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

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and I agree with very much of what he said.

As will be clear to my noble friend the Minister, some of us have joined this important Second Reading debate as consumers, not as experts on the aviation industry—unlike, for example, my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe, who will bring his huge knowledge of this sector to bear, I have no doubt, in his contribution; my noble friend Lady Antrobus, whose speech adds to the knowledge and wisdom of this House; and indeed my noble friend Lord Barber.

I very much welcome the part of the Bill that grants direct enforcement of consumer protection legislation to the Civil Aviation Authority. My noble friend the Minister will be aware that, as consumers rather than experts in aviation, we find it a matter of particular satisfaction that the Bill proposes to grant the Civil Aviation Authority these direct enforcement powers over consumer protection legislation, strengthening its existing powers and bringing them into line with those enjoyed by other regulators.

What might this mean in practice? I offer a small but perhaps telling example, drawn from my own experience last Thursday. Noble Lords will recall that it was an exceptionally hot day in the United Kingdom— I can tell them that it was even hotter in Poitiers. As our Ryanair flight landed, I noticed a long queue of passengers standing outside the terminal building, virtually on the tarmac itself, in blazing sunshine, waiting to board the aircraft we were about to leave. I have no idea how long they had been standing there, but, whatever the answer, it was plainly too long. It is not easy to see how such treatment could be justified, unless the overriding priority was to achieve the fastest possible turnaround time, regardless of passenger comfort and, arguably, regardless of considerations of health and safety. I did indeed feel herded at Stansted, but at least my brain did not get fried.

I readily acknowledge that standards of courtesy and general customer service in the budget airline sector have improved significantly over recent years. Until a few years ago, the Ryanair chief executive, Michael O’Leary, was famous for not caring about the brusque and sometimes rude way that his staff treated passengers. But then, famously, speaking at the Paris Air Forum in June 2016, he said:

“If I’d only known that being nice to customers was … so good for my business I would have done it years ago”.


To give credit where credit is due, the staff are indeed very charming, by and large. Nevertheless, much more still needs to be done if consumers are to be treated with the degree of dignity and consideration that they are entitled to expect when buying any product or service.

People understandably choose budget airlines because the fares are low, but they also do so because those airlines frequently serve destinations that few other carriers are willing to fly to at all or at scale. In many places, that gives them what is, in effect, a near-monopoly position. Where that occurs, robust consumer protection becomes all the more important. We may not be able to insist upon better standards in France, but we can and should insist upon them here in the United Kingdom.

It is worth saying—this partly follows the noble Lord, Lord Holmes—that, if you are not tech savvy, do not have a printer available to you or do not know how to use online ticketing, you will be fined. Does the Bill address the issue as one of equality and reasonable adjustments for ability, disability and age? Will this be considered in the new consumer rights that the Bill espouses?

Most passenger rights originate, of course, from European legislation, and this Bill seeks to update it. As my noble friend the Minister said, the Bill is needed, and its three primary objectives are to promote economic growth and infrastructure development, strengthen consumer rights and protections, and enable improved aviation safety. The Bill modernises the regulatory framework for aviation and ensures that it can keep pace with technological change and the evolving consumer landscape, ensuring that the sector remains resilient to disruption and aligned with international standards. It introduces a delegated enabling power for the Secretary of State to amend existing passenger rights regulations and introduce new regulations where necessary. It addresses airspace modernisation, about which I knew absolutely nothing—although, since the contribution of my noble friend Lady Andrews, I feel I know a little more than I did before this debate.

The Bill delegates responsibility for certain aviation safety and operational rule-making to the CAA, enabling highly technical rules to be developed and updated more efficiently and creating a more responsible and agile regulatory framework. It restores powers lost after EU exit to amend and create aviation safety-related criminal offences in assimilated law. In other words, it is an important Bill in all those areas. I welcome it and look forward to being involved in its passage through your Lordships’ House.