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

Lord Harper Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, this is what I refer to as, in essence, an administrative Bill, in that it does not make large changes to the way in which civil aviation operates but changes significantly the way in which decisions will be made in future about how civil aviation operates. It does that necessarily because many of the decisions that have been made in the past and until now have been carried out under European Union legislation. Since we happily left the European Union, a substitute for that decision-making must be found.

My concern about this Bill throughout Committee has been that the new system has, in many ways, been a terrible botch. One of the features of it has been that very large powers are being taken away, so to speak, from the European Union and given to the Civil Aviation Authority almost without supervision or ministerial oversight: they are, in other words, being transferred to unelected bureaucrats. It is as if the Government have been completely deaf to what we voted for when we voted to leave the European Union.

I will be fairly brief on Amendments 1 and 3, but a few words of introduction are important in this case. The background to them—and I have to say this frankly— is the catastrophic Government we have suffered from in the last two years. They have been so catastrophic that they have had to depose their own party leader and Prime Minister and go outside Parliament to seek a substitute, in order to reset the Government and try to recover from what has been a complete disaster. In that context, it seems quite wrong that the Government should be seeking our trust to take these powers, with almost no parliamentary scrutiny, to pass many of them to the Civil Aviation Authority with very little ministerial oversight, saying to Parliament, “You can trust us to get it right”. I am afraid the basis of that trust has gone.

That is why we have two amendments in this group, one of which, Amendment 1, seeks to give a purpose to the Bill and sets out what the guiding principles underlying the Bill should be: that competition and the economy are important. I know that Governments generally do not like purpose clauses, and I have to admit that, as I think most noble Lords know, even the Public Bill Office does not like them. However, I have reinforced and buttressed Amendment 1 with Amendment 3, which gives specific guidance to the Government on what they need to take into account when making decisions under Clause 1 to do with passenger protection. They focus very much on the opportunities that aviation gives us for economic growth and on the necessity, to that end, of competition and competitiveness in the sector.

It is astonishing that when one talks to members of the Government and asks, “What about the economy and competitiveness?”, they often look at one as if one were talking about something from Mars. They are all for growth, but when you say that the mechanics of growth involve such things as competitiveness and light-touch regulation, they wonder what you mean. It is as if the only route to growth is the expenditure of public money—money we have now, in fact, run out of.

The Minister has said, and I do not think it is a matter of controversy, that the aviation sector—indeed, like other transport sectors—is an important infrastructural base for economic growth and that we need the capacity to give the country the aviation services it requires. Therefore, requiring the Government to have regard to those factors and to avoid overregulation is reasonable guidance to them in putting this together. It must be said at the outset that the Minister has clearly listened carefully to many of the points made in Committee and has tabled a raft of amendments in response. Many of his amendments could have gone further, but they have come some way in the direction I and many other noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, have been arguing for, so I am grateful to him for that. However, he has not listened on this point, and it is perhaps time that he should. He still has a chance to redeem himself. I must say that if he fails to do so, I am very likely to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 3.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lord Moylan’s two amendments. I have some general remarks about them, and two specific points which are questions to the Minister.

The first point, which I will not labour at length since we dealt with it in Committee, is the focus of my noble friend’s Amendment 1: the importance of growing the aviation sector itself and making sure it is competitive. It is important to have that as a focus, because there are those—some inside your Lordships’ House and also those outside—who want to stymie and stifle the aviation sector, which would be a retrograde step. I should have done this at the beginning of my remarks, but at this point I declare my interest, as in the register, as the non-exec chair of RVL Aviation. I did that one or two moments too late but in the nick of time.

My second point is on my noble friend’s Amendment 3, which is about economic growth more widely and therefore links the importance of growing the aviation sector and its role in growing the economy. I want to put this point on the record because I suspect that a lot of the debate will be focused, rightly, on the impact of many rules on passengers. But it is worth remembering the very significant role that aviation plays in trade, and in not just the volume but the value of imports and exports to and from the United Kingdom. This is very significant. It is important to our overall competitiveness, particularly in high-value sectors, that aviation remains strong to promote the wider economy.

