Christian Wakeford
Main Page: Christian Wakeford (Labour - Bury South)Department Debates - View all Christian Wakeford's debates with the Department for Transport
(4 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe hon. Lady will accept that I have been engaging regularly throughout the last 10 weeks with the whole aviation sector, including with BA and other organisations that have made similar announcements, and I will continue to do that. Questions such as this will make a clear point to those organisations. As I have said before, the organisations taking these decisions ultimately need customers, and if customers view that their actions are below par, people might start voting with their feet when booking flights.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) for securing this urgent question. As an MP for Greater Manchester, I am particularly concerned about Manchester airport and the wider impact on the north-west aerospace and aviation industry. Will my hon. Friend the Minister tell me what assessment she and her Department have done regarding employment in the sector itself and in the wider supply chain?
I thank my hon. Friend and note the importance of the Manchester airport, which is close to his constituency, and the work that is done there. We have been engaging with the airport extensively over the past 10 weeks, as hon. Members would expect. We are working across Government, through a Government-led taskforce on aviation. I am working with my colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to look at the extent of the impact on a wide range of jobs in the sector, not only at airlines and airports. That work is ongoing and will very much influence policy.