Aviation: UK Civil Aviation

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Bradshaw had hoped to speak on this issue and the House would have been very interested to hear him because he is clearly one of the leading experts in this field. I regret that I am only the understudy since he is unable to be here. I must also declare that I am a member of HACAN, the protest group that is made up primarily of residents but is now fairly international, which opposes further expansion at Heathrow and works closely with those of a similar view at both Stansted and Gatwick.

I am very pleased that the Government will be consulting, hopefully in the spring, on a sustainable framework for aviation, but it is absolutely crucial that green and environmental issues are at the forefront of that conversation. This House will be very aware that since 1990 the proportion of total UK carbon emissions from aviation has doubled and that we have serious climate change targets. Whether or not it is within the context of those targets or a broader context, climate change must surely be a real concern, and if we do not manage capacity in aviation as we look at those climate change issues, surely we make a mockery of being committed to the climate change problem at all. I stress that when we talk about airports, we are talking not just about carbon emissions from aviation itself but about the travel to and fro, which is overwhelmingly by car—and anyone who thinks that you can completely switch that in any circumstances to public transport has not looked at the behaviour of those who regularly use London’s current airports and who insist, when they have many bags, on using road services.

In reference to some of the comments that have been made on tax, surely now of all times, when we are all under pressure, aviation ought to be carrying more of its own weight. The very favourable tax climate that aviation enjoys dates back to when it was a new industry. Those new industry tax breaks, given a generation ago, in essence remain with aviation today and are only gradually being countered. Like many others, I would much rather that we were not doing this on a per-passenger basis and I hope very much that the Government will achieve their goals in Europe of shifting to a per-plane basis and getting the tax associated with the emission levels for each plane. The very notion that we should be giving further tax breaks to an industry that is already paying less than other transport rivals strikes me as absolutely extraordinary.

Perhaps I can join some of those who see the estuary airport as something of an election ploy. I suspect that this project will bite the dust by the time we get to mid-May, but I will make a couple of comments on it because it addresses one of the issues raised: that of capacity. Even in their most aggressive forecasts, the Government are basically saying that 470 million passengers will be flying by 2050, but the estuary airport plans and similar raise that capacity to 700 million—way beyond even the most aggressive forecast. If you are looking at this from a climate change perspective and you want both to shift to rail and to eliminate unnecessary travel through the use of new technology, some would say that 380 million passengers per year is a much better target to work towards. We are looking at a lot of capacity around the UK, not at places such as Heathrow, but we are a country not simply a city, which I think people sometimes do not notice. As we look at putting in new capacity, here we are talking about rebalancing an economy that is looking to the north to rebuild its industry, jobs, prosperity and growth. Yet how can we look seriously at a mechanism that seeks to put all that additional capacity back down into the London area? I would argue that that is illogical.

I will not even talk about the price because no one, I think, is able to put a price on it yet, but we have issues of safety such as bird migration and the wreckage of the community that currently serves Heathrow and that is based around Ealing and Harlesden. All those people will be unemployed or will perhaps move to some new city out near the new airport. There are all those issues, as well as the environmental ones.

I realise that I am running up against my four minutes, so I simply say this: most of the problems that people have with aviation are to do with the fact that some airports, and Heathrow is one of them, are not passenger-friendly or very well run, and you cannot get through immigration. That is what drives everyone absolutely insane. The better operation of what we have and making innovations in aircraft—these are the things that would make a real difference.