Airports Act 1986 (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts

Friday 19th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this Bill because it is an important element in what the noble Lord, Lord Empey, outlined so nicely: the need to ensure connectivity between the regions and hubs, as he calls them, over the whole country. This stems from the fact that this country has a structure of airports which are largely in the private sector, or at least act in the private sector, whereas on the continent most of them are not. That is a bit of a generality, but I think it is the same in the ports industry and there is a similar debate going on about the port services directive in Brussels. The involvement of the private sector is most evident in the competition we have seen over recent years. I welcome the competition between Heathrow and Gatwick in terms of services, destinations and general operational capability. Much of that is to be welcomed but it will be interesting to see how the Government—if and when they ever make a statement on the need for expansion of Heathrow or Gatwick, or neither—will take forward the necessary permissions that are obviously required to implement their decision when there are two competing private sector operators. It will be interesting to see how much funding, if any, the Government put into it.

I want to talk a little about hubs. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, made a speech in favour of Heathrow as a hub, and I can see why, but I know many passengers who avoid Heathrow like the plague if they want a hub through which to travel from the regions of the UK to elsewhere. Travelling through Heathrow takes a long time and is less convenient. I always go to Stansted or Gatwick if I want to travel through a hub, but that is just a personal preference.

There are several types of hub. A hub can be between one international flight and another. Heathrow says that it is very good at that and that it is the most important thing that it does. I often question who benefits, apart from the duty-free shops in the terminals. Does the UK economy benefit enormously if someone coming from South America to Moscow changes planes at Heathrow? I do not know. Then there are hubs between the regions of a European country or the UK and the centre. That is a sort of halfway hub. In the definition in the Bill there is a hub within the region. The noble Lord mentioned Newquay. I live in Cornwall, and Newquay is a hub between the Scilly Isles and the nice new PSO service to Gatwick. The fact that the two airlines never co-operate on timetables or when there is a delay and any compensation has to be paid is a slightly different issue, but according to the definition in the Bill, Newquay is a hub.

I question how much support we need to give to one airport as a hub. If someone is making an international transfer, there is no reason why they should not fly from a region of the UK to Schiphol, Paris or anywhere else. It does not make much difference to the local economy; the important thing is convenience.

The Bill leaves the definition of a hub wide open, and that is a good thing. I cannot see any reason why the European Commission or the Government should oppose this. When you have the equivalent of a PSO, that is good. Let us make a comparison with the rail system. The Government specify rail services. I know that that is in a franchise, but they specify minimum services on particular routes. If they let a train franchise operator decide where it would run trains, they would find that many of the regions, away from the money-making inter-city routes and London, would be pretty well starved of trains because those regional routes do not make money.

Take First Great Western. It makes money on the inter-city routes and, I suspect, on the commuter routes, but I am sure that it would not make money on routes in places such as Cornwall and beyond Swansea if they were separate. It is reasonable for the Government to take a view on this. Whether it should be done through a PSO or something else, I do not know, but it is reasonable for a number of slots at airports in the centre—not just Heathrow but some other airports; maybe Manchester as well as a hub—to have some process of allocation to ensure connectivity to the regions. That would bring aviation in line with public transport on the railways. I do not think that there is such a system for shipping yet, but there might have to be in the future. It is part of the policy of ensuring that the regions are connected.

I use the PSO service from Newquay to Gatwick quite often. It is a good service. If it had closed, as looked likely, at the time when the Dawlish railway line collapsed two years ago, 2 million people in Devon and Cornwall would have been cut off from travelling to the rest of the country except by motorway. That is not a good regional policy. I know that the noble Lord cannot have a train service to the centre in Northern Ireland—that is a great shame, but it is a long way ahead—but his Bill is good, and I fully support it.

[Lord Skelmersdale (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord has just explained that in his view the airport at Newquay is a hub airport. As I read the Bill, Clause 1(4) defines a hub airport as providing a connection between flights. There is no flight that I know of to the Isles of Scilly, and certainly no airport there.

[Lord Berkeley]

Well, I must invite the noble Lord to come to the Isles of Scilly some time because there is a very good airport at St Mary’s. The runway is not that long because of the cliff at one end and a bit of a hill at the other end, but it does take two types of aeroplane: an eight-seater and a 16-seater. There are very regular flights between St Mary’s and Land’s End Airport, which has now been surfaced; it is no longer a grass strip. But the flights also go to Newquay and, in the summer, to Exeter. Newquay has an enormously long runway. It used to be a US Air Force station. The flights to Newquay go two or three times a day. In the summer there are other flights from Newquay to other parts of the country. So I invite the noble Lord to move a little bit further west from where I believe he lives and visit Newquay. Its land connections are awful because it is miles from the railway; there is a good taxi service. But it is a good airport and it provides a very important link to the Scillies—in fact, the only link to the Scillies when the “Scillonian” does not run through the winter.