Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Grayling

Report stage
Monday 13th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 13 and 14 are in my name. I declare again my interest as an advisor to AtkinsRéalis in the UK and Ireland.

I have a lot of sympathy with my noble friend on the Front Bench and his comments about various aspects of the Bill; in particular, his comments about the European Union. We should not be looking simply to match the European Union going forward. Indeed, I am very much in favour of having high standards which are not tied to the European Union. Where we can do better—and we should do better—without doing damage to the commercial viability of the UK industry, we should seriously consider taking that kind of step.

While mentioning briefly the international side, in the light of the easyJet takeover proposals, I urge the Minister and his colleagues in the department to use the most muscular approach on this. It would not normally be possible for a UK airline to buy a US one. We need to make sure that the rules and ownership are properly and rigorously enforced. It is urgent to do that.

My two amendments are designed simply to try to put some limitation on the powers that would reside with the Civil Aviation Authority as a result of the Bill. I always envisaged changes upon leaving the European Union as likely to lead to a degree of deregulation and a relaxation of restrictions. The Minister knows that I raised a number of concerns with him in Committee about the extent of the powers to enforce—to enter premises and to impose penalties. These two amendments are designed to put some limitations around the freedoms of the regulator to take enforcement action, so that it does so only in what are genuinely serious situations. I know the Minister is not going to accept these amendments, but I would ask him to give some thought to how this is applied in regulations. Of course, we need a regulator to have the ability to take serious action in a serious situation, but what we do not want is to create a situation where we have undue levels of enforcement on small matters in a way that is overly onerous on the commercial independence and freedom of businesses. We want common sense; these two amendments are designed to apply common sense, and I hope the Minister will be able to take that principle forward.

Finally, I will just comment on my noble friend Lord Young’s amendment, which I am sure he will be speaking to in a moment. Given the impact on the airlines of the failures, when they do happen, in the air traffic control system, I think he makes an important point that is worthy of consideration by the Government.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that trailer. The reason behind Amendment 65 in my name is what happened on 28 August 2023, when the air traffic system run by NATS failed. There was an independent review which looked into the debacle, and I want to quote very briefly from the report, which said:

“From CAA estimates, over 700,000 passengers were affected by cancellations and delays ascribed to the incident, including approximately 300,000 impacted by flight cancellations, approximately 95,000 by long delays (over three hours) and at least a further 300,000 by shorter delays”.


The review went on to estimate the costs involved:

“Based on the information provided by the airlines most affected by the incident, the Panel has estimated that the costs to airlines were approximately £65m. In addition, substantial costs were incurred by passengers, airports, tour operators, insurers, and others. The Panel was unable to accurately quantify these costs. It is likely that the total cost was in the region of £75m to £100m”.


Noble Lords may be surprised to learn that the company responsible for those losses—NATS—with a turnover of over £1 billion, with profits of over £200 million in each of the last two years, has immunity from those losses. Those losses instead are borne by the airlines, which are tied into a monopoly provider. To my mind, this is a manifest, wholly indefensible position that flies in the face of natural justice, and that is what my amendment seeks to remedy.

Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Grayling

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

Will my noble friend allow me to help him a little? He may have heard of a company called Network Rail, which, if my memory serves me correctly, must pay compensation to train operators if it goes through the kinds of failing that he has identified. Were he to know anybody who used to chair Network Rail, he might have an interesting point to make.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My noble friend is a mind-reader; I was going to refer to Network Rail in about 40 seconds. As I said, as far as NERL’s ownership is concerned, it is different, but that should not preclude it having to pay up for claims.

The review then produced another pretext, which, again, does not stand up to scrutiny. This is what it said:

“Such a liability would probably lead to a substantial increase in the annual costs of the ATC”—


air traffic control—

“service, which could in turn lead to increased costs to airlines and passengers”.

What happens at the moment? The compensation liability rests with the airlines and, as such, it has already caused increased costs to passengers. If the airlines did not have the liability their costs would go down, but if NATS then passed back all the increased costs we would be back where we started. Crucially, that assumes that the regulator, the CAA, would allow the costs to be passed on by NATS to customers, instead of taking it out of profits. If, as happens with the water companies, costs were not passed on to consumers but funded out of profits then costs to the airlines and passengers would actually go down, not up—the opposite of what the review suggested.

I come to my noble friend’s intervention. The Minister will understand and, I hope, sympathise with the case I am making because of his previous responsibility for Network Rail. If, as my noble friend said, a passenger is delayed, the train operator pays the compensation. If Network Rail was responsible for the delay, it then reimburses the train operator. That is as it should be, and it is exactly what should happen in air transport. A failure in traffic control is paid for by the traffic controller. My amendment is supported by IATA, which actually wants to go further. It would like the amendment to be extended to airports and other parties that provide air services that can cause disruption yet are not liable for passenger compensation. Airlines currently pay all passenger compensation regardless of who is at fault—for example, the power failure at Heathrow last year.

To sum up and use management jargon, we need shared accountability across the value chain. I hope the Minister can respond positively to the case I have made and put right this manifest injustice.