Aviation Noise (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not repeat at length the points made by my noble friend Lord Berkeley and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. I broadly agree with them and will certainly be listening with care to the Minister’s response. I do, though, come back to the issue of the Secretary of State exercising his powers. We got a clear answer on the previous SI that, in exercising his powers under that statutory instrument, he would consult the CAA. We need something a good deal more complex for this issue because noise is quite different in character from safety. Realistically, a member of the public does not have a useful or valid opinion about airline safety issues, but on noise a member of the public is exactly who it is all about. The issue is about communities around airports.

There are two areas that I would like the Minister to expand on. First, from what parts of government will the Secretary of State receive advice in exercising his powers? Secondly, I would like an assurance on matter of consultation. As far as I can tell, the statutory instrument seeks as far as possible in this nightmare scenario to maintain the status quo, but any changes to these regulations that the Secretary of State makes—using, once again, the negative procedure—will affect the general public in all the communities around airports, and of course there are also the additional issues of practicality, cost and so on. This is a difficult and complex political subject, so we need assurances that at any time in the future when the Secretary of State uses his powers under this instrument, he will conduct a full consultation to get all proper inputs to the decision-making.

[Baroness Sugg]

I thank noble Lords for their consideration of this statutory instrument. The regulations do not set noise policy; noise standards for aircraft are set by ICAO and we will continue to follow them.

On the point about the competent authority, last year we laid regulations that appointed competent authorities in England and Wales. The implementation provides for the local planning authority to be the competent authority when an application for any change is brought under the Town and Country Planning Act, but it also allows the Secretary of State for English airports or Welsh Ministers for Welsh airports to be the competent authority for called-in applications. Therefore, that matter is slightly separate from this SI.

The noble Baroness mentioned the balanced approach. Regulation 598 requires the competent authorities to take account of the balanced approach, and that requirement is kept by this SI. It will ensure that the balanced approach consists of identifying noise problems at specific airports and giving consideration to various measures that might be available to reduce noise. That is being carried over in its entirety.

Expansion at Heathrow is conditional on a package of mitigations. The NPS makes clear that noise mitigation measures should be put in place to ensure that the impact is limited. Again, that is going through the planning process following the judicial review process. We of course recognise that aviation noise is a key concern for communities living near airports. I regularly meet community groups and MPs to discuss this. We have played a leading role at an international level in relation to noise standards, and we will continue to promote further improvements in this area.

This SI does not change noise policy; it is concerned only with corrections as a result of EU exit. It does not impose restrictions; it is just a framework. We are consulting more widely on our noise policy, which we set at a national level through the aviation Green Paper consultation which we published in December. In that, we set out a number of policies designed to reduce noise and its impact, and that is how we will set our noise policy in future.

On consultation, in 2017 we consulted on proposals for appointing competent authorities, and the Scottish Government conducted a consultation on their proposals earlier this year. However, we have not consulted communities on this. The changes in Regulation 598 will not have a direct impact on overflown communities. They will ensure that the correct procedure is followed when operating restrictions are considered or it is proposed that they be imposed, but they will not change things for communities per se. As I said, that is being dealt with through the aviation strategy consultation.

There is a delegated power which provides for the Secretary of State to make secondary legislation under the negative procedure. It is about providing technical updates to the regulations, but again that power is limited to such updates to the noise certification standards and methodology indicators relating to the assessment of noise impact at an airport. Again, those updates are limited within the regulations to account for changes to relevant international rules.

As with the previous SI that we discussed, we will continue to follow the international rules. We have been leading the way with our noise policy and are suggesting further measures to improve it through the consultation. We will publish our final aviation strategy later this year, which we hope will address the understandable concerns of communities around the airport. However, that noise policy is not directly relevant to the SI we are discussing, which simply ensures that in the event of a no-deal exit from the EU there will be continuity of aircraft noise standards and certification and of the process when operating restrictions are considered at airports.