Aviation Safety (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for his useful introduction. I stress that I perceive this SI as important because it introduces amendments to bring the UK into line with ICAO standards and practices. It will allow commercial operators to use more advanced and efficient fuel-planning systems, which will lead to the saving of fuel and lower emissions, which is in itself very important indeed, and will lead to significant savings for those operating in the business.

Secondly, this SI will also permit the use of new technology and procedures at take-off and landing in what you or I would call poor visibility but what the aviation sector calls “all-weather operations”—that is a masterful understatement—which will, of course, mean much safer aviation.

Thirdly, this SI will introduce improvements to mandatory crew training and safety checks. I have a question for the Minister: does that tightening up on safety deal in practice with the grey area between commercial pilots and leisure pilots in general aviation? I am sure that those in the aviation industry knew all about this issue, but it first became publicly known after the air crash that led to the death of Emiliano Sala, a player at Cardiff Football Club. It involved a pilot who was not qualified for commercial aviation and not licensed to fly at night. It turned out, according to the news stories, that this was a frequent blurring of the edges; there was general agreement in the House that that should be dealt with. If this SI goes as far as dealing with that blurring of the edges, I would very much welcome that.

There is a general concern that the Department for Transport may have fallen behind on updating aviation legislation, just as it did with maritime legislation, because, according to the report by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee—I am a member of that committee, although I did not attend the particular meeting that produced the report—we have been out of step with the ICAO requirements for anything from four to 12 years. According to that report, the Department for Transport says that this time lapse has not posed a safety risk. That may be questioned, I think: if one is updating safety legislation in a whole series of bits of legislation, one assumes that one is doing it to make things safer. In any event, this has put UK operators at a competitive disadvantage because, for example, the EU implemented it nearly three years ago.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee also states that the UK has filed differences—that means that we are not in alignment with ICAO standards and regulations—in 9% of cases. That is a significant minority. The Department for Transport also told the committee that it was up to date with other international agreements. I am delighted to hear that, and I invite the Minister to confirm it here today. Maybe the department has now had time to look more thoroughly. My concern is the waste of precious time in improving fuel efficiency, but I am also concerned that the UK is not fully up to date with the latest safety techniques, especially in relation to helicopters, which are notoriously complex to fly.

Can the Minister update us on where the new Government stand on our previous withdrawal from the EGNOS satellite system operated by the EU? That is something that we have discussed in this Room on several occasions. The withdrawal from EGNOS has undoubtedly put smaller airports, such as Bournemouth and the Isles of Scilly, at a disadvantage, because they have been unable to operate safely in poor visibility. I would welcome it if the new Government were looking again at that costly decision for the aviation industry. I believe that the problems with training for commercial pilots also involved the issue of access to EGNOS. If the new Government have not addressed that issue yet, I urge them to look at it in detail.

Finally, paragraph 4.9 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that the instrument

“applies to aircraft registered in the UK wherever they are”.

Can the Minister confirm the flip side of that, if I can put it that way—that if an aircraft is operated in the UK, wherever it is registered, it will be subject to the same safety criteria? The same accident to which I referred earlier also revealed, as a result of CAA investigations, that there was a gap between the safety of those aircraft registered in the UK and the standards, for example, of those registered in the USA. Those are legitimate issues of concern.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall be disappointingly brief. I thank the Minister for arranging a briefing with his officials, and I thank those officials for the time that they gave. Various pertinent questions have been raised in the course of this short debate, and I look forward to hearing the Minister answer them. I had one question that I raised with his officials, relating to the extent and effectiveness of the consultation exercise with the smaller operators in particular. I understand that, if the Minister is unable to give an answer to that this afternoon, his officials are preparing to give a written answer to that question later.

The previous Government prepared these regulations. At their heart is not a question about alignment of texts or legality but the question of safety in practice. We are all agreed that we want aviation to be, as the Minister said, one of the safest modes of travel. It has been for a very long time, and we want it to continue to be so. The Minister has assured us that these regulations represent a further step in ensuring safety in aviation and, on that basis, this side is more than happy to support them.