Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill
Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord West of Spithead
Lord West of Spithead
I thank the Minister for his response. Before I come to that—because I was a little disappointed—I will say that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is absolutely right. We have to be quite careful about how we go about this. Indeed, I have got no praise for the way I have put my amendments, but I believe that this needs to be looked at. The Minister makes the assumption that we are happy with current legislation, but current legislation is not adequate. Certainly the Civil Aviation Authority and the airline pilots association do not think it is. We need to think hard about this. Overall, the noble Lord was on side with my worries, but—
Lord Ashton of Hyde
Again, I am sure that the cross-government group that is considering gaps in legislation will take account of this debate, including the noble Lord’s comments.
Lord West of Spithead
I thank the noble Lord for that. At the moment, some of these things are slightly opaque. That is the problem. It is very difficult to find out what is going on. It would be much better if we had a clearer view with a more open debate about it. It is interesting, for example, that the Military Aviation Authority has just published RA 1600, which is a reclassification of some drones and it is paving the way for much greater use of military drones in UK airspace. So when we have a lot of military drones operating there, again, the risk of these other drones becomes even greater. This is something we have to get our mind around.
Interestingly—I had not thought about this before—the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, mentioned tracking mechanisms, which of course are making huge leaps and bounds in technology. You can get ones that are really tiny. Maybe that would be a way, if the drones showed up on secondary radar, for example. I do not know whether that has been looked at—and the reason that I do not know whether it has been looked at is that there is no openness in terms of discussion, which worries me.
I will need to reconsider the Minister’s comments and think about them and look at Hansard. Until I have done that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.