Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill [Lords]

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP) [V]]

On behalf of the SNP, I very much echo the comments about Captain Sir Tom Moore. He led an extraordinary life with an absolutely wonderful finale, and his work over this past year will never be forgotten. My condolences to his family and friends.

I welcome the fact that the legislation to put airspace change and modernisation on a statutory footing is finally before us, and I agree with any extension of the 80/20 slots rule as well. I would prefer it, however, if other factors such as employment conditions were also used as criteria when allocating slots. I also welcome the increase in powers for the police and prison officers to tackle drone flights. While drone supply flights into prisons is not currently a big problem in Scotland, it is growing, with more than half of Scottish prisons recording incidents involving drones, as well as evidence from the recovery of drug packages that other flights are going undetected.

The carnage caused by drug addiction in wider society is magnified still further in prison. Drone technology has allowed those who profit from this misery to evade security measures in our prisons, so giving the police and prison authorities the power to intervene and stop the supply at its source is a welcome development that will receive approval from the Scottish Parliament after Royal Assent. I also hope there will be improved investment for police forces and the Prison Service in England and Wales, to allow them to use these powers properly and proportionately, and allowing Scotland the Barnett consequentials to make the same investment.

The flipside of the harmful use of drones is their positive use in logistics and distribution if properly managed and regulated, and I hope that the Bill will do just that. AGS Airports, which owns and manages Glasgow airport in my constituency, along with Aberdeen and Southampton airports, is leading a consortium that will develop and trial what will be the UK’s first national distribution network to use drones to transport essential medicines, blood, organs and other medical supplies throughout Scotland. The consortium of 14 organisations, including the University of Strathclyde, NATS and Connected Places Catapult, has secured £1.5 million from the industrial strategy future flight challenge fund to demonstrate how autonomous drone technology can enhance access to essential medical supplies, particularly in rural parts of Scotland.

The project started in December last year and will involve live drone flight trials in addition to developing the ground infrastructure needed to recharge the drones and the systems to control them. A key aspect of the project, which dovetails rather well with other parts of the Bill, will be designing pathways to ensure that drones can safely share airspace with civil aviation. Derek Provan, the chief executive of AGS, has said:

“This project has the potential to completely revolutionise the way in which healthcare services are delivered in Scotland.”

Karen Bell, the head of research and development for NHS Ayrshire and Arran, has said:

“NHS Ayrshire & Arran are excited to be leading on the delivery of this project on behalf of the West of Scotland Innovation Hub. This is an opportunity to work with aviation colleagues to explore the innovative use of drone technology to address some of the potential challenges facing daily delivery of NHS services, not only within NHS Ayrshire & Arran but across the West of Scotland.”

We often hear of drones in a negative light, be that in their use in warfare, in closing airports as we saw at Gatwick, or in reported near misses with aircraft, but it is clear that they can provide many positives within a fairly and well-regulated framework.

The changes to airspace that the Bill paves the way for are absolutely vital, as previous speakers and the Minister have outlined. Given the exponential growth in aviation over the decades, it will come as a surprise to many that the management of our skies dates back to a plan conceived and implemented in the 1950s, before the age of the super jumbo, when British European Airways and BOAC ruled the skies over the UK. There can be no argument but that the airspace management framework currently in place requires urgent review and a new policy and plan that will hopefully last for the long run.

Of course, many of the necessary technical improvements have been put in place or are in the pipeline, including the ITEC system at NATS in Prestwick. ITEC stands for interoperability through European collaboration, and it forms the basis of the two equal parts of the next generation of traffic management: software technology, including flight data processing; and the controller working position. This technology will strengthen safety and increase efficiency, and therefore improve the environmental impact of flights through more detailed planning of all flights’ trajectories. It will also enhance interoperability between European control centres, allowing us to share those detailed trajectories to optimise aircraft flights across borders.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to ensuring that we have a modern and efficient airspace fit for the 21st century, but I am concerned about the gap that has been left in the plans for airspace management. Giving the Civil Aviation Authority and the Department for Transport legal authority and powers is one thing—I take the Minister at his word on hoping not to use them—but that will mean nothing if there are no actual plans to implement. That is the danger caused by the pandemic that is faced by the Airspace Change Organising Group. The financial devastation unleashed on the industry has meant a funding shortfall of around £8 million from what was needed for the group to continue and complete its work. That work has been ongoing for three years now. Given the sums sloshing about the Treasury in recent months, £8 million is a comparative drop in the ocean, and the economic boost and increase in efficiency that the airspace modernisation programme will bring is far in excess of that. It would be ludicrous if the last three years’ work by the group had to be binned for lack of that bridging cash to allow the group to finish its work and ensure that our airspace was fit for the 21st century.

