Drones

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said, easyJet announced this morning that the drone fiasco at Gatwick cost it £15 million and disrupted 82,000 easyJet passengers, let alone anybody else? Is she also aware of easyJet’s announcement that it is confident that it has plans in place to deal with even a no-deal Brexit, and that it will fly more passengers next summer than it did last summer? Does my noble friend agree that Brexit is likely to cause less disruption—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Dobbs]

Listen. Does my noble friend agree that Brexit is likely to cause less disruption than one non-existent drone, and that the only things falling out of the skies are the predictions of those who prefer to embrace anxiety rather than rational analysis?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I should take this opportunity to thank the staff of easyJet, at Gatwick and everybody else who was involved in the significant disruption, which affected more than 100,000 passengers. As my noble friend would expect, we are working closely with easyJet and everybody in the aviation sector on Brexit. As easyJet said, it is confident that flights will continue, and we share that confidence.