Civil Aviation Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Grand Committee

I am not sure of the best place in the Bill for this statutory duty, but what I am sure of is that it must be included somewhere. We all owe a duty to the environment. Why should the CAA be an exception? So I hope that my noble friend Lord Attlee will keep an open mind on this subject, agree to consider it further and come back on Report with a suitable government amendment.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

I do not think that I will detain the Committee long because I could not possibly put my arguments better than they have just been put by the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart. He has made every single point that I wanted to make, succinctly and elegantly, which is marvellous for the Committee and not so bad for me.

I support these amendments, which were moved very ably by my noble friend Lady Worthington. In particular, I want to support Amendment 69 for the very reasons that the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, gave. I felt that he put the points in exactly the way in which they needed to be put. This amendment would provide the CAA with a general duty, which would meet the objections that it would somehow be to the disadvantage of the regulated airports if they were subject to a particular kind of scrutiny by the CAA that was not going to be applied to the airports that are not regulated.

I declare an interest in that, very stupidly, I have chosen to live under two flight paths. I live in north Essex, under the flight path into Stansted, and in Dolphin Square, under the flight path into Heathrow. This was not good planning on my part, but it gives me the ability to make one particular point that the Minister knew that I might raise to do with noise.

Environmental issues can be understood very broadly or quite narrowly. What has been interesting about the whole debate this afternoon, from the outset, is that it has all been drawn towards this issue of environmental impacts. The first amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, which talked about surface access, was actually talking about the impact on passengers and local communities of insufficiently well developed infrastructure, which is an environmental impact. Noise is too, and my noble friend Lord Soley is quite right that if you live next to a railway line that goes all night, that is also disturbing. However, living under a flight path where so-called night flights really only stop between midnight and 4 am means that you lose a lot of sleep. There are a great many people who are adversely affected by that. That does not necessarily include me, as I am fortunate enough to be able to cope. However, people who are very ill, very young children or people who suffer from sleep disorders are going to be very adversely affected if noise pollution is not controlled effectively.

Emissions, which my noble friend Lady Worthington talked about with great authority, as one would expect her to do, are less easy for people to understand in their daily lives. You are not aware, on the whole, of the sort of damage that is being done to you as an individual by the aeroplane that is going over your head emitting toxic fumes that you cannot smell but which sure as heck are there. The same is true of the impact of surface transport around and in airports. The whole range of impacts that can be broadly said to be environmental is very wide, and I find it very hard to understand why the Government have so far resisted giving the CAA the general duty that Amendment 69 would give it. It gives rise to a slight suspicion that they may be susceptible to the wrong kind of pressure, possibly from the aviation industry—who knows?—rather than giving what most noble Lords in this Committee today appear to accept is proper consideration to the wider social and environmental impact of that industry’s activities.

I do not think, as my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis appears to believe, that the industry is unmindful of its environmental impact. I do not think that at all. Having lived under the flight path into Stansted for 10 years, I am aware that a huge amount of work has gone on in the development of aircraft, in respect of both noise and emissions and that there is a strong wish on the part of the industry, in its own interests and in those of the wider community, to continue developing, for example, better fuels, which my noble friend Lord Soley mentioned, and engines and airframes that are less likely to produce excessive noise.

I do not believe that in some way this is an opportunity to bash the aviation industry or not to accept that it has done a great deal already. However, there is much more to do. The danger that we stand in if the CAA does not have the kind of strengthened position that this amendment would give it is that the competition between airports that was talked about in earlier amendments will give rise to reluctance on the part of the industry to accelerate that work as quickly as it otherwise might. It will also, as the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, has already mentioned—

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

Beyond the work of the CAA, does my noble friend recognise that without any prompting the aviation industry and the trade unions concerned with aviation are all mindful of the ill effects on the ground? Is it not appropriate that a tribute should be paid to them for the work they have done and will do in future?

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

I believe I just did exactly that. As I already said, I am very well aware of the work that the industry has done and will continue to do in both its own interests and those of the wider community. I merely say that the aviation business is very competitive. There are strong pressures—which I do not suggest are venal in any way—on the airlines to compete with each other and on the airports to compete with each other. If the CAA was not properly equipped with the right regulatory powers, those pressures could lead to some of the reduction in environmental impacts that we would like to see not being achieved either as quickly as we would like or at all.

It seems to me that Amendment 69 in particular is quite modest. I did not draft it. I simply observe that it looks fairly straightforward. As the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, remarked, it is deliberately structured so as not to place an onerous duty on the CAA but to place an obligation on it where appropriate to exercise this particular power. The point that the noble Earl made about the protection that it offers the CAA is very important. Could the Minister explain to the Committee on what grounds—other than in the difference between the regulated and unregulated airports—the Government have resisted and I fear may continue to resist this particular amendment?