Civil Aviation Bill

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

Like other speakers, I welcome the general thrust of this Bill. I am sure that we shall make some improvements in Committee. I would like to see it in the context of a proper aviation policy, which I fear we do not have at the moment. I am rather nervous about some of the papers that might come out from the Government, although the Prime Minister today, in answer to Zac Goldsmith, the MP for Richmond Park, declined to give a commitment that, if re-elected, the Government would not build a third runway. This argument is moving and there are growing numbers of people who recognise that the only realistic possibility is the expansion of Heathrow. It is something that I have been saying for many years, but I will not spend a great deal of time on it now because the House and other people have heard my views on many occasions. I simply reiterate that at a time of economic recession, a third runway is estimated to add some £8 billion to the British economy, and all the investment is totally private sector. The idea of not doing it is crazy. If we do not do it soon, we will continue to lose out. A number of Members around this House have made that point.

I want to make an additional point—and this is where it would be good if the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, could talk to the noble Lord, Lord Rogan. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, understands the concept of a hub airport. That is curious because he seems to love trains, and I presume that he understands the concept of what is in effect a hub railway station. People go to the big railway stations in big cities to interchange to get to other places.

Perhaps I may give the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, an obvious example, and I would like him to think it through, because the opponents are getting in the way of the advantages that would accrue to us if we took the necessary decisions. I could give him many examples similar to that of the Japanese businessman who wishes to invest in Europe and has investment meetings here. He wants to fly on to his factory in Liverpool and can do that by going to London, getting a train across to King’s Cross, getting the train to Luton, and then flying to Liverpool. Or he could go to Euston and get the train all the way to Liverpool. Alternatively, he can fly to Amsterdam, have his meeting there, decide his investment policies, and fly straight to Liverpool. That is true of dozens of regional airports around Britain. We are not just doing damage to London; we are doing damage to our regions and it is important to understand that.

I will not proceed further on that, other than to make the more general point that in aviation generally we still have the second largest and second most advanced aerospace industry in the world. Although we will not retain that position much longer, for all the obvious reasons about emerging countries, we can retain the great advantage that we have, particularly in science and technology. We can do that only if we have a good civil aviation policy and a defence policy that goes with it to support the aviation industry. Everyone in the industry understands that, and that is why when I make speeches such as this I get so much support from across the whole industry. That is generally recognised by all, and I ask the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, to talk this through with people, understand the concept of the hub and why you cannot have more than one hub airport in one major area. You can have several hub airports in a large country, but not otherwise. That is important.

I wanted to mention investment in Heathrow and so on. Although the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, who has had to slip out for a while, has saved me some time, I want to reiterate this issue—which the noble Lord, Lord Patten, also touched on. There is a problem here. My understanding is that it would not require much tweaking of the Bill to give Heathrow the protection that it needs in terms of investment policies in infrastructure. We could look at that in Committee, because it is an important matter which we should flag up.

I want to refer to two other matters mentioned by another speaker. Clearly, we must give the CAA a duty of efficiency, and the National Audit Office is relevant in this context. The idea of the CAA not being answerable to the National Audit Office is, frankly, dumb. I believe that we were thinking of doing that some time ago when we were in government and considered introducing a similar Bill. That was the intention.

I want to say a quick word about the issue of airline holiday sales and the Air Travel Organisers Licensing scheme. My understanding from the CAA is that it believes that airline holiday sales should come under the new ATOL arrangements. It was drawn to my attention that the number of people whose holidays are protected by the ATOL scheme has reduced considerably, and today only around 50% of holidaymakers travel with full financial protection from ATOL. Those figures are from the CAA. We should all recognise and support its proposal.

Security issues, dealt with in Clauses 78 to 82, are very important. This is perhaps not the moment to discuss them in detail, although we may do so in Committee. I am slightly worried about the way that we are tackling this area. It is difficult to get right, although it may be that the Government have received advice from the security industry generally, including the security departments of government. However, we need to get this right. I remember the Minister saying at one time that her plan was to make Heathrow better, not bigger. When you look at the queues at Heathrow you realise that, whatever else she has done, she has not achieved that.

