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

Danny Beales Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 9th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury]

I think I am right in saying that people also have to walk quite some way to get the bus to the airport. Talk about a lack of joined-up thinking in our public transport—and in this instance I include flying.

I fear that in this respect the UK is an embarrassment. When we travel on holiday or for other reasons, we can compare our airports with those that we travel to, and often the comparison is not very complimentary to the UK.

[Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is giving an excellent and thorough speech based on her and her Committee’s work. I agree with everything she has said, with one caveat, which is that even for those living a stone’s throw from the airport there often are not public transport links. In my constituency and my neighbour’s, many people who work at the airport cannot get there directly on one bus, so they are forced to drive and pay drop-off charges or park in questionable places, causing disruption to communities. Does my hon. Friend agree airports need to do much more on public transport?

[Ruth Cadbury]

Absolutely. For almost 40 years, I have dealt with Heathrow’s lack of interest in transport. My hon. Friend is to the north of Heathrow, and I know full well what he is saying. In fact, one of the section 106 conditions in the terminal 5 planning decision was that there be a direct bus between Feltham station and the central terminal area, without stopping. That would then create a fast link from Waterloo to Heathrow—this was long before the Elizabeth line. However, nobody marketed it or told anybody about it, so funnily enough when the funding gave out, there had not been enough passengers to make it viable, so it did not survive. I can think of many more examples.

Sometimes I come in to work on the Piccadilly and District lines, so I know that many people use those lines to travel to and from Heathrow, but they might go to, say, South Kensington to stay in a hotel. I have had to help an elderly couple who have come from Heathrow up and down the stairs that passengers have to take at South Kensington station. It is not a welcoming environment for visitors to this country. Obviously, the Elizabeth line has transformed that; it was long overdue.

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[Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for her opening remarks and for the measures in this Bill, which are broadly very welcome for passengers and for many in airport communities such as mine. To share the Secretary of State’s comments, my thoughts are also with those individuals and families who face significant disruption this week through the failure of NATS. It shows just how vital air travel is to people right across this country for business and for leisure, and the impact when it goes wrong. Although it is not directly related to the Bill, there has been lots of discussion in this debate about the incident and about the lessons that we can and should learn.

At Heathrow, the major airport in my borough, we have now unfortunately got somewhat used to quite significant incidents. There was recently a grid power outage, which caused significant disruption, and there have been a number of other incidents. We clearly need to look at the resilience of our air travel system and at planning for such incidents, which are increasingly common and can cause significant and harmful disruption to businesses and individuals. I hope that there will be a thorough consideration of the issue, as the Secretary of State said there would be. The sector could learn lessons more broadly than from this instance and better resilience planning could be put into place.

The Bill is welcome news for my constituents and the travellers who come through my home borough of Hillingdon. The borough has not just one airport but two: we are home to Heathrow and RAF Northolt, which has a significant and increasing civilian operation involving private flights that come under civil aviation. We are not shy of or ignorant of issues arising from civil aviation—flights, disruption and balancing some of the trade-offs and challenges that come with air travel.

My constituency neighbour and right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who is no longer in his place, has already talked about some of the concerns about potential Heathrow expansion and the third runway; I am sure that the House will rightly turn its attention to those very soon. Those of us who believe in a better but not necessarily bigger Heathrow need to see measures to address the current challenges that Heathrow presents, regardless of expansion. That is why the Bill is particularly welcome.

There will be much better consumer protections when things go wrong, as they sometimes inevitably will. The Bill also takes action to tackle some of the wild west behaviours and differences between the approaches of airlines and contractors; that has been mentioned when it comes to hand luggage, but there are also different, hard-to-navigate approaches when it comes to compensation and delay payments. Those who have experienced disruption will often remember having to hunt down air staff at 10 or 11 at night when the desk is closed. They have tried to find anyone who works for the airline concerned to find out what is going on and what compensation they may be able to get—only to get a £5 paper voucher for refreshments, which will buy about half a sandwich in an airport concession.

I support comments from Members about looking at best practice and upping and standardising the quality of provision, as well as learning from other sectors such as rail; the automatic “delay repay” system has been mentioned. For my sins, I have recently travelled on Avanti and have had to use that quite frequently. It is a helpful tool, and there is a quick compensation turnaround. Notably, the compensation is a payment for the cash that the customer paid for the travel that they did not get. Unfortunately, far too often the disruption payments from airlines are an invitation to travel on the airline again. A voucher to travel again on easyJet when someone has not been able to travel the first time seems perverse.