I have two specific questions to the Minister. He will remember that in Committee, we had a debate, prompted by an amendment I tabled, on the impact on airports following the revaluation and very significant rises—a multiple factor increase—in business rates. The Minister referenced the fact that a review is ongoing. I want to put on record the importance of this issue in the context of my noble friend’s two amendments, for this reason.

There has been some talk—which I recognise is only speculation at this point—from the man who will be Prime Minister next week that he favours an increase in business rates on what are loosely defined as out-of-town warehouses, large premises, in order to generate revenue for the Government and cut business rates for the high street. I ask the Minister to specifically make it clear that for this purpose—I am not going to go into the wider debate on business rates—airports should not be included in the category of large, out-of-town warehouse sites, and should not be facing a significant increase in business rates in order to pay for reductions on the high street. I ask the Minister to give whatever commitment he is able to at this stage about that, because that would be a retrograde step. The review that is taking place will, I hope, conclude that the very significant rise in business rates that has hit airports is good for neither the sector nor passengers and freight users, because those costs are just loaded on to the users. I hope the Minister can rule that out.

The second area is for me to reflect on the point that my noble friend Lord Moylan has made in both his amendments: the importance of economic growth. The Government have said on a number of occasions that economic growth is their number one priority. The problem with that assertion is that, since the general election, there has been almost no GDP growth per head. The economy has grown a little, but it has not kept pace with the rise in the population, so there has not really been any economic growth.

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I agree with some of the commentary about how skeletal this Bill is and how it needs more detail. We tried to test this out in Committee and the government amendments have in some ways achieved that. On this one, we are not going on the same journey as the Conservatives. At the very least, we would add an environmental element if we were expanding that remit. Therefore, we will not be joining them. We will be listening with some interest to what the Minister says, like the noble Lord, Lord Harper, whom I did not realise is not on the Conservative Whip this evening.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, can I reference the point that she made about disabled people? The amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Moylan just says that the Government have to consider the burdens. If you make air travel better for disabled people, you will grow the top line. You will have more people flying and higher revenues. Secondly, the Minister has simply to consider those costs; he may still consider that they are the right thing to do. So I do not think that there is a contradiction in the way that she set out.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord. We think that driving for this principle cuts across the stronger consumer rights that we have been talking about all through Committee.

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[Lord Redwood (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, posed an interesting question when she said that she thought that the mixture of amendments in this grouping created a tension and that maybe Amendment 4 was not compatible because it was trying to reduce the administrative and regulatory burden, whereas some of the other amendments were trying to achieve better outcomes, particularly for disabled passengers, by improved regulation. However, I think that these two things are perfectly compatible.

Most of us in this House benefited greatly from learning from the expertise of noble Lords and noble Baronesses with experience of service for disabled passengers, and we would want the regulations to be of the best quality in order to give the best opportunity for good outcomes. However, we have also heard from my noble friend Lady Foster, with her experience of the airline industry, that a lot of the bad cases that have been described are bad practice by a commercial business. They may already be violating existing rules, but they are certainly violating normal standards of good conduct and probably doing damage to the reputation of that business, because not only the disabled people but all their families and friends will be singularly unimpressed by what has occurred. We clearly need a cultural improvement in the case of some commercial airlines, and it may be that some of the proposed improvements in the regulation will help achieve that.

If we look at the whole burden of the cost and complexity of regulation, we can see that that great weight of business and economic regulation, as the CAA and others call it, is exceptionally complicated and is now producing a cost problem for aviation that is using the facilities of United Kingdom airports and trying to build businesses from a United Kingdom hub and headquarters base. That regulation is doing a lot of business damage to our growth and competitiveness and encouraging the growth of alternatives, such as Schiphol. That is what the Minister and his colleagues in other economic departments ought to be most interested in, and it is why I am attracted to my noble friend Lord Moylan’s proposal that the Government should either put their own general target for deregulation into the Bill or at the very least say, in the course of this debate, that aviation is not excluded from what is a perfectly attainable and sensible aim.

For all those noble Lords who think that the EU gets a lot of these things right, the EU is, of course, following exactly the same stated policy: it has come to the conclusion, through a number of reports, that it is massively overregulated and therefore not competitive compared with, say, the United States of America. It too is trying to set itself a target of a 25% reduction in the volume and cost of regulation, because it thinks that would be a good start in trying to restore some of the lost jobs and slower growth that it is undoubtedly incurring as a result of overcomplicated and excessive regulation, in particular business and economic regulation of the kind that afflicts the United Kingdom’s aviation industry. I hope that this House will look favourably upon my noble friend’s proposals and see that they are perfectly compatible with the excellent idea that we need better treatment for disabled passengers.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I will comment very briefly on my noble friend Lord Moylan’s Amendment 4. There are two parts to it. The first part, as he explained very carefully to the House, is the 25% reduction in administrative costs, which is the Government’s own target. We discussed this in Committee and I asked the Minister if he would set out the progress that the Government have made in achieving that 25% cost reduction in the areas that are the responsibility of his department. Clearly, we are two years into a five-year Parliament, so if the Government were on track, other things being equal, one would expect a 10% reduction in cost or an explanation as to why it was going to be loaded towards the back end of the Parliament. We did not get a lot of information, so I would be grateful if the Minister could tell the House what work is going on in the Department for Transport to track progress in reaching that 25% reduction in administrative costs. What information is currently available and published by the department about hitting that target? As my noble friend Lord Moylan said, if we received a lot of that information it would make the amendment unnecessary.

My second and final point is just to reflect on the point that I made on the earlier group. The wording of my noble friend Lord Moylan’s proposed new subsection (1B) is very sensible. It does not rule out the imposition of costs, but it challenge the Government to make a judgment as to whether the cost increase is disproportionate to the consumer benefit. It absolutely would allow some regulations to be introduced that had a cost but it would require the Government to look at the benefit that those regulations delivered to passengers and assess whether that balance was correct—in other words, whether the benefit to passengers outweighed the costs that were levied on the airlines. That is a good test for the Government. We do not want to have costly regulations which have a big economic burden but do not result in significant benefits to passengers. That is a perfectly sensible point and one which I think addresses the perfectly sensible point that the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, made about making sure that the focus on economics does not lead to a reduction in passenger support.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, before I address these amendments, I thank noble Lords for their constructive engagement with the Government on passenger rights and accessibility in Committee, in meetings since and in the debate today. In particular, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton, Lady Grey-Thompson, Lady Finlay of Llandaff and Lady Foster of Oxton, my noble friends Lady Kennedy of Cradley, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath and Lady Griffin of Princethorpe, and the noble Lords, Lord Holmes of Richmond and Lord Blencathra. Their contributions have greatly strengthened the Government’s approach to accessibility in the Bill, including the government amendments on this topic.

First, I turn to government Amendments 18, 19, 71 and 72 in my name. These amendments are intended to ensure that the Bill fulfils its potential to strengthen air passenger rights, with particular emphasis on improving protections for disabled and less mobile passengers. Amendment 19 will place a statutory obligation on the Secretary of State to consult on accessibility issues and identify what changes may be needed to existing law. Any necessary reforms could then be made through Clause 1. The consultation will cover issues raised in your Lordships’ House, such as compensation for breaches of assistance duties, protections for passengers with allergies and complaints handling, but it will not be limited to those matters.

The Government will consult disabled passengers and persons with reduced mobility and their representative organisations, alongside airlines, airports, the Civil Aviation Authority, passenger rights advocates and wider stakeholders, as appropriate. This will support a genuinely pan-disability approach grounded in lived experience and expert evidence. We will begin the consultation as soon as possible after Royal Assent, while allowing sufficient time to consider the full range of accessibility issues. It will focus on legislative reform and sit alongside the non-legislative work already undertaken through the Aviation Accessibility Task and Finish Group, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, to whom the Government are grateful. Amendment 18 is a technical amendment enabling government amendments on accessibility, and Amendments 71 and 72 deal with commencement.

I turn now to Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender. The intention of Clause 1 is to strengthen and enhance air passenger rights, and this aligns with our obligations under the trade and co-operation agreement to achieve a high level of consumer protections. I recognise the noble Baroness’s intention to ensure that this clause is used only to make things better for air passengers. However, such a requirement could limit what the clause is used for, which may ultimately work against passengers’ interests. The Government share her objective of strengthening passenger rights and have tabled amendments to support that aim, including some which will be discussed in the next group.

I turn to Amendment 4, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. The Government are committed to reducing administrative burdens. The Bill is expected to reduce business costs over time, as set out in the published impact assessment. In Committee, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Harper, I gave some examples of changes made within the department towards this target. However, it would not be appropriate to place a fixed numerical target in primary legislation, as targets may change over time. It is the Government’s overall target; it is not split by department. But, to be clear, aviation is included. I also reject any notion that these amendments adversely affect efficiency, because they will facilitate disabled people playing a full part in economic life and making their contribution.

I turn to Amendment 6, tabled by my noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley and the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Brinton. The Government are clear that aviation must be accessible to all who wish to travel. Clause 1 has been drafted deliberately broadly to support a pan-impairment approach. It relies on existing legislative definitions that would already capture all the conditions and impairments specified in the noble Baronesses’ amendment. By contrast, a more detailed statutory list risks unintentionally excluding passengers whose impairment or condition is not specifically mentioned.

The Government recognise the importance of adequate protections for passengers with allergies travelling by air. Allergies and wider accessibility issues can be considered through the consultation required by government Amendment 19, which I have already outlined. Persons with allergies must be consulted as part of that process. Any reform shown to be necessary will then be made using Clause 1. I will ensure that noble Lords continue to be engaged as that consultation develops. This consultation will sit alongside the excellent work of the Aviation Accessibility Implementation Group, which is focused on non-legislative work with the industry to improve accessibility across the sector. In answer to my noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley, I will be happy to arrange a meeting with the co-chairs of the group to discuss what more could be done in a non-legislative capacity.

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For these reasons, I hope noble Lords will feel reassured by the commitments and safeguards I have outlined, will not press their amendments and will support the government amendments in this group. I will have more to say about the international issue in the next group.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

Before the Minister sits down, can I press him on his point about the Government’s plan to reduce the administrative burden on business by 25%? In Committee, he said that the Department for Transport was working closely with the Department for Business and Trade, which I presume owns this target across government—the Minister is nodding assent. What expectations for delivery has the Department for Business and Trade set out for the Department for Transport? Unless each department is going to deliver something, the Government have no hope of hitting this target. If the Minister is not able to tell me that now, he committed in Committee to write to me with further information, which has not yet happened; I would be perfectly happy if he were to furnish me with that information in writing.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right: I am pretty sure I did commit to write to him, I am pretty sure I have not yet and I am pretty sure I will do shortly.

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Amendment 5 talks about minimum standards, which are very important. I support that, but I thought it was important to log that not everyone using wheelchairs is treated badly.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I raise just one issue, which is the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley, raised on the previous group: the interaction between specific regulations in place for the aviation sector and more wide-ranging legislation, such as the disability elements of the Equality Act. I have a specific question for the Minister to answer when he responds. We are obviously looking at Amendment 5, which the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, introduced so well and which would set down some minimum standards. However, such standards will not achieve the outcome we want if they are not enforced. Can the Minister therefore say what the Government’s assessment is of the extent to which the gap is the legislation, standards or regulations, and to what extent it is the degree to which those existing regulations are enforced? If it is the latter, what is the Government’s plan to close that gap between the regulatory standards that are in place and the ones that take effect for passengers and to make the experience that my noble friend Lord Holmes referred to a much better one for disabled passengers?

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, I will be extremely brief. I know that quite a lot of people say that and then do not fulfil it, but I really will. This group of amendments of course has a great deal of support from our Benches. We look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. In particular, we look forward to hearing something about how, having raised the bar at a UK and domestic level, it is possible to further that. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, for giving some indication of what that could include, because what comes next is the question of how we can create a gold standard here in the UK and explain it elsewhere at an international level.