Thomas Cook

Debate between Lord King of Bridgwater and Baroness Vere of Norbiton

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

Is my noble friend saying that, at a time when the Government are making every effort to get home people who are stranded and scrabbling around to find any airlines that will help, and while we see pictures of all the Thomas Cook planes sitting idle on airfields, whose crews presumably are unemployed, there is no way in which some extra arrangement could be made on a temporary basis to give some employment to the crews and use the planes that are there to bring those people home?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I assure my noble friend that those very same questions went through my mind as I was going through the contingency planning for all the options that we had for this eventuality. Insolvency law in this country does not allow that; the number of indemnities that would be required is enormous. We will be looking as a matter of urgency at whether we can put something in place.

One point that is a slight mitigation here is that most of the Thomas Cook aircraft are leased, and therefore they automatically go back to the leasing company. One would not be dealing with Thomas Cook at that point but with however many tens of leasing companies in order to operate the planes owned by those companies.