Civil Aviation Bill

Brian H. Donohoe Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burns]

We will engage wherever necessary to seek to reach solutions that are viable and will achieve the objectives set out, provided that they are the right course of action and the correct way forward.

Let me pick up the points made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), because I think that I dealt with the matter raised by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) in my intervention. [Interruption.] Well, I thought I did; I hope that he will be generous so that we can make progress. As the hon. Member for Strangford and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds will know, the context for dealing with the environmental issues surrounding Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, for example, are all fully dealt with in the Bill.

I felt at times that the hon. Member for Strangford was going a little further on to the wider issue of hub airport status. I have to say to him, in the nicest possible way, that that is obviously beyond the scope of this Bill. However, I hope that he will take reassurance from the fact that in order to look at the whole area of the future of aviation policy, to meet our commitments and to protect our position as the significant hub airport presence for western Europe, we have set up, under my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, the Davies inquiry, which will look across the range at the best way forward on aviation policy, the best way to deal with capacity and connectivity issues—

[Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Burns]

No, because I really do want to make progress.

The inquiry will report in due course, and it would be extremely foolish of me to try to prejudge or anticipate it, but no doubt the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse will, if he so wishes, be prepared to contribute to it by submitting his views on issues that he clearly holds to be very important, as indeed they are.

In conclusion, as the hon. Gentleman has said, this process, which started with the Bill’s Second Reading in January, has involved friendly, vigorous and constructive engagement between the Government and the Opposition. I pay tribute to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers), for the way in which she led on the Bill until the final prize was taken from her grasp and given to me. I also pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman and his colleague the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) for their constructive engagement in ensuring a strengthened and even better Bill at the end of the process than it was at the beginning. That is what Parliament is all about—making sure that we get the right answers to the questions posed. I think that the Bill as it was originally drafted was very good but, by listening and engaging, we have been able to strengthen it further, and this short debate has illustrated the co-operative way in which both sides have engaged in the process.

I could not finish without thanking those who are often the unsung heroes of the process of taking a Bill through Committee. Members in this House and the other place do not know their names and rarely see the hard work that they do day in, day out. They are, of course, the civil servants in the Department for Transport and its Bill team. They have worked extremely hard to ensure that our proceedings could go as smoothly as possible and that all the amendments were analysed properly, so that only those that merited it were accepted, even in modified form. I pay tribute to them and to all Members who have contributed so much to the Bill, both in this place and in another place, and I look forward to its becoming law, because it is badly needed to upgrade the existing legislation, which dates back to 1982.

Lords amendment 1 agreed to.

Lords amendments 2 to 7 agreed to.