[Luke Taylor]

To add grist to the mill of all our travel experiences, I had a case in which a customer chose to pay for a seat allocation so that they could sit with their children. They got on the flight and were then moved, and had to claim compensation on the extra service they had paid for—otherwise they would not have got a refund. Does the hon. Member agree that these sorts of things need to be automated and quickened up to improve passenger experience and customer protection?

[Danny Beales]

I wholeheartedly agree, and this Bill is a fantastic opportunity to address some of the issues that have lingered for too long in the sector. Boosting enforcement powers at the Civil Aviation Authority would enable faster enforcement when those rights are not applied. That is also welcome.

Members have rightly mentioned the need for a much tighter definition of “extraordinary events”, and the need to ensure that it is properly applied. It cannot be a catch-all opt-out for airlines, allowing them to get around the requirements. I strongly welcome the removal of the cap on baggage, specialist equipment and wheelchairs. In the Health and Social Care Committee, and in other debates, we talk a lot about the challenge of getting specialist adaptive equipment. It can take a long time to get bespoke equipment. It is incredibly damaging and destructive if it is lost or damaged when a person travels, and they are not able to reclaim the full cost, so I strongly welcome that provision. I encourage the Minister to ensure that when the cap is removed and the provision is applied, there are no unintended consequences—that airlines do not become unwilling to allow such equipment to be stowed and boarded, and do not refuse to fly individuals because of the insurance risk around their equipment. I hope that we will ensure that there are no unintended consequences of applying the right policy.

I strongly support the provisions around modernising our airspace. We have to modernise outdated routes, now that we have modern flights, and now that technology is emerging that has a much lesser noise impact. There are options and flexibilities that remove the significant impact on heavily trafficked flight paths. How we do this is just as important as if we do it; it must be done with proper assessment and consultation of residents. It cannot be right to have just a few heavily trafficked routes, leading to the piling up and circling of flights and an unnecessary additional burden on communities.

I support the comments made about the value of the Bill looking at abusive travellers and their impact on staff, both at the airport and cabin-side. Air workers face unacceptable amounts of abuse in all forms, physical and verbal, and it is increasing. The stats from a recent Unite survey of just 300 workers in Scottish airports showed that 90% had experienced verbal abuse on a regular basis, 75% had experienced intimidation and aggression, and almost a third had experienced some form of physical assault. We are becoming a bit numb to the abuse and regular intimidation that public sector workers and those in customer-facing roles experience; it happens to hospital, rail and shop workers. We have to take action; we have done, for shop workers. I hope that we can explore the issue and use clause 13, which gives a power to create offences to properly deal with airline and airport abuse. Crucially—Unite the union is right about this—this has to apply not just to abuse in the cabin; it has to apply to the whole journey, from entering the airport to sitting on the plane. Any abuse and intimidation has to be dealt with properly. We need a comprehensive system that ensures that when a person is banned from one airline, that carries across the whole airport system; the ban cannot put the staff at other providers at risk.

Finally, I turn to drop-off charges, which have been much discussed. We had a significantly busy Westminster Hall debate on this, which the Minister attended and responded to. This is an issue of great concern to my constituents. Charges have gone up significantly at Heathrow and at the other airports we have heard of today. Frustratingly for people locally, airports do not disclose what the revenue is used for. It is not clear whether it goes towards improving the situation, or is invested in community transport so that people can avoid having to drive to the airport. There are no direct public transport routes to Heathrow for staff and airport visitors from the north or Ruislip parts of my borough. It is incredibly difficult, particularly for evening and night workers, to get there on public transport.

I hope that the provisions added to the Bill will increase the transparency of information about drop-off charges, ensuring that they are adequately advertised, there are easy ways to pay them, and they are fairly implemented, and will ensure that the revenue they generate genuinely goes towards improving community transport. As has been said, the charges mean that people do not drive to the airport, but instead drive to the area around the drop-off zone. Local councils are made to pick up the enforcement costs relating to that parking, and to the illegal commercial car parks opened without permission. Through the review, I hope that we can properly address those issues, which are of significant concern to many of my constituents and my communities. Overall, I strongly welcome the provisions of the Bill, and I hope that it makes swift progress through this place.