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

Debate between Lord Moylan and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

3rd reading
Monday 20th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I also thank the Minister, in particular for the exemplary way he has engaged with those of us who are Back-Benchers and on the Cross Benches over specific issues, and how he has facilitated moving forwards. If I may inform him, I have managed to secure a meeting with the CAA tomorrow morning, thanks to his intervention. I know that those who are disabled are also greatly relieved to know the seriousness with which he took the appalling situations in which they have often found themselves when travelling. I hope that he will continue, not only in his role but also in the way he has behaved towards all of us, because that personal contact has made it very easy to have very open discussions.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, this was a pretty dreadful Bill when it was introduced to your Lordships’ House, in terms of its conception but also its drafting. It leaves it in somewhat better shape, which is very considerably due to the fact that the Minister paid attention in Committee to the many amendments and proposals that were made, and came forward on Report with an astonishingly large number of amendments to change the Bill—all of which, it is fair to say, noble Lords felt responded to their concerns, and which they were willing to support. I thank him for that.

Also, as was just referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, a large part of Committee was taken up with discussions of the treatment of disabled people in the course of flying. Amendments brought forward by the Minister characteristically represent an improvement in the approach that government will take to those issues in the future, for which I thank him.

I also thank his officials for their engagement and the Public Bill Office for its support in drafting the amendments we put forward. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for her important contribution to the debate. I am sure I will have forgotten some, but I also thank my noble friends Lady Bray of Coln, Lord Grayling, Lady Foster of Oxton, Lord Harper, Lord Young of Cookham, Lord Reay, Lord Redwood, Lord Davies of Gower, Lord Holmes of Richmond, Lord Goschen and Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate for the experience and scrutiny they brought to our proceedings.

This is fundamentally an administrative Bill. As I say, it changes decision-making processes in the wake of our departure from the European Union. But we remain concerned that the Government have chosen to use the legislation to transfer not only those European Union powers but also powers that the Government themselves possessed to the Civil Aviation Authority, to be carried out in many cases—fewer now, as a result of the Minister’s amendments—with no external scrutiny, certainly no scrutiny from Parliament, that would indeed have occurred under the previous system. This is a retrograde step in terms of parliamentary scrutiny.

We are also concerned that the Government have said, quite explicitly, that they want to use their new freedoms in order to align more closely with the European Union. It is a very strange conception of Brexit that the Government seem to have developed. British aviation is a world-leading industry, and it succeeds because of innovation and competitiveness. It needs to have regulations made for it that are suitable for the success of British aviation.

There was also one amendment passed by your Lordships’ House on Report that did not have the Government’s favour. Naturally, one suspects, the Government will use the passage of the Bill through the other place to try to remove it, but I hope very much that they will not. I wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Empey, in this regard. Although it was my amendment that passed, that was as a consequence of the numerical placement on the Marshalled List. He had an amendment achieving a similar effect, which related to the drop-off charges made at airports that have now become scandalously excessive. Families and other travellers are charged simply for trying to pick up or drop off somebody, very often with no feasible alternative for doing so. There may be a lack of public transport or it may be unsuitable for somebody to seek to travel to an airport other than by car, for example, because they are wheelchair-bound or have some other mobility impairment that prevents them travelling on ordinary public transport, even where it exists. The amendment that was passed calls on the Government to conduct a thorough review of airport drop-off charges. It is as simple as that; it requires nothing more legally. We will look at that at ping-pong—or perhaps we will never get to ping-pong because the Government will take the advice of your Lordships’ House and accept the amendment that was passed.

With that, I am sad to bring an end to my involvement with this Bill. I hope that it becomes a route—I will not make a silly pun—or path to better regulation of aviation. If it does, it will be very much because of the efforts of Members of your Lordships’ House.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Moylan and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

Committee stage
Friday 20th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

I would be delighted to raise it outside the Chamber; it was a little more complicated than those three points.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, before he vanishes, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, and apologise to him for not acknowledging in my opening remarks the fact that he had added his name to my Amendment 175.

I would be disappointed if the noble and learned Lord were, at this advanced stage of Committee, to agree to an amendment proposed to the Bill. He has not disappointed us; he has rejected it. The fact is that Clause 5 requires the discussion of prognosis, as he says. Any prognosis worth its salt has some data at the basis of it, and I am simply asking that that position—the spread of that data and the range, as my noble friend Lord Effingham referred to it—should be a part of that discussion so that people understand that, if they are told they have so many months to live, that is not a prediction but, in technical terms, a median based on underlying data. That data should be disclosed.

This is an unusual debate for me because it is the only one in which I agree with everything that everybody—apart from the noble and learned Lord—has said. I even found myself agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, that the language of combat and struggle is really not appropriate for people who are suffering from cancer. I never use it myself and, although I quoted Professor Gould using it in my speech, it is not the natural language that I would propose.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, that of course simply talking about positive attitude, and indeed attributing moral value to that, is one aspect only of the management of the diagnosis one might find oneself facing. I am not a Christian Scientist, and I certainly believe that medical treatment—the most advanced medical treatment one can get hold of—is absolutely crucial and almost certainly much more important.

I agree to some extent with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that it is possible for some clinicians at a specific time to be able to tell simply by looking at people that they are not going to live very much longer. But the evidence we have—there are studies about this—is that that is true where there is a very short time left to live, of 14 days or less. People with 14 days or less to live are, in my view, unlikely to have access to the provisions of this Bill simply because there is quite an elaborate bureaucracy attached to it through which one has to pass, and that takes time. The key thing for this Bill is the six months written in it. It is that that we have to look at, and six months prognoses are not particularly accurate. Where there are medians, it is important to understand the basic data.