Part of the reason is that we have not tackled effectively the whole issue of immigration, passport clearance and so on. The recent sacking of the head of that department has produced a situation where there is almost a work to rule. I am not justifying that, but if you tell the workforce that they must obey the Immigration Rules to the letter, they will do that—and that is what they are doing. That may be good, bad or indifferent, but you cannot easily blame those staff without recognising that the Government, by saying what they said and doing what they did, have made the problem far worse. We have to rely to a considerable degree on the good sense and, above all, the training of these people. If you tell them that they cannot use that good sense and training and give them a set of rules which you tell them to obey to the letter—and if you tell them that they will lose their jobs if they do not follow the rules to the letter—then they will obviously do just that: follow the rules to the letter. That would account for the terrible queues at Heathrow, which have done immense damage. The airport’s position in the international airline stakes is bad enough.

My noble friend and colleague Lord Davies of Stamford said that Heathrow was now number four in terms of aircraft movements. It has slipped to number eight in terms of the destinations it serves. That is by far the most serious slippage for a major airport. To compound that with a lack of effective ground operations in terms of clearing the queues and so on is therefore a major failure.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Just to set the record straight, what I actually said was that Heathrow is currently third in Europe for aircraft movements—behind Roissy and Frankfurt—but that it will be fourth by 2020, behind Roissy, Frankfurt and Schiphol, both in terms of movements and passenger numbers.

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[Lord Soley]

I accept that. I was simply making the point that in terms of destinations served, Heathrow has been way down for a long time, and it is slipping further.

On the issue of the environment, there are opportunities to get this right in Clause 84. I am interested in subsection (5), which gives the CAA a duty to fund certain research and so on, including on health—an issue which the noble Countess, Lady Mar, might be interested in. As for what the CAA can do, it seems perfectly possible to interpret subsection (5) as meaning that the CAA could do more to raise the profile of environmental research, and not necessarily by spending a great deal. It always struck me that in airports and aircraft generally there is a captive audience for the environmental message.

There is always room for improvement in what airports can do on ground operations. Five or six years ago, when I first spoke at the Airport Operators Association’s annual conference, there was a lack of willingness to acknowledge that airport operators ought to be aiming, as far as possible, to get zero emissions from ground operations. Now, all airports are trying to do that. There is no reason why, in Clause 84, we could not ask the CAA to look at things such as the effectiveness of airlines in introducing drop-in fuels—algae-based and other biological fuels that are now regularly being mixed with jet fuel by many airlines around the world—and modern aircraft design. That is because a lot of the noise problem comes not from engines but from air frames.

Incidentally, I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, to get off his hobby horse of railways and recognise the overall problem. I can tell him that, having lived under the flight path of Heathrow for something like 30 years, I would far rather do that than live next to the high-speed rail line in west London, where the trains run through at 100 miles an hour, less than 100 feet from people’s front and back doors, which goes on throughout the night—24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Although I recognise the noise problem, I would simply say that this is a problem for all transport systems. Rather than picking out aircraft, trains, cars, or whatever, the message is to look at a modern transport system and do it environmentally.

I have a couple of final points. The stacking issue is important, and several people have mentioned it. We will not stop stacking at Heathrow until we dramatically reduce the number of flights—in which case we may as well close the airport—or we expand the airport. The other problem, which is a much bigger problem for Europe, is the number of air traffic control centres in the European area. There were 50 such centres the last time I looked, compared with about 10 for the whole of the North American continent. Until we reduce that number we will not be able to fly in straight lines; we will have to fly in dog-legs across Europe. The Minister will know that. However, I am not sure that we will be able to get agreement on this issue given the number of jobs involved which will be defended by various countries at various times.

I have one final, brief point which the Minister might like to come back on at another time. I am puzzled about the situation whereby some airports owned by the Ministry of Defence also handle civilian flights. I am not sure what the CAA will be covering. Northolt is an obvious example. It has been increasing the number of civil flights, usually involving privately owned aircraft. I am not sure whether the Bill will cover the activities in a MoD-owned airport where there is a civilian operation as well. I welcome the Bill and look forward to dealing with some of it in Committee.

