Covid-19: Aviation

Ben Spencer Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Air connectivity with all our devolved Administrations, particularly Scotland, is important, and regional connectivity and our smaller airports will very much feature in our planning for the recovery stage. I am incredibly cognisant of the fact that we must do a lot of work to keep that connectivity and deliver on our levelling up agenda, and that is exactly what I intend to do.

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her answers, and I echo the point about the use of taxpayers’ money and the furlough scheme, and the corporate responsibility of carriers such as British Airways. A 14-day quarantine would ground the aviation industry and all jobs and businesses that rely on it, but as yet we have not provided aviation-specific financial support. Given that the 14-day quarantine is in effect a Government mandated shutdown of a large part of the passenger airline industry, does the Minister agree that sector-specific financial support should be provided, as we have done for other sectors that have been directly shut down, such as shops and pubs?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I recognise the importance of the aviation sector in my hon. Friend’s constituency; he has been a champion of it and spoken to me about this issue a number of times already. We absolutely have already delivered unprecedented financial support already for the airlines, which have the ability to access the Government schemes. As we move through the period of restart and recovery, we are working with the industry to assess what the problems, issues and requirements will be. We have not taken anything off the table and we will continue to work through things. We are obviously working closely with the sector to deliver on the quarantine announcement.