Airports (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Friday 16th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden]

My Lords, I am very glad to lend my support, in the most emphatic fashion, to this important Bill, which my noble friend Lord Empey has brought before us. In this, as in other aspects of his wide-ranging work in your Lordships’ House, he draws on his great experience as a former Minister in the Northern Ireland Executive and places that experience at the service of our country as a whole.

We must have reliable and efficient transport services between all parts of our country, especially the more distant parts and London, particularly Heathrow with its multitude of links with the wider world. Without first-rate services between London and the regions, the many important initiatives that the Government are taking to make the United Kingdom a truly excellent place in which to do business will not lead to the increase in sustained investment that we need so badly.

It may be that we face a future in which for many domestic purposes air travel is replaced by railway travel, but this will not be universally true. In one part of our country above all—Northern Ireland—air links with London cannot readily be replaced by other forms of transport. The provisions of my noble friend’s Bill are particularly important to the people of Northern Ireland and are critical for their economic success, as my postbag has recently reminded me. Parliament must always seek to protect and safeguard the interests of Northern Ireland, a part of our country that, despite having its own devolved institutions, must never be forgotten here, in better times as in times of internal crisis.

London, Edinburgh and Cardiff are all relatively easy to reach by train—though there is plenty of room for improvement in these railway services—but Belfast would be cut off from the kingdom’s other capitals without regular air services. This must not happen, particularly under a Government who attach the greatest importance to rebalancing the Northern Ireland economy through greater private sector growth. I will not labour the point. Nothing could be more obvious than that Northern Ireland will remain more dependent on airport links to London than any of the other constituent parts of our country.

There is deep concern, as the House has been told on several occasions recently, and again by my noble friend Lord Empey this morning, that Lufthansa’s sale of British Midland International to the IAG Group, of which British Airways is the principal member, increases the chances that the pairs of daily landing slots now allocated to BMI flights, of which there are up to 56, will be handed over to external flights whose origin or terminus is outside the United Kingdom.

The reason is obvious: each landing slot that can be taken up by a long-haul intercontinental flight yields far greater profits than a short-haul flight from Belfast would bring. Businesses can hardly be blamed for acting in ways which best serve their interests, particularly in such a low-profit-margin business as aviation, but we must keep constantly in mind the British Government’s overriding duty to ensure adequate transport arrangements for all parts of our country.

Where the replacement of one method of transport by another is not feasible for economic or geographical reasons, we should seriously consider whether it would be appropriate to give the Transport Secretary modest additional powers, as the Bill seeks to do. The aim would be to ensure that where corporate and national needs conflict, national needs are not subordinated to such an extent that great damage is done to the interests of some of our fellow country men and women. This is precisely what my noble friend’s Bill seeks to do while acknowledging that circumstances will differ and that each application will need to be judged on its merit.

I emphasise again that air travel between London and Belfast will remain essential, not least to ensure that Northern Ireland’s private sector growth is not impeded. That is why organisations such as the Northern Ireland division of the Institute of Directors, CBI Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board support this short Bill. It also deserves the full support of this House.