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

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

I declare that I am president of the CO Research Trust and a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. The Minister has already referred to our report. I am also one of those people who responds when there is a call for a doctor on a flight, and some of my experiences lead to my support for Amendment 36 —in particular, two aspects of it.

I shall deal with my Amendment 14 first. It aims to address potentially toxic dangers sneaking into the air that we breathe, as has already been mentioned. We must have an unconditional duty to protect human life. The silent threat has mostly been ignored; that is the risk of a plane’s cabin air containing contamination by carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons. Carbon monoxide is colourless and has no smell, yet it is highly and rapidly toxic.

In much of the commercial fleet, pressurised air for the cabin and other parts of the plane must be kept frost-free, and that air comes directly from the engine compressors. It is called bleed air. When engine seals are broken or even have a micro-crack, synthetic oils and hydraulic fluid leak into this air flow. When subject to extreme temperatures, the fluids become neurotoxins, which are then inhaled, and that constitutes a cabin fume event. The neurological and respiratory symptoms are often short-lived and fade, but they can be far-reaching. They include things such as dizziness, headache, muzzy thinking and even shortness of breath and nausea—but, very occasionally, it may lead on to much more serious issues. Carbon monoxide binds to haemoglobin, which it does much more quickly than oxygen, so in effect it suffocates our vital organs.

Even at low levels of exposure, passengers can feel unwell, but for the pilots in charge of the plane, hypoxia is potentially a threat to aviation safety, nationally and internationally. Filters exist, such as the HEPA filters, which can block around 99.97% particles, including viruses, but they are useless against gases, which just flow through them.

In 2007, the Committee on Toxicity examined several reports on cabin air sampling on a selection of normal flights, showing very low levels of contaminants. It concluded that cabin air quality globally conforms with standards. However, it stated that

“uncertainties remain, and a toxic mechanism for symptoms cannot confidently be ruled out”.

A 2017 study by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency pointed out that

“there is no contaminant-free indoor environment. The aircraft cabin is no exception. However, due to the exceptional high air exchange rates in aircraft, the cabin air has been proven to be less polluted compared to normal indoor environments”.

So far, so good. The 2018 guidance on cabin fumes from the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations states:

“When a fume event occurs, cabin air contamination can cause short-term physical effects which may compromise flight safety. Sufficient scientific concern exists requiring more studies in order to determine any short and long-term effects of fume exposures”.


It is worth noting that the Civil Aviation Authority does not officially recognise aerotoxic syndrome, but Unite the Union and other unions are pursuing legal action over airlines’ duty of care and campaigners have called for an independent inquiry. Fume events are indeed rare, affecting only about one in 10,000 flights. Newer aircraft designs, such as the Boeing 787, utilise bleed-free technology, which draws air directly from outside rather than through the engine turbines. However, these planes represent only around 1,175 planes of the approximate 30,000 commercial aircraft in service. Most aircraft pre-date or did not incorporate that design.

The reality of our skies is interesting. Heathrow registers about 1,300 flights a day and Gatwick over 700—let us round that to around 2,000 flights a day. Mathematically, if one fume event occurs every 10,000 flights, the risk is about one a week over London, ranging from very minor to potentially serious. Currently, we rely on the human sense of smell to detect a fume event, and crew report the typical smell of dirty socks or burnt oil. However, the human nose cannot detect carbon monoxide, which is what caused the tragic crash of the Piper Malibu that killed Emiliano Sala.

In 2025, the CAA mandated that certain small piston engine light aircraft carrying passengers must monitor carbon monoxide. This leads to my amendment. If monitoring is vital for the protection of the users of small light tourism aircraft, on what grounds do we fail to offer the same protection, and de facto guarantee of safety, to hundreds of passengers confined in a commercial airliner? The technology already exists. Airbus is collaborating with the Fraunhofer Society to develop mass spectrometry systems capable of pinpointing the source of these pollutants with extreme precision. Our legislation should mandate every air transport service provider to install, maintain and operate continuous active monitoring systems for carbon monoxide, in particular, and hydrocarbons in the cockpit and passenger cabins.