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[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest. I am chairman of Fairoaks Airport Consultative Committee—a small privately owned aerodrome only about 10 miles from Heathrow in Surrey, but not a candidate, I can assure your Lordships, for the third London airport.

I start by saying that I, too, accept the broad thrust of the Bill. The great issue before civil aviation and the Government is the provision of sufficient runway capacity in the south-east. At the moment as everybody knows, Heathrow, if not full, is close to it, and there is much speculation and discussion as to where the additional capacity should be provided. I listened with interest to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Soley, who was, I think, saying that he is in favour of a third runway at Heathrow. He was once the distinguished Member of Parliament for Hammersmith, as I recall. Indeed, I remember it only too well, because for a while I was the junior Aviation Minister while he was the MP for that constituency. I seem to remember him coming to represent the views of his constituency about flights in and out of Heathrow, as they passed over his constituents, in a fairly critical manner. But perhaps the world has changed. In truth, it has changed, and I must be fair to the noble Lord, because the impact of civil aviation on the population underneath is less now than it was 10 or 20 years ago. He is entitled to take that view and therefore perhaps to now accommodate the idea of a third runway at Heathrow, although that is not a popular view among those who live a little nearer to the airport than do his former constituents in Hammersmith.

[Lord Soley]

I think I remember the meeting the noble Lord is talking about. It would have been in the very early 1980s. Actually, it was about night flights. I have been in favour of a third runway since 1989 or 1990, and I spoke in favour of it in the House of Commons. However, night flights are different, and I would not go back on that. We have to be very careful about night flights.

[Lord Trefgarne]

I agree with that. Indeed, I recall that one of the very first issues I was asked to deal with as the junior Aviation Minister—I was there for only nine months, I think—was the numbers of night flights permitted from Heathrow. I dare say the noble Lord came with other Members of Parliament from local constituencies to make their representations to me.

If a third runway is not to be provided at Heathrow—and the Government seem to have set their mind in that direction—then where is it to be provided? Of course, I listened with interest to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Patten, about a sort of mega-airport, as he seemed to be saying, with two runways at Gatwick and two at Heathrow, connected by some wonderful new interconnecting railway. I must confess I have not heard that proposition before, and no doubt the Minister will want to consider it very carefully.

I also listened with interest to the speech of the noble Countess, Lady Mar. She has, of course, made her representations on these matters to your Lordships on several occasions before. They ought to be considered carefully, but it is also fair to say that very few, if any, of the major air-worthiness authorities take a similar view to her. For example, I would have thought that if there were a real issue along the lines that the noble Countess was predicating, presumably the Civil Aviation Authority would have taken some steps to move in that direction. Perhaps it will one day. Perhaps she is a voice crying in the wilderness; perhaps she is a sort of John the Baptist, who will in due course convert us all. But she does, at least, deserve the courtesy of a proper consideration of what she has said, so I shall read it with care. Like almost every noble Lord, I have been a passenger many times in my life, but I was also a pilot for some years, so I am no less interested than she is in these matters.

My noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding referred to some of the important considerations that arise from Part 1, particularly the ring-fencing of the assets of BAA and any other airport operator which finds itself in a similar position, and the question of the right of appeal when those assets are ring-fenced. He makes an important point that will need to be considered carefully when we get to Committee. My noble friend can count on my interest at least, if not support, in these matters when that time comes.

Further provisions of this Bill which are not sufficiently covered are those for general aviation, in which I have played a small part over the years. General aviation is now largely excluded from Heathrow, for obvious reasons, and is almost totally excluded, though not quite so, from Gatwick. It is therefore required to operate from places like Farnborough, and indeed Fairoaks, to which I have already referred. That presents difficulty, particularly for interconnection with other flights, but I do hope that some provision for general aviation can continue to be made, if not at Heathrow then at least at Gatwick and Stansted.

The time marches on. I certainly intend to play a detailed part when we get to the Committee stage of this Bill. I support the broad thrust of what is proposed, but there are a number of detailed matters which will need further consideration.