Aviation Safety (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Baroness Vere of Norbiton Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Lords Chamber

What to do about this? The quality of EMs—across the board, to some extent, but certainly from the transport department—in recent years has given us concerns. Perhaps it is unfair to call it quality; it is the shape of them and the fact that they do not spend enough time explaining where we are, where we are trying to get to, and why—as opposed to saying, “Well, we will change this paragraph to that paragraph”. There should be more understanding of transition and —if I am right that the last two dates in the document are wrong—there need to be processes that make sure that there is good proofreading. I invite the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, the Minister and officials to have a conversation about this. For this process to have any value at all, it all depends on the quality and breadth of the Explanatory Memorandum. We could help to get across to officials what we would see as being more valuable so as to have a more informed debate on these issues.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)]

I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for their input this evening. I am particularly grateful for the collaborative words from the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. It is hard to find fault with much of what he said and we recognise that, when it comes to aviation safety, transition is really important. It is an extremely complex area. We are already very safe and we must not do anything to upset that applecart as we put in interventions that will make things even safer.

I would like to address the broad narrative around the concerns raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. Noble Lords will know that I take great interest in the secondary legislation programme, even though I am not the SI Minister in the department, because of the valid scrutiny that our secondary legislation programme gets in your Lordships’ House. I too am keen to get it right, because it is as painful for me—perhaps even more so—as it is for them to have to stand in front of noble Lords and say that, on this occasion, I am not particularly proud of the work my department did on this SI. I want perfection and this was definitely not perfection—it was a long way from that. We can and we must do better. As I have said, we have a very strong record on aviation safety and we are committed to maintaining and improving those high safety standards. When we do not meet those high standards, it is right that we are subject to immense scrutiny.

Some months ago, the department completely reviewed its approach to secondary legislation and implemented improved processes and training. I think the issue here is that that is still being bedded in. The core team is well aware of what needs to be done but we now need to cascade that throughout the department. We have a lot of secondary legislation, and there are many different groups in the department that do legislation. That is why, when the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, tries to draw comparisons to, for example, primary legislation on Great British Railways, the two are not really comparable.

Secondary legislation for aviation is often developed with the CAA and then comes to the DfT, and likewise in maritime, where pretty much the whole process is within the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and then comes to a central process. There are a lot of different groups doing the secondary legislation and it is important that they fully understand what is expected by not only the Minister but noble Lords on the other Benches, such that we can get this through in a way that everybody understands and is able to agree with based on the evidence and the information provided.

These regulations amend four retained EU regulations relating to airworthiness and to balloons and sailplanes. The key element, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, mentioned, is the safety management system requirements that require organisations involved in the design or production of aeronautical products or parts to implement an SMS. This represents the culmination of many years of collaborative work across stakeholders, and will ensure better oversight and continuous improvement of aviation safety. It is not really something that one implements once—a safety management system is about continuous improvement.

The SI notes that the implementation timeline for compliance is not immediate, to allow time for organisations to prepare and develop adequate SMSs. This is in line with the guidance from the International Civil Aviation Organization—or ICAO—because, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, noted, it recognises that speed can sometimes be the enemy in these circumstances. That is about the speed of the implementation of the regulation and not the speed of the regulation coming forward; I will address that in due course.

However, we believe that the delay has had negligible impact on safety; obviously, the counterfactual is if had it been brought in earlier. We chose to press forward with the priorities that we did, some of which had enormous safety implications or massive economic implications. Noble Lords will understand that sometimes one has to make decisions in an imperfect world of appropriately limited resources.