Lord Tunnicliffe
Main Page: Lord Tunnicliffe (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Tunnicliffe's debates with the Department for Transport
(7 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
The noble Lord conflates two of my favourite topics. As he knows, both those companies are privately run and can recruit as many people as they like. However, they suffer the same thing: during the Covid pandemic, it was very difficult to train traffic controllers and train drivers. To a certain extent, there is a bit of catch-up going on. As I say, for train drivers as for air traffic controllers, training takes a very long time. It is at least 18 months before that person is operational.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, this is a very complex and almost unique issue. We have the failure of a small unit, with perhaps three people on duty, impacting on the enterprise as a whole. The problem is: what is the adequate reserve? When NATS took over in October last year, Gatwick saw the need to agree staffing levels. As an increase in staff was needed, recruitment and training were put in hand, but it has not yet delivered. That was 11 months ago. It may be that ab initio to on duty is 13 months, but surely more energy should be put into finding a bridging solution to that problem. We also need to worry about who should be financially responsible. I caution against putting the responsibility on NATS on the day, because the runway is the most dangerous part of any operation, especially into Gatwick. But is the present situation equitable and, in the final analysis, is not Gatwick responsible for Gatwick?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
In the final analysis, Gatwick is indeed responsible for Gatwick. As the noble Lord will know, there are numerous London airports which, I am sure, would be happy to provide services. Therefore, there is a rationale for Gatwick management making sure that their operations run very smoothly. The noble Lord mentioned a bridging solution. I agree; I wish there were one. However, the simple fact is that Gatwick is the busiest single-runway airport in the world. Even an experienced air traffic controller still needs that 13 months to train in order to take up their role. Even worse than that, at 13 months the success rate is still 50%, because safety always comes first.