Notably—I believe this is directly relevant—the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, of which I am a member, gave the view that

“the power in section 61A(7) of the Civil Aviation Act 1982, read with section 61A(1), is inappropriate because its effect is to give the Government unconstrained power to decide which operational and safety aviation rules will be delegated to the CAA and consequently made without Parliamentary process; and to ensure Parliament is properly able to scrutinise the scope of delegation of rulemaking to the CAA: the power … should be amended to make clear the principles underlying the exceptions to delegated rulemaking; and that power should be subject to affirmative procedure”.

I hope that the Government will amend the Bill accordingly. Otherwise, we will have to bring this back on Report.

Very briefly on Amendment 36, there is a risk of deep vein thrombosis in passengers. It can result in a fatal pulmonary embolism. It may well often be linked not only to the passenger’s own propensity to have a blood clot but to whether they are in an inappropriate seat to meet their medical needs and the seat pitch is inappropriate, particularly on very long-haul flights. I have had to look after people on the floor of an aircraft, sometimes for many hours. It is extremely difficult to hear what is going on through a stethoscope, because the engine noise is so great that you cannot hear properly, and trying to take somebody’s blood pressure on the floor of a crowded aircraft is not easy.

The thing that concerns me even more than that is the provision of lavatories. I have had an incident on a long-haul flight of two young people with really catastrophic and probably infectious gastroenteritis, which meant creating a public health measure to seal off one toilet for only them to use and making up rehydration fluids to keep giving them all the way back to Heathrow. It meant that there were not many toilets for other passengers, but I certainly did not want other passengers to use the toilets that these two were using. One problem is that the lavatories in many planes are so small that if anyone needs assistance with toileting, particularly if they have a bowel problem of any sort, including a stoma, it is extremely difficult to be in that toilet cabinet to assist them. Amendment 36 is particularly important.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in Committee on the Bill. As it is my first intervention in Committee, I declare my technology interests as set out in the register, variously as adviser to the Crown Estate, Endava plc, and Simmons & Simmons LLP, and as non-executive director of Avalanche (BVI) Inc and the Avalanche Foundation. It is also a pleasure to follow my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. The whole Committee and everybody should thank her for everything that she has done on flights in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. I support everything that she had to say on shortcomings and areas that need to be addressed which, as she clearly pointed out, could be addressed right now.

I also support the amendment from my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson; it must be agreed. I see precious little point in wasting any of the draftsperson’s ink on a “may” provision. “May” is “whenever”. We have seen from other legislation pertaining to disabled people that “may” is a hope that never comes to fruition, so “may” must be converted to “must”.

Similarly, I support the comments of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham—he sounds even better when he is quoting himself from a previous Hansard. It seems extraordinary that the circumstances he sets out have not been addressed. They do not, in any sense, reflect what happens in the rail industry. As a corollary, I ask the Minister: as it works so well in the rail industry, would some systems such as Delay Repay not be a positive addition to the airline sector? Those payments can be rightly collected behind the scenes from the source of the problem, be it NATS or another service provider. Smart contracts could be deployed so that those payments are automatically made when such events occur.

However, there is a situation that we are seeing a creeping illustration of across a number of sectors, including in aviation, as my noble friend Lord Young set out. I will highlight what is happening in the financial services sector around fraud. Banks are on the hook for repayment and reimbursement for certain fraud events, such as push payments, whereas telcos or platforms, where the frauds may originate from, are currently not. I would be interested in the Minister’s comment on the sense that there is an increasing tendency for this, where, in reality, the costs and compensation should fall where the breach occurs. It is a very simple and well-established legal principle. I look forward to the Minister’s response to my noble friend’s excellent intervention.

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[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, before my noble friend responds, far be it from me to get between two former Secretaries of State for Transport before a Transport Minister comes to respond to either of them, but I want to check something with my noble friend Lord Harper. Is he suggesting, as a point of principle, that for any wholly or partly owned entity where the state has even a minor share, there should never be a question of compensation or liability for redress to be made by dint of whole, partial or even minority public share ownership of that entity?

[Lord Harper (Con)]

No, I do not. The question I had to answer was that if you have a status quo and if you are going to make a change, you have to ask yourself, does the change drive an improvement in behaviour or outcomes? I simply was not persuaded that it would.

