Flybe

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

As the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate, we are working across Government—across the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions—on the response to the collapse of Flybe, to make sure that all the issues and troubles, particularly for staff, are addressed and that we are able to respond. I am happy to give him more updates at our briefing later in relation to specific, detailed questions on some of the issues that he raises. We stand ready to make sure that we deliver for individuals who have been made redundant. We also learned a lot from Thomas Cook’s collapse, but I remind him that this is not at the same level as it was with Thomas Cook.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Flybe is regrettably the second failure of a UK-based business in this sector in just six months. What parallels does my hon. Friend see with the collapse of Thomas Cook last September, and what lessons have been learned to ensure that the sector is not affected again in the near future?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

My hon. Friend will know that we are working hard with the industry and the sector to understand some