Air Passenger Rights and Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is an even better peroration. The whole campaign of the leavers was to take back control—if I remember—to the British Parliament, not the British Government. It is not the Government or even the Cabinet, but one person who seems to be ramming it through with some kind of stubbornness and determination. That was not what it was supposed to be about. It was supposed to bring the power back to this Parliament.

I say to my noble friend Lord Adonis, if they try to push it through by emergency legislation that will be a real test of the mettle of every Member of this House, particularly the Cross-Benchers. Are they going to stand up for Parliament, or be subservient to our autocratic Government? That will be the test.

I think I have gone a little bit wider than the statutory instrument and I am grateful for the fact that the Lord Speaker does not have the same powers as the Speaker in another place; otherwise, I might have been ruled out of order by now. I am sorry to be slightly flippant; it is a very serious matter. Coming back to relevance, this one statutory instrument is illustrative of the kind of thing we face in this Parliament at the moment, and it is quite frightening.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry that I am going to destroy even more the statement from the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, by being the third speaker from this side of the House to raise questions. I saw in the paper this morning that apparently, on 1 September 1939, between 6 pm and midnight Parliament passed six pieces of emergency legislation—all three Readings —and rose before midnight, so it is possible to put through emergency legislation. But I wonder whether this is the sort of parallel we would like to draw.

I have heard many justifications for leaving the EU but I have never yet heard job creation as being one of them. However, it seems that virtually every time we come here we are creating more jobs—59 extra jobs, I am told. That must be at least a couple of million pounds on public expenditure. How much of the vast amount of money we were going to save is going to be spent? I suppose that since the Government’s priority is to create jobs, this is a partly a way of doing that.

[Lord Adonis]

The Minister talked about 59 jobs in the CAA, but about a third of the staff of the Department for Transport are currently working on Brexit-related issues and about a third are clearing up successive messes of the Secretary of State. That leaves very few members of staff actually doing the job of the Department for Transport at the moment.

[Lord Balfe]

The noble Lord makes a true point. One of the things that I find very unsatisfactory at the moment is the huge amount of public service energy going into this. Indeed, we are told that this SI will be unnecessary if there is no deal. We are told by the Government that they want a deal. I feel very sorry for the civil servants spending all their lives working on something that the Government do not want to happen. That is not a very good way of boosting morale.

What happens when the EU updates the regulations? We seem to think that we are looking at a picture that is static for all time. But anyone who knows how the European Commission and Parliament work will know that there is a constant process of review of legislation. Even if this SI is unnecessary, there will come a point, if we leave, where we will have to take over the legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

I am sure the noble Lord has noted that the Government have conveniently—from their perspective—translated the euro rate of compensation into pounds using the current exchange rate. The noble Lord makes the good point that that could become distorted if, for example, we have the kind of significant change in exchange rates that the MP David Davies, for example, referred to last week.

[Lord Balfe]

I did not raise that point about the translation, but purely because my noble friend Lady McIntosh had already raised it. I was making the point about the change in regulation, which I am concerned about, not the change in internal things within it.

My second point is on the interpretation of regulation. When the European Court of Justice interprets a regulation, if we are following and providing the same rights, and the CJEU makes a judgment which interprets the regulation so that it is no longer in line, to what extent will we accept the judgment of the court? In other words, how real is this alignment when, not on day one but on, say, week six or month six down the line, things have started to diverge? Presumably we will not have an SI every week; what mechanism do the Government see being used to maintain the alignment between our regulation, which they say will follow the EU statute book—that is fine—and changes in the EU statute book? This question will come up, whether it is on this regulation, if we do not leave, but it will also come up if we leave. How dynamism plays its way through the legislative process will be quite a fundamental point for consumer rights, as it will be for trade union rights, which we will come on to in another debate.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, as this debate has unfolded I have watched the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, looking pensive. I suspect he has probably been thinking, “When I finish this job, I might go into travel consumer law”. When the Minister comes to read Hansard tomorrow, she will probably find that she can check off almost every known troublemaker in this House as having intervened. However, that is what this House is here to do: to make trouble when Ministers bring forward flawed or defective legislation.

Listening to the various queries and questions makes one think very hard about the process that we are going through. The Minister had a baptism of fire over drones a few weeks ago, but that will be as nothing compared to a situation in which this legislation proves defective when it comes to the test and we find that all the sweet and honeyed words about the smoothness of the transfer from EU to domestic legislation throw up faults and weaknesses. There is nothing that makes the British public angrier than being interrupted on their holidays. Woe betide the Minister who is left holding that particular baby if that comes to pass. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, is right: we are stronger within the EU, and the protection given to consumers is far stronger when we work and speak from within the EU rather than when the CAA is acting alone.

Has any impact assessment been made on the effect of Brexit on Heathrow as an international hub? We have already heard of the possible British Airways transfer to Spain, but Heathrow is one of our vital assets as a major hub airport of the world. If leaving the EU and operating under CAA rules leaves us open to competition from Schiphol or Paris or others that can give flight operators greater assurances, that is a real downside of what we are doing. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, made the valid point that EU law is not static, but is developing. We must face the fact that in this case, as in so many others, we will not be at the table to speak up for British interests and consumers when that development takes place—so much for sovereignty.

Given the complexities that have been revealed by this, is there any plan for a public information campaign to explain to the public what has happened? They need to be informed about their guarantees and where there are dangers because—make no mistake—good as our travel industry is, we will find scams, additional charges, problems with transfers from the EU, tax put on holiday costs and so on. There will be a need for some concerted consumer protection during this process. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.