Airports (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Soley Excerpts

Friday 16th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Empey, on his timely and interesting Bill. I have great sympathy for the people of Northern Ireland, who are acutely concerned—and have been for many years—about losing the link between Belfast and London Heathrow. The link is vital for investment. All Governments put an enormous effort into ensuring that Northern Ireland is at the top of the agenda for international investment, but they will not be able to maintain that unless Belfast airports are able to link in effectively to Britain’s only hub airport.

I would be less sympathetic towards the Bill if I had any confidence that the proposed government White Paper on aviation, which we will see in the near future, was going to address the issue of our hub airport and state what is going to happen either to Heathrow or the proposals for an alternative hub elsewhere. I fear the White Paper will have a big hole in the middle—that is, a lack of policy around the crucial importance of our premier hub airport. As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, rightly pointed out, it is at the moment full and, unlike other hub airports around the world, and particularly our main competitors in Europe— Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris and Madrid—it is not in a position to grow. Those other airports, of course, are busy soaking up the investment that would otherwise come to Britain.

The noble Lord, Lord Empey, does not fear that the route will be lost in the short term and I think he is right about that. I do not think the new International Airline Group will, if it takes over BMI, immediately sell off the link. Indeed, IAG has made many statements over recent months, both in the British and Irish press, both north and south, stating that it will not do so, and I put some store in that.

However, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, rightly said, this is about the long term and not only the short term, and that is a crucial fact. If you had asked people some 20-odd years ago, “Would you not be able to fly to some of the great regional cities of Britain from Heathrow in 20 or so years’ time?”, they would have said, “No, of course we would”. In fact you cannot. You can now fly from Heathrow to only seven regional cities in the United Kingdom, whereas Amsterdam will fly you to 21 British regional cities. You do not have to be too clever to work out where international investors who are looking to have their investment meetings at a hub airport and then fly on to visit their factories or for other purposes will go to: they will go to other hub airports which are better serviced.

The temptation for a hub airport which is squeezed in the way that Heathrow is squeezed is eventually to sell off the short-haul slots because, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, rightly pointed out, they are less profitable. The Bill at least gives some feeling of safeguard because Clause 1 amends the Airports Act 1986 and imposes a duty on the Civil Aviation Authority to protect those regional links.

I do not want to spend too much time on this—I am aware of the time factor for the House—but in this country we fail to grasp at times that the aviation infrastructure of Europe and the world is similar to the infrastructure that Britain developed first with the railway network of the 19th century. It was the first time that an industrialised national economy was linked by a rail network. There were hub railway stations, if you like, in places such as Manchester Piccadilly, Glasgow Central, London King’s Cross and so on, and the hub airports perform the same function. You did not get a train from Stirling to London; you got a train to Glasgow or Edinburgh and then got your train to London. That is what hub airports do and they are crucial for the exchange.

Demand for the all-important investment meetings has grown and perhaps I may use a simple example to point out the real danger that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, seeks to address. Liverpool used to have a direct link with Heathrow. Now a Japanese businessman with a factory in Liverpool can no longer fly there unless he flies to Heathrow, gets off there with his bags and baggage, goes by train or bus to Luton—which has just agreed to expand, as my noble friend Lord McKenzie will be very pleased to know—and flies from there. Of course, the alternative—which they are all using—is to go to Amsterdam and fly direct to Liverpool, which has many links.

This is happening across the country but we are not being serious about it. That is why I say to the Minister again—he is probably bored stiff with me saying it over the years—that unless we maintain a premier hub airport that can deliver the same quality of services we will continue to lose these network routes, which will go to European airports instead or, in some cases, airports in emerging countries.

At least this Bill would give the people of Northern Ireland confidence that, like former Governments, this Government appreciate the importance of investment in Northern Ireland. That has been a driving force for us for many years given that the Northern Ireland economy had fallen behind that of the rest of the United Kingdom and, indeed, southern Ireland. Air links are critical for Northern Ireland. Some people believe that trains are the answer to all this but I do not. Trains are very important and I am in favour of high-speed rail but we should not kid ourselves that they will replace planes. Moreover, trains are not an option for Northern Ireland in this context.

The safeguard that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, has included in the Bill sends a serious signal to the Government which they ought to take seriously. If the Minister says in replying to this Second Reading that the Government have decided either to expand Heathrow or to create a new hub airport somewhere else, then I would say that this Bill is less necessary. However, until the Government bite the bullet and recognise that their policy on hub aviation in Britain is seriously flawed and is having a profoundly damaging effect on our economy, and address that situation, frankly, there will be increasing demands for short-haul routes to be protected, particularly from places such as Belfast which cannot link with countries overseas by rail. That is very important not just for Belfast but for many other British regional cities, particularly in the north of Scotland and the far west of England.