Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]

Lord Empey Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, like many Members, I declare an interest as a member of the General Aviation APPG and as an honorary vice-president of the Union of Pilots, Engineers & Cabin Crew.

I want to talk about slots, but before getting to that point, I will say that much of the Bill gives additional powers to the CAA. Can the Minister tell us what the capacity of the CAA is to deal with the extra powers that are being directed towards it? Is that part of the reason for the long delay between the passage of the legislation and its introduction in practice? It seems to me that a huge extra burden has been placed and, if rules are to be made as well as enforced, new skills will be required by the CAA to carry out that activity.

Much has been said about consumer protection, and many of the causes of the problems at airports are actually caused not by the airlines but by the people who operate the airport services—whether that is luggage or other services that are provided. There is always a gap. It seems to me that, when we get to Committee, we will have to probe to see exactly how that can be looked at to ensure that the best possible service is provided.

One issue that is not in the Bill but concerns the welfare of passengers and people who work in the airlines is cabin air quality. It has been largely glossed over for many years but, if it is not monitored properly, it can affect and have a direct impact on not only the people who work on aircraft and in aircraft but the people who use them.

I listened very carefully to what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said. She is not in her place right now. We all have concerns about the environment. It is not confined to one particular party. We all have concerns. She argued that we should take only two flights a year. That is going to put people like me in some difficulty, I have to say. We have to be realistic. Exporting the pollution to another part of the world at our own expense does not improve the environment or climate in general.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, mentioned NATS: something that has largely been passed by. I ask the Minister: is he satisfied that there is sufficient resilience? In 2014, 2023 and 2025 there were significant failures, and the last one was pretty catastrophic. If you are going to redesign with the help of technology, and perhaps AI, how the motorways in the sky are controlled and monitored, there is a capacity issue there to be resolved.

Obviously, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, raised the issue of people with mobility issues and other issues. The person who took my seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly—a war veteran who was severely injured in Afghanistan and is a wheelchair user—was left literally on the tarmac, having the indignity of watching his baggage being offloaded from the plane, which moved off the apron and took off while he was still on the tarmac, because the people who were responsible for bringing the equipment to get him on the plane did not show up. So, there are cases that we cannot ignore—but that is just one, and I am just saying that it is something we have to bear in mind.

I would like to bring slots to the Minister’s attention. Some years ago, I twice brought a Bill to this House, and it was passed twice in this House—the Airports (Amendment) Bill. It passed through this House and went down to the other place. As former Members of the other place will know, there was a particular Member down there who specialised in ensuring that a Private Member’s Bill ended up in a not very good place.

At that particular time, the Minister answering was the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, who is not in his place. What I was trying to achieve was to ensure that regional airports had access to appropriate slots at Heathrow. Of course, it was primarily a European function, and that is what his line was, because the Government of course did not accept the Bill. The fact is it has nothing to do with PSOs and providing subsidies. If you are a regional airport, the reality is that, in this country, access to a main hub airport to get connectivity internationally is essential. For those of us who do not have access to trains and so on, it is even more important.

In circumstances where a slot owner—let us take the IAG as an example—is acquired by people from the Middle East, for instance, who may find greater value in international flights than in domestic flights, they might decide to move in that particular direction and reduce the number of regional flights. The regions would then be at a disadvantage. In those circumstances, is the Minister satisfied that the Bill will provide the necessary powers? Would the Government be prepared to use those powers to guarantee that regional airports will have sufficient access to Heathrow to ensure proper regional connectivity within the United Kingdom? I do not think that that is an unreasonable thing to do, and we will probe it in Committee to see how we can do it. That was the primary purpose of the Bills that I put through this House, which had very strong support, I have to say. I ask the Minister: is that something that we can do?

The noble Baroness, Lady Foster, said that slots are not a simple thing. I understand that; they are very complicated. They are very valuable assets, worth tens of millions of pounds. Therefore, you can imagine a future situation where an operator is not nationally minded and is simply looking the best profit that it can make, which is understandable. But the fact is that there are national, regional and consumer rights for the people of this country, and we have to ensure that there are proper circumstances where they can get access. It has a huge economic effect on the United Kingdom as a whole. We talk about the London area, with the principal airports, and that is understandable, but we do not all live in London; there are one or two of us left outside London. I just draw that to your Lordships’ attention. So, it is important that we have that access and I think that most political parties would have that as a fundamental policy in their manifestos.

We may probe that issue in Committee, but I ask the Minister to take that on board so that we can be satisfied that, if circumstances arise where an operator or an owner of the slots is going to reconfigure their schedules to the disadvantage of the regions, that can be corrected by government action. In the past, Ministers were saying that because of our membership of the EU we could not do this; the question is whether this legislation will permit that to happen. Obviously, that is one of the things we will probe.

I point out that this has nothing to do with subsidising routes. There is a PSO for one or two perfectly justifiable routes, but this is not what I am getting at. Most of these routes do not need subsidies; they are perfectly economically viable in their own right, provided, of course, that there is the appropriate access. It is not a Northern Ireland issue; it applies to Scotland, to the north of England, to other areas and of course to the PSO routes as well, and to Cornwall and Scotland.

Can the Minister in summing up address the issue of slots and satisfy us that the Bill in its current form will have sufficient powers? If not, we will look at amendments to bring the necessary certainty that this will be addressed.