coach services, which the Minister spelled out in considerable detail, with great clarity for such a complex subject.

The impact assessment for this instrument says that it has no impact and that that is the reason for not having any consultation. I welcome that; we should have more laws that have no impact. Most of the laws that set out to have an impact seem to have only perverse impacts and do not achieve what they are intended to at all. This one is deliberately intended to have no practical impact—with one exception that I will return to—because it seeks to maintain the existing situation but translate it into domestic law. As I say, this is not only desirable but necessary because the provisions of the TCA under which it operates will effectively expire at the end of March next year, as the other foreign parties join the Interbus agreement. So, on the whole, we welcome this instrument and are happy to support it.

On cabotage, it is of course possible—as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said—that there is some diminution of immunity to British travellers as a result of that. The Minister has been asked a question, and I certainly do not know the answer to it, but he may. It is possible that certain services currently operating start in, say, Paris and go to Edinburgh, stopping along the route, collecting passengers and dropping them off. Those services will no longer be able to operate in that fashion—picking passengers up and dropping them off along the route—once these provisions come into effect, which in practice will be on 1 April next year. As I say, that could constitute a diminution in services.

However, it is interesting that the noble Baroness focused on that, because the counterpart to that is that British coach operators will not have those cabotage rights in the European Union. I would have thought and hoped that the Liberal Democrats would be more interested in promoting the interests of British coach operators travelling abroad than protecting the business model of foreign coach operators operating in the UK. However, that appears not to be the case: her focus is on the latter—she did not mention the others at all.

Flight Cancellations

Lord Empey Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord will know that the air passenger duty on domestic flights was reduced quite recently to a relatively modest level. The Government are entirely committed to good air connections with Northern Ireland and to the promotion of its airports. I do not think that the removal of the duty—which is, in any case, a Treasury matter—would make a lot of difference. We are committed to good regional connectivity and the future prosperity of the airports in Northern Ireland.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I, too, was a passenger on the flight on Monday morning that never was. If you looked at the schedules in advance, it was not there. I took up the email at 8.10 am, although fortunately I do not have so far to travel.

On the wider point, however, this is becoming a repetitive issue. We understand operational challenges; we all have them and we all know that it is also from Covid, with the number of staff that were disposed of at the time. However, I brought a Bill through this House twice to guarantee slots for regional airports at Heathrow and it was rejected in the other place on the grounds that we were part of the European Union and therefore it could not be implemented. Now that that is no longer the case, will the Minister look with his department at ensuring that regional connectivity is guaranteed to Heathrow, because that is where the operational hub in the United Kingdom is? It also bears down on the airlines, because these slots are worth millions.