Aviation Statistics (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, airport operators currently provide their statistics to the CAA, which passes them on to Eurostat. This is to be replaced, according to this SI, with a system whereby airport operators give the information to the CAA, which then provides that data to the Secretary of State if directed—not by legal obligation but if directed.

There are four problems with the SI. First, statistics collected on a national basis are much less useful and meaningful than international statistics. As the noble Lord said, there is no guarantee that this information will be shared internationally.

Secondly, there is no obligation on the Secretary of State to even want to see the statistics. What will he do with them? There is no obligation on the Secretary of State to publish them. Therefore, one has obvious concerns about transparency. Statistics should be important for the Government; they are certainly important for the public and the industry itself to monitor performance. The CAA already collects this data, but it will be of much less use for comparative purposes as matters stand in the SI.

The third problem is the impact of changing rules on exactly how the data is expressed and collected. This is the kind of internal thing that happens in any organisation. If you change the order of the questions or one or two words in the questions, you impact the results. It does not matter that much if you are looking across the piece and everyone is obeying the same rules, but we will be collecting our data on a different basis. I more or less guarantee that, within a year or two, we will be told that our data is no longer comparable because of differences in collection procedure.

Finally, there is the new power of the CAA referred to in the SI to impose a £5,000 fine if an airport does not provide data. I am not entirely clear about this, and I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify. I believe that this is a new power; I am not sure that the CAA has it at the moment. If it does, what is the fine, because £5,000 seems derisory as a fine on a large organisation for failing to provide data? It would cost Heathrow Airport or Gatwick Airport a great deal more than £5,000 to collect the data, so there would be an incentive not to bother. Where does £5,000 come from? Has it been thought through as a penalty that should be paid by a large commercial organisation? It does not seem worth it.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, the points made by my noble friend Lord Berkeley and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, are exactly right. I look to the Minister to answer them. I can see why we would want to avoid an obligation, but I cannot for the life of me see why we would not want voluntarily to co-operate with Eurostat. This obviously is a wider question for government as a whole, but in an open society we have to believe that sharing information is a good thing, not a bad thing.

I formally object to the £5,000. It clearly is not within the spirit of the withdrawal Act and therefore the Minister has not prayed that Act in aid but has prayed in aid the draconian European Communities Act 1972. I was not here in 1972 and I have not recently brushed up on the detail, but that Act was created to implement European law. This is not creating European law; it is smuggling in a little correction. I am not going to cause a constitutional crisis by objecting to it, but the Government should not have done it.