Another strong point that has been alluded to is that, like the rest of our transport infrastructure, aviation needs investment and renewal for the long term. Given the rebuilding of our economic future that is needed as we come out of the pandemic, strategic support is crucial to a sustainable future for aviation and the hundreds of thousands of jobs it supports.

Airports and the wider industry want to see a more efficient use of airspace, not simply to funnel more flights in, but to minimise the impact of noise and pollution on local communities and to ensure the best environment so that direct links from regional airports to Europe and beyond can be viable, reducing unnecessary transit at overloaded hub airports such as Heathrow. Penny-pinching by the Treasury simply will not cut it, and I hope this will not happen. I urge the Minister to lobby his colleagues to come up with the cash to allow this crucial work to be done properly and come to a proper conclusion. While he is doing so, he could look at the precipice that the industry is staring over, without any real prospect of recovery even beginning until late summer or more likely the autumn. The sector needs proper support, and it needed it yesterday.

I take this opportunity again to urge the Secretary of State to ensure that the Airspace Change Organising Group is given a seat at the Jet Zero table. One key outcome of the airspace modernisation strategy will be a reduction in carbon emissions through increased efficiency in the skies. It is also the cheapest and easiest win with regard to carbon reduction. It seems an oversight, therefore, to leave the group out of top-tier discussions about how aviation can contribute to a low and zero-carbon future, particularly as we approach the COP26 summit in Glasgow. I hope that is on the Department’s radar and a clear mistake can be remedied as soon as possible.

In concluding, the Scottish Parliament passed a legislative consent motion on a previous incarnation of the Bill, and I hope that, pending discussions between the UK and Scottish Governments on police and Prison Service powers, the Scottish Parliament will again give consent for the measures in the Bill.

Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill [Lords]

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

It is a genuine pleasure to follow the shadow Minister the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane). This is one of those events where we sit down and think, “This is Parliament at its best.” I served on the Bill Committee, where we rattled through our work—at interceptor pace is the best way to describe it, using an aerospace metaphor.

As the shadow Minister said, this modernisation of our aerospace is long overdue; it is what we need to do to keep our skies open. We need to find a way for co-existence between those interceptors—the Typhoons that fly through our sky and keep us safe— passenger jets and unmanned aircraft, because the sky is becoming an increasingly busy space. I talk about co-existing from a position of fairly strong expertise being the MP for Milton Keynes North, because of course we co-exist with our robots—our delivery robots that wander around delivering groceries and are part of everyday life. Drones are essentially sky robots, and we need to find a way of co-existing. This is a hybrid Parliament, and we now have hybrid skies and hybrid airspace. So if we co-exist with our sky robot friends, we need to find a way of making judgment day a matter for the regulators, not the robots.

Our aerospace is our gateway to the world. Let me deal specifically with the points raised in the Bill Committee and here tonight. This modernisation will make us more efficient. It will make our airspace more efficient, reduce noise, reduce pollution, reduce congestion, and, of course, as others have said eloquently, it will reduce the impact on the communities over which the airspace lies.

I support Government on this Bill. The UK is and will remain a global leader in aerospace, and in fact global MK and global Britain will be open for business because our skies will be open for business.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP) [V]]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt). Sadly, my speech will not have any references to Skynet or “Terminator 2”, but I do rise virtually to speak to amendments 5 and 6 and new clause 5 in my name and on behalf of the Scottish National party.

It is fair to say that I have been rather a vocal critic of this Government’s action—or inaction—in relation to the aviation industry. For the industry that has been hardest hit by the pandemic not to merit a single mention in the Chancellor’s Budget speech is quite something. While I will continue to press the Minister and his colleagues on other issues relating to the sector, including support and equal access for UK aviation operators to EU markets, as they do to ours, I thank the Minister for responding to my calls on behalf of the sector to help fund the immediate future of the airspace modernisation strategy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Newlands [V]]

I will be mercifully brief as well. I echo the sentiments of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane). I am proud to represent Glasgow airport and to be the Scottish National party transport spokesperson. We have been speaking a lot about aviation over this past year. The UK has the third largest aviation sector in the world, but it is very unlikely to come out of this pandemic with the third largest aviation sector in the world unless the Government make good on their year-long pledge of proper sectoral support. I will be keeping up the pressure on the Minister on that basis.

However, in the meantime and with regard to this Bill, I thank the Minister, the Bill team and the Clerks. In particular, I thank Sarah and her colleagues in the Public Bill Office for their help and patience on issues such as last-minute amendments submitted at the 11th hour on Thursdays. With that, I will say that we support this Bill, and I am glad to see some progress on airspace modernisation: it is about time. I agree that we need to look at the issue of drones in a bit more detail, as the shadow Minister has already outlined.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Third time and passed.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I will now suspend the House in order that arrangements can be made for the next item of business.