Picking up my noble friend’s point about perhaps having saved the Minister a bit of bother, I thought, when I was listening to him make his case, that there is, of course, the opportunity, when one is now both in opposition and on the Back Benches, to let the Minister do all the work. But since the event happened on my watch, as it were, and we put quite a lot of thought into whether we should make the change that my noble friend set out, and since the answers that he received from our noble friend Lady Vere of Norbiton when she was Aviation Minister were effectively on my behalf, I thought it would be a bit slopy-shouldered of me to sit here quietly, not say anything and not give the Committee the benefit of the thought process at least. Being slopy-shouldered has never really been my style, so I thought it was at least worth giving the Committee the benefit of the effort that went in on behalf of aviation consumers who were disadvantaged by this, the work that went on by the industry and the work that the Government did to try to put things right.

My final point is just to say that the industry—NATS, the airlines and the airports—demonstrated a remarkable ability to work together to serve the interests of consumers. The industry has a lot to be proud of in the way that it comes together when there are these difficult circumstances to serve the people who pay their wages.

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[Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 7 in my name. I declare my interest as chief operating officer of Natasha’s Foundation, the UK’s food allergy charity, which was previously known as the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation.

At Second Reading, my noble friend Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill emphasised that the purpose of the Bill is to strengthen consumer protections and improve the passenger experience. He recognised the importance of accessibility and ensuring that aviation works effectively for all passengers. We have heard passionate speeches from the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Grey-Thompson. My amendment would not only address their issues around reduced mobility but would include non-visible disabilities and medical conditions, such as allergies, so that all passengers—including those with visible disabilities, non-visible disabilities and medical conditions, especially food allergies—can travel safely and with confidence.

I will focus on food allergy today. It is a serious medical condition, where a trace amount of an allergen can trigger a rapid and potentially fatal reaction. If someone is in the air and ingests the food to which they are allergic, they can be unconscious within 30 minutes. Whether they are on a short-haul or long-haul flight, they therefore experience serious difficulties. More than 3 million people in the UK—and around 220 million people globally—are living with a food allergy. This is not a medical condition the aviation industry can afford to continue to overlook.

UK tribunals have recognised that a food allergy can constitute a disability under the Equality Act 2010, where it has a substantial and long-term impact on daily life. Moreover, legal advice commissioned by Natasha’s Foundation concluded that Natasha’s law applies to pre-packaged meals served by UK airlines, and that airlines have a legal responsibility to provide allergen information under UK food safety law. However, in practice, that does not happen: Natasha’s law is hardly ever applied to pre-packaged airline food. Can my noble friend the Minister clarify the Government’s position on Natasha’s law and pre-packaged airline food? Does it apply, and if so—to illustrate the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton—who is responsible for ensuring that airlines comply with Natasha’s law and current UK food safety laws? That question covers both UK-based airlines and those that operate within our UK airspace.

As is it clear to many food-allergic passengers, despite the seriousness of their condition and the laws designed to protect them, allergen management is too often treated as an afterthought by the aviation industry. Passenger support is frequently inconsistent. Passengers encounter a reluctance to make reasonable adjustments or to provide any support to help them travel safely and with confidence. Passengers frequently report difficulties sourcing an airline’s policy on allergy. There is hardly ever a list of the support available to them, and it is not clear whether a plane carries spare adrenaline auto-injectors. Food-allergic passengers need to know that information, especially when research suggests that around one in 10 food-allergic passengers reports experiencing an allergic reaction when flying.

Passengers regularly ask the cabin crew for food ingredient lists on a plane. IATA states that the lists should be available to passengers, but they hardly ever are. Even when passengers do everything asked of them and pre-order a special meal, many find that it has not been loaded on to the aircraft, it has been mistakenly given to another passenger or, worse, it contains the food stuff to which they are allergic because there are weak controls over meal supply chains. Unless a provision such as Amendment 7 is added to the Bill, the lack of priority and attention given to allergen management on flights will continue.

The support for food-allergic passengers that we are asking for is not hard to provide, and it is not hard for the aviation industry to make a big difference. My amendment does not impose disproportionate burdens on the industry. It is largely about ensuring better training, information and communication, as well as compliance with the laws that already exist. In brief, Natasha’s Foundation has identified four areas where improvement is needed: leadership, training, policies and food. Airlines need to be asked to publish clear policies, setting out the support passengers can expect. They should be easily available on their websites, communicated before booking and throughout travel, and applied throughout the passenger journey. Simple adjustments, such as announcements on flights or time to pre-board to wipe down food trays, are easy to accommodate in the airline industry, but they are frequently inconsistent. A food-allergic passenger may request them, but that does not mean that the request carries through to the cabin crew on that plane, as they often do not receive the communication that someone is a food-allergic passenger.

