Civil Aviation Bill

Lord Rogan Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rogan]

My Lords, the Bill has been widely welcomed during its progress and I, too, am in broad agreement with its principles. However, despite my fear being thought partisan, I would like to say a few words from a purely Northern Ireland perspective, although my remarks are also applicable, albeit to a lesser degree, to other UK regions.

Northern Ireland has many fine qualities which I am happy to wax lyrical about, but its geography brings with it the price of being the most peripheral region of the kingdom. Consequently, aviation—especially anything which touches upon access to Heathrow—is of particular interest to Ulster’s travellers, even more so now, in the aftermath of BA’s takeover of BMI, which has raised many questions about the long-term future of BMI’s current Heathrow slots, presently operating from George Best Belfast City Airport. It is difficult to underestimate how important those slots at Heathrow are for Northern Ireland, particularly for the business community and the tourist industry, attracting visitors from overseas with connections at the Heathrow hub.

While much of the debate about Heathrow quite rightly centres around its capacity and ability to compete in the modern world with other major continental airports, our issue in Northern Ireland is more fundamental —to ensure that Heathrow is accessible in the first place. There is no other practical way to reach Heathrow without direct flights from Belfast. There is no direct motorway link, direct rail link, or underground. Nor is it practical to connect to Heathrow, complete with baggage, from a lot of London’s other airports.

The more difficult it is for Northern Ireland to access Heathrow, the more difficult it is for business people to build that outward-looking, export-driven economy which Northern Ireland needs in order to continue developing. The arguments and evidence for the economic development benefits associated with air links are well known, but access to Heathrow is a two-edged sword for Northern Ireland. If we lose those links, our ability to plug into the global business community is much diminished, but similarly, it will also prove more difficult for inbound traffic, particularly inward investors, to register the Province as a serious investment location if there are no direct connections into the UK’s national hub airport.

While I appreciate that it may be beyond the remit of the Civil Aviation Bill to guarantee slots at any given airport, there should be some cognisance of regional policy within the general aviation strategy. Failure to do so will be to the detriment of the regions in the short and medium term, and will overcentralise economic activity around key airports, especially in the south-east of England, to an extent which may not be sustainable in the long term.