Civil Aviation Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Bradshaw

Monday 2nd July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Bradshaw]

I ask my noble friend to consider very carefully the arrangements now in place in the bus and rail industries for taking care of passengers. These have been built up over a long period, although they are certainly not completely fair. Statistics on performance are very regularly published but this issue goes very much wider than performance; it relates to things such as looking after people who miss their connections or trains. When I was chairman of the bus users’ council, I was concerned about people who were left in draughty old bus stations because the last bus did not run, or something of the sort. These are all people who need protection. I am slightly surprised, but I am perhaps better advised, by what the noble Lord, Lord Davies, has said: people at airports should at least be protected as well as passengers who use buses or trains.

[Lord Soley]

I am broadly sympathetic to this group of amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Davies, and to the recommendations of the Transport Select Committee. It is always dangerous to put too much in a Bill, but on this we need to start with the recognition that when a person comes into an airport, particularly to a major airport such as Heathrow, it is their first impression of the United Kingdom. If they are coming here from any of the emerging countries—especially China, India or Brazil—the image for someone who is thinking of setting up a business and investing here is not good. It has got a lot better since Terminal 5 opened at Heathrow. I readily accept that there is a much greater desire to do things about this. I also accept that, as my noble friend Lord Davies has pointed out, a lot of the recent problems were not caused by things that the Bill will cover; they were caused by immigration control and so on. The image of vast queues moving very slowly—which is what were seen, even if that issue will not be covered by these amendments—is very bad for Britain. It is less true for other airports but it is still true; so we need to get our act together and do rather better on this.

I was trying to envisage someone who had just emerged from one of these long queues taking part in one of these surveys, whether for immigration purposes or anything else. They might give some short, sharp answers to the questions. We have to do better. That is the thrust of these amendments and of what the Transport Select Committee was saying. I urge the Minister to look at this matter sympathetically and see whether he can come up with some way of constantly emphasising the importance of the passenger having a good experience. It does not do our business or general tourist travel any good at all to have the images we have had.

I dread to think of what will happen if we have problems of runway availability at Heathrow during the Olympics. You can see what will happen if there is a severe weather event that causes a back-up because there is no alternative runway space. You then have the inevitable position of all the other problems at the airport, and you will have some very disappointed people coming into Britain. This is rather important and the airports and the Government need to look at this whole area.

Civil Aviation Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Bradshaw

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Bradshaw]

In moving Amendment 1, I shall speak also to Amendment 10. These amendments relate to the surface access to the airports, which is of course very important, not just for people who fly but for people who work there and residents. So I am not entering a plea especially for airline passengers but for everybody who uses those modes of access in getting there.

Some figures published this morning show that pollution arising from aeroplanes is reducing quite sharply as bigger and more efficient aeroplanes take over. That brings into focus the need to tackle the higher level of both noise and atmospheric pollution that comes from surface access to airports. I want to stress the point that we must do something about surface access. I know that there are many ideas about it—it is probably becoming more important than the aircraft themselves.

I do not intend to turn this debate into an argument about the third runway in Heathrow, but I want to draw attention to the large amount of spare runway capacity that exists or is planned to exist at Gatwick, Stansted, Birmingham and Luton airports and in other regions of the country. The four airports that I mentioned particularly affect the south-east. If it were exploited, that would reduce the clamour about demand at Heathrow, which is being fed mainly by BA and BAA which have substantial financial interests in it. I am particularly anxious about the damaging and expensive campaign that they are running, which suggests that London is not open for business. I think that they are trying to hijack any debate and the forthcoming White Paper to try to concentrate on what they see as the problem—how they can get more planes at Heathrow, which in turn will give them more income.

Regional airports could well take up the challenge as Gatwick has done since it was divested from BAA. Noble Lords will probably be aware that Gatwick now has two direct flights to China, one to South Korea, one to Nigeria and one to Hong Kong. That is only the beginning to building up an international business, and I believe—and I have been to several airports—that Birmingham, with all the committed money being spent there, will offer passengers a wide range of possibilities when they travel. For example, most airport users or people who use the lines, cite the fact that Stansted Express is not a very good, efficient or comfortable way in which to get to London. In fact, if you consider the Lee valley, the whole service needs revision. It needs money spent on the infrastructure, and it is one of the areas that I hope the Government may have something to say about in the high-level output statement for the railways which I believe they are due to publish next month.

The impact of HS2—if it is built—on Birmingham airport would be huge and would bring it within 38 minutes of London, which is equivalent to what Gatwick is now and what Heathrow is for most people. The real point that has been made to me, particularly by people at Gatwick, is that passengers from airports do not mix well with passengers who are commuting on a regular basis. For example, if trains emanating from Brighton arrive at Gatwick full of commuters and a lot of Americans with heavy luggage who have never been here before are on the platform, they cannot be accommodated comfortably on the service that is provided. That is why I was pleased to see the debate yesterday in the House of Commons on this matter. It was raised by Henry Smith, the MP for Crawley, who said that it is very necessary that the whole question of access to airports is brought into focus. It is definitely on the radar of the department. In this debate, reference was made to the fact that the new Southern franchise will be let, and it will be up to the franchisees what they want to do. I think they might need a little guidance. It is not just the train services; it is the trains themselves because many of the trains in use on the railway are pretty unsuitable for people with heavy luggage.

If I am correct, it is only the regulated airports that need any requirement for improvements to be included in the regulations. This is so that they can be included within their regulatory asset base. I do not want any situation to arise in a regulated airport where any airline might legally escape paying its share of any improvements that are made to surface access. I hope the Minister can give me an assurance that once this change is made everything will go into the RAB.

Licensed airports, which are a different lot, can do whatever they consider to be commercially attractive. In many cases, this will mean help with investments by other transport providers to produce mutually beneficial schemes and from local authorities keen to promote regional airports. These airports do not need the regulator to intervene, as I see it, so the intervention may come from government or from local authorities which are keen to invest in improvements. Birmingham airport stressed to me that it feels that if the huge spare capacity it has is used, it would bring a lot of development with it. In that case, you have an airport that is willing to accommodate any improvement.

I hope the Minister can give me the assurances that I seek and will endorse the fact that the improvement of surface access is extremely important and is becoming more so as time goes on. I beg to move.

[Lord Soley]

The noble Lord might be surprised that I am not entirely unsympathetic to what he is trying to achieve but I do not think that he is trying to achieve it in the best way. I will not focus on his comments about Gatwick managing to be a hub or otherwise, although I think that if you told the people around Gatwick that we were to move Heathrow’s operation there, they might be a little less enthusiastic than the airport owners.

I think the noble Lord is right that there is a problem about surface access to airports generally. However, it is not my view that the CAA is the best organisation to do this—the Minister will tell us what he thinks. This flags up the problem which a number of us have referred to over many years: we lack an effective regional government structure in Britain that could provide the surface transport necessary around airports, as well as some of the other regional infrastructure that we need. The noble Lord is right that we end up doing things in a hit-and-miss way, with a bit here and a bit there, and then join it up afterwards. Heathrow Express came in but was that really the best idea when we had Crossrail coming? There are a lot of oddities in there. In my judgment, and I will be interested to hear what the Minister says on this, if we asked the CAA to suddenly become the organisation that has to comment on and recommend surface infrastructure we, will need a much larger organisation than the current CAA.