All airline staff, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Grey-Thompson, said, should receive training. We would obviously say that that needs to be food allergy and anaphylaxis training, how to recognise an allergic reaction and how to use an adrenaline auto-injector. Spare AAIs should be carried on all flights and be available in many different sites across airports. Accurate allergen information must be available for all the food served on board. Natasha’s law should be applied and enforced, and cabin crews should have access to information about the food they serve.

All these recommendations are very much in line with the conclusions of the Aviation Accessibility Task and Finish Group, chaired by my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson. Natasha’s Foundation thank her for her support, as we were very grateful to have the opportunity to provide evidence, and we were pleased that allergy was recognised in the group’s final report. The group’s recommendations on staff training, passenger information, communication and support for people with disabilities and non-visible disabilities, including allergies, is exactly as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said—we are all trying to do the same thing, because all these conditions need the same thing: information and training.

I therefore hope that the Government will look favourably on the amendment. I also ask my noble friend the Minister to take time to read, before Report, the report from Natasha’s Foundation, Flying with a Food Allergy, and agree to meet the foundation and others to discuss this amendment and the practical solutions that it contains to improve safety, build trust and enhance passenger experience, which is what the Bill should be about.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate so far, not least my friends the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Brinton, who have done so much for disabled people for such a long period of time, despite suffering indignity and discrimination on their own account, often when using various transport modes. It is impressive, and continues to be messaging that Ministers in any and every department should take more than a passing note of.

To take one tiny step back—here I am in danger of giving a bit of a Second Reading speech, but I promise noble Lords that it is purely Committee-stage chat—I want to talk about what is possible. So much of what has been discussed with regard to disabled people goes into the “too difficult” file, or somehow health and safety trumps the rights of disabled people.

At London 2012 we faced the world’s finest elite disabled athletes coming to London—and, whatever we did at the park, the venues, the stadium or the aquatic centre, imagine if we had not looked at the aviation experience, not least at the port of arrival for air, London’s Heathrow Airport. Noble Lords can imagine that whatever we did in terms of athlete experience in the venue and the village would have been as nothing; if we had not intervened, we would have had the world’s finest Paralympians coming to London, and their first experience of London 2012 would have been being pushed through the airport in an airport wheelchair, because it was said at the time that it was too difficult and operationally impossible to repatriate a person’s wheelchair to the door of the aircraft. We were fortunate that we had the power, the brand and the most immovable of deadlines of London 2012 to make that difference.

But the reality is that, no matter how good we planned that golden summer of sport to be, it is as nothing to ensuring, enabling and empowering all disabled people to assert their rights to travel with independence, dignity and respect, or, to put it another way, to have an airline experience equivalent to what a non-disabled person—lucky for them—can just experience and take for granted. I say “experience” because that, I believe, is the most helpful lens to get us to the right position on this. We should think about this experientially before we even make one operational decision in the Bill.

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Moved by

[Lord Holmes of Richmond]

31: After Clause 2, insert the following new Clause—
“Use of artificial intelligence in CAA enforcement decisions(1) Where the CAA uses an artificial intelligence system to inform or support the exercise of its direct enforcement functions under Schedule 1, the CAA must—(a) ensure that every enforcement decision informed by an artificial intelligence system is reviewed and authorised by a qualified human decision-maker before it takes effect;(b) conduct bias audits of the system at intervals of not more than 12 months and publish the results;(c) provide a written explanation of any enforcement decision informed by an artificial intelligence system to the person affected on request;(d) operate an accessible appeals mechanism through which persons affected by such a decision may challenge the use of the system.(2) For the purposes of this section “artificial intelligence system” has the meaning given in the AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689), or such other meaning as the Secretary of State may specify by regulations.(3) The CAA must publish an annual report on its use of artificial intelligence systems in the exercise of its direct enforcement functions.(4) Any regulations under this section are to be made by statutory instrument.(5) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to require human oversight at every decision point where AI is used in the CAA's direct enforcement functions, mandates annual bias audits with published results, requires written explanations of AI-informed enforcement decisions on request, and establishes an accessible appeals mechanism.

