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

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th June 2026 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 13, leave out “may” and insert “must”

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as I was chair of the Aviation Accessibility Task and Finish Group, which published a report last year. I thank the officials at the Department for Transport for their support. The vast majority of the recommendations from that report are now amendments to the Bill. As of today, I have been appointed a board member of Active Travel England, and I also chair the Accessible Transport Policy Commission. We had a useful meeting this morning which looked in a UK context at disabled people’s experience of travelling. I understand that aviation is more complicated than that. The sheer difficulty that disabled people have in using any form of transport came out clearly in the meeting. I make reference to the Transport Select Committee’s report, Access Denied: Rights Versus Reality.

We have probably a once-in-a-generation chance to make a difference to how disabled people are able to access this industry. Since Second Reading, I have had a much-increased number of emails from disabled people who have had truly dreadful experiences of flying, and some of those will be picked up in the next group.

I have two amendments in this group, Amendments 2 and 16, which are in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. They simply ask that we change “may make provision” to “must make provision”. “May” is too vague in this context, so we have a chance to make a change. The Minister will know from other debates that we have had around disability access, such as the debates around taxis, that it is hard enough when we are trying to enact accessibility legislation that was passed 30 years ago, let alone what we are trying to do now. There have been a lot of promises about what disabled people might have the opportunity to rely on. Unless we have a much bigger commitment to “must make provision”, it feels like we will be kicking the can down the road, as we have done with the rail industry and all the derogations around it.

I am more than happy to discuss a tighter range of regulations that the Secretary of State may make or to work across your Lordships’ Chamber. I am simply looking for assurance that there will be a genuine shift in how disabled people will experience air travel. Both this group and the next have a number of important amendments that both seek to strengthen the Bill and to provide more clarity for disabled people. For them, currently and so far, the experience is far too ad hoc. I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 109 in my name aims to remedy a manifest injustice whereby the airlines have to pay for customer compensation when the fault lies not with them but with NATS. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Kirkhope, who trailed this amendment in his Second Reading speech, but, in the time available, the Minister was not able to address it.

The problem manifested itself on 28 August 2023, when the air traffic system, managed by NATS, failed. An independent review was set up and its report gives the scale of the debacle:

“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”.


It went on to say that

“the incident on 28 August had substantial negative impacts on a large number of passengers, not only on the day of the outage but for several days afterwards, as it took until the following weekend for all the re-routed journeys to be completed”.

The review estimated 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”.


Finally, it said about passengers:

“Many passengers incurred costs which they could not recover, for example, the loss of pre-paid holidays, lost income from work to which passengers were not able to return, and other consequential losses. The total costs of this large group would be very difficult to calculate but is likely to have been many millions of pounds”.


However, when one reads the NATS annual report for that year, it puts a slightly different spin on the incident:

“A technical flight handling system issue in August necessitated a considerable reduction in flight capacity for a short period in order to ensure the skies remained safe”.


Noble Lords would expect that the guilty party, NATS, rather than the innocent parties, principally the airlines, would have to bear the costs—not a bit of it. The only cost to NATS was £1.8 million. In the words of the review, that was a

“relatively modest penalty associated with not meeting some of its performance … targets”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I should just say that of course I respect the views of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and if he looks at Hansard and considers what I said, I will similarly consider further what he said.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate this afternoon. I would just like to pick up on a couple of points relating to my amendments, and I will try not to run into the next group.

The noble Lord, Lord Empey, makes some valuable points about the drop-off charges. Although I have not had emails on that specifically to do with airports, disabled people have issues in terms of access and technology and might find physically paying some of these charges quite hard to do. Although we should be trying to get disabled people and everybody to travel to airports by public transport, that highlights a bigger set of problems that we have with wheelchair-accessible transport in this country.

An amendment was not passed on wheelchair-accessible taxis outside London. It might be quite hard, if you have a specially designed WAV with hand controls, to take it to off-site parking. So, if you then use transport around the airport, there is a whole issue with not being tied down in the buses to get from the parking to the airport. My husband is not a permanent wheelchair user, but if we are going on holiday, he will quite often take his wheelchair with him because he struggles to walk long distances. We would not be able to travel on the same bus together because of the current rules.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, raised hand luggage and made me think of a different aspect not raised today: travelling with medical aids. I have had some emails about that. Some airlines are great, do not charge and are very accommodating, and some are not. It might be a piece of equipment such as a hoist that needs to go into the hold, or something like a CPAP machine, which absolutely needs to be on board with an individual and which is safe to fly with. I think some of that might come into the training in the next group.

I bow to my noble friend Lady Finlay’s greater knowledge on air quality, but the Task and Finish Group looked extensively at toilets. That is outside our jurisdiction in terms of the design, but we could do so much better at the design of toilets. There are some really good examples. The airline crew should help disabled people to the toilet, but not in the toilet—absolutely not. However, because of the poor design of toilets on planes, most people, including myself, absolutely dehydrate ourselves before we fly to make sure that we do not have to use them, even on long haul flights, which creates a whole different set of problems for safety on board a plane. Any influence we could have on smart design—probably outside the Bill—would be very helpful.

I thank the noble Lord for his response; I understand what he is saying. I will be bringing possibly a different version of this amendment back. I do not think it is impossible to look at a form of words that is a tighter list. Maybe a new clause needs to be inserted to give disabled travellers more reassurance on what the Government are trying to do. But at this stage I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

Moved by

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

3: Clause 1, page 1, line 21, at end insert—
“(ca) about the liabilities of air transport services providers and operators in relation to the damage or loss of mobility aid devices, medical and life-sustaining equipment, ensuring compensation of a such loss or damage is commensurate with the full replacement or repair value of the equipment;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that air transport service providers and airport operators are strictly liable for the full financial value of repairing or replacing any damaged or lost mobility and medical equipment.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, this is a really important group of amendments, like the last one, and it needs some consideration. I support Amendment 7 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley, in terms of her work on allergies. The Task and Finish Group again looked at this and recognised that there were some challenges in what we can do about the complicated nature of international jurisdictions. I also strongly support the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.

In this group, we have to ask ourselves what we are trying to do in considering consumer protection. Looking at transport rights for disabled people, we should be guaranteeing freedom of movement, independence and, above all, dignity. When there is failure, one of the words that is frequently used by disabled people is dignity, which they feel has been taken away from them. So it is vital to reform a system that currently hinders disabled people from travelling.

--- Later in debate ---

Finally, I heard the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, discuss a UK standard for landing rights. It is certainly a desirable aim, but she will appreciate the need to deeply consider how this might work and the effects on airlines of any such proposal.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, this has been a large group of amendments, and I think the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. I remain unconvinced that the Bill, as it stands, goes far enough. I like the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, of government amendments. That might save quite a lot of time, as this would be something that I would want to push to a Division on Report.

The debate highlights some of the problems we have with international jurisdictions. We have not addressed people who want to fly in electric wheelchairs. That is above anything that we can do here.