Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill [HL]

Lord Craig of Radley Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 21st January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 14 and give notice that I am minded to put it to a vote at the end of the debate. As I said earlier, this Bill is a bit of a mess—through no fault of the Minister; it is simply the passage of time, and time has definitely taken its toll. This applies in particular to the clauses on unmanned aircraft.

Since 2016, I have been urging the Government to bring forward legislation on drones. The Minister reminds us from time to time that unmanned aircraft include model aircraft, but I am concerned here solely with drones. In the five years since I first addressed this issue, drone technology has been transformed, and so has the number of drones in operation. They are of massive importance to our military, to the police and other emergency services, and to countless businesses across the UK. It is wonderful, transformative technology; it is also very worrying technology. In the wrong hands, drones carry illegal drugs, take illicit mobile phones into prisons and threaten major loss of life by interfering with flights, as we saw at Gatwick in 2019. “Wrong hands” obviously includes criminals, but also careless and untrained hands.

Since we started this Bill in 2019, EU legislation has been updated, and that is reflected in the details of the amendments here today. But they do not reflect the broader approach that is now needed. The Bill is a wasted opportunity, because it is largely a list of additional powers for the police. That approach is unsatisfactorily narrow, and my amendment outlines the broad approach that I believe needs to be taken. It needs to address the serious concerns of BALPA, the Airport Operators Association and many airlines about safety and security risks from drones. I have specified the range of issues I am worried about, but I do not believe it is an exclusive list. Some of them relate to technical advances, such as the availability of geofencing and remote ID. Others relate to possible shortcomings in criminal law in relation to the deliberate weaponisation of drones. Potential risks from overseas exist now that the technology allows longer-distance flying.

The amendment in this group in the name of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, also raises important issues about commercially used drones, which are often specialist and valuable. My amendment addresses the issue of the appropriate minimum age to be in charge of a drone. EU legislation allows a minimum age of 14, and the Government have supported this. But that is a minimum: it does not have to be that low within the EU rules, and, in any event, we have of course left the EU. Legislation allows drones to be registered to anyone over 18, but they can be flown by people younger than this, and there is no requirement for the registered owner to be present and in the line of sight of the person flying the drone. So, the question is whether this is sufficient supervision.

In preparation for this debate, I spent a long time online looking at adverts for drones, from under £100 to thousands of pounds. In all the adverts I looked at, I saw no reference at all to the rules on registration and supervision, line of sight, heights for flight and so on. Presumably, all that comes with the instructions in the box. But I am not entirely sure that everyone reads the instructions in the box carefully.

Also untouched by this Bill is the issue of privacy. There are serious concerns that drones can allow invasions of privacy. I said earlier that the Bill concentrates on police powers, but police use drones as a tool themselves, and they are a very useful tool in fighting crime. The vast majority of police forces now use drones, but there appears to be no overall dedicated guidance for police on the way in which they are to be deployed, or provision of information on how they should be used. This is a potentially controversial area, as we saw when Derbyshire police used drones at the start of the pandemic to watch walkers in the countryside, with the potential to levy fines on them.

This is a fast-developing technology, and my amendment recognises that by seeking a review of the legislation within six months, and every year thereafter, to ensure that it is, and remains, fit for purpose. I am not prescribing solutions, just outlining issues to be addressed and asking for a more comprehensive and effective approach to the whole issue of drones.

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 14 and shall speak to Amendment 15, which stands in my name. It is a probing amendment and I shall not divide the House on it.

After Committee, I was informed that unmanned aircraft and drone operators holding CAA permission for commercial operation—PfCOs—were concerned about the scale of the police powers introduced by the Bill. Recent changes to the ANO 2016 affecting the use of unmanned aircraft have dispensed with PfCOs and new categories for unmanned aircraft operations are provided for all users. The concern is that use of the police powers designed principally for recreational users or potential criminal use could cause commercial operators loss of time or money, or even cause them to fail to meet a contract.

For example, a building inspection by a drone operator might involve manoeuvres putting the drone closer to the structure than would be acceptable for a hobby user. Were the police to order the immediate grounding of a drone in such a CAA-approved use or, looking to the future, of a drone with CAA operational authorisation for beyond visual sight, extended visual sight or even swarm flights, this could lead to business disruption and loss. Would the police consider a complaint from the public reasonable grounds to order grounding? Would the police authority be responsible for such a commercial loss? I expect not, but serious cases might lead to some form of claim by insurers or the operators themselves, so it is reasonable to suggest that, for flights with CAA operational authorisation, the most the police might be required to do would be to seek presentation of the CAA approval licence, as new Schedule 9 envisages. If still concerned, the police should report the operator to the CAA, which already has extensive statutory powers for investigation and sanction.

As the Minister informed me in an exchange of letters we have had about this amendment, new risk-based categories apply to all UA activities, but this does not seem to be any reason for commercial operators, however approved or risk-assessed by the CAA, to be less concerned about the difficulties they might face if the police powers were to be exercised in ways that, maybe inadvertently, were to delay or interfere with the approved use which the CAA had given to the commercial operator.

These operators are further concerned about the level of knowledge of the relevant extensive ANO and CAP 722 publications required of regional police forces to deal with unmanned aircraft operating commercially and whether their increased workload will be funded, particularly as this activity expands. No one would welcome a breach of trust between the police and commercial businesses if police involvement were to be disruptive to commercial use. In further exchanges with the Minister—I thank her for her engagement with me over these concerns—I have not been given sufficient reassurance about the way police powers in this Bill will be used so as not to lead to potentially harmful outcomes for the commercial operator.

There is considerable growth potential in the commercial use of UAs and, indeed, in the market globally for such remotely controlled devices. The Government quote an addition of £42 billion and more than 600,000 jobs by 2030. The Bill provides an opportunity to show that such commercial users are recognised and being supported by statute and regulation specifically designed to deal with, but not onerously restrict, their activities.

A further consideration is whether some statutory approved way to claim for loss, disruption or damage to the business of the commercial operator—for example, if its unmanned aircraft was incorrectly impounded by the police—should be provided. Would this too be by means of secondary legislation, as envisaged for appeals against fixed penalty fines?