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[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to move Amendment 31 in my name and to speak to Amendment 32 and the other two amendments in my name in this group. It is worth reflecting that we have now been in Committee since 3.45 pm. We could have flown to Athens in that time, but who would want that when you can have the warmth of the Grand Committee together?

To take a step back, it is interesting that the aviation sector has often been at the forefront of technological advancement. Just two examples are Sir Frank Whittle’s jet and the elegance of Concorde, which also speaks beyond technology to what we can achieve when we work internationally and collaboratively—something unrivalled in commercial aviation since and that is still a marvel. Bearing that in mind, it is extraordinary that this Bill is silent on the possibilities of technology, not least emerging technologies and the powers they could bring to support the intentions of the Bill. That is the purpose of these amendments.

Amendment 31 looks to how AI could be used to assist the CAA in its endeavours. Amendment 32 looks at all the questions around cyber, particularly given the legacy systems at UK airports. The Bill’s provisions will bring a lot of new data into play. It is imperative that this data is subject to stringent levels of cyber security and protection. It would be positive for all concerned if this were set out in the Bill. Harking back to those days of innovation and endeavour—the white heat of technology from the Labour Government under which Concorde came into being—it would be extraordinarily positive to have a technology horizon-scanning requirement for the CAA. That would make a difference not just for airline businesses, as it sits squarely with them, but to how emerging technologies could assist and transform the operations of the CAA for the benefit of airlines, passengers and everybody involved in aviation.

Finally, to turn to the governance that should sit around these technologies, there is clearly an assistive, enabling and supportive role that the CAA could play in terms of guidance and support. The Government have clearly stated their approach to artificial intelligence: to not bring forward cross-sector and cross-economy AI legislation. There is nothing party political in that approach; it is the identical approach to that which was taken by the previous Government. It is a sub-optimal approach, because it fails to give the UK the best opportunity really to realise and optimise the potential from this constellation of technologies that we call AI and go to the heart of the attendant risks, which will otherwise go unaddressed, and oftentimes it will be those at the sharp end who suffer the most.

The Government have stated that they do not want to do cross-sector AI regulation and that they will take a domain-specific approach. Here we have a specific domain—aviation—yet the Bill is silent with regard to AI. Is it the position that the Government are simultaneously not bringing forward cross-sector AI legislation while also not doing anything domain by domain, sector by sector on AI legislation and regulation? That is the position with regard to this domain, as set out in the Bill. This is about the transformational power, and the potential for the CAA to transform how it goes about its operations to enable better services to airlines, and its role in transforming the passenger experience and optimising it, with a far more efficient use of all the resources that are currently in play. That is the current situation, and it seems at least curious if not somewhat unfortunate. I look forward to the Minister’s response and I beg to move.

[Lord Barber of Ainsdale (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 101A. I declare an interest as I am currently president of the British Airline Pilots Association.

It is clear that we have ambitious targets for growth in this sector. It is a sector with tremendous growth potential. That will need an appropriate number of pilots to be available in the coming years, but it is clear that there is a rising number of licensed pilots who will leave the workforce in the next few years. There is a compulsory retirement age for commercial pilots of 65. In a recent answer to a Parliamentary Question, the Minister reported that, of the CAA-registered pilots reaching that age, more than 1,300 will leave the sector within the next five years. That is at a time when we have ambitious plans for airport expansion, to promote growth in the sector.

This amendment would require the CAA—and it would engage the sector—not to sleepwalk into difficulties with shortages of pilots by publishing an annual report, with three key issues to address. First, there is the availability of pilots in the coming period. Secondly, there is the capacity of training provision in this area. Thirdly, there are the factors affecting access to the profession of pilot, including the cost of the necessary training.

On that final point, there are currently real financial barriers to pilot training. The cost is something of the order of £100,000 or more, and there are only two airline-funded schemes to train new pilots—British Airways and Jet2. For every successful applicant to the BA scheme, there are around 100 unsuccessful applicants who would like to make a career in the industry and who potentially have the skills and adaptability to undergo the training successfully. In terms of availability of finance, unless you have the bank of mum and dad, there is no real alternative provision available. There is no student loan scheme for people wishing to access the profession, and there is no readily available commercial loan offer from the banks either.

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That is the fastest I can speak.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who contributed to this interesting debate. I also thank the Minister for his speedy response, which was Concorde-like in its pace of delivery and has landed us at the end of today’s proceedings in Committee. For now, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 31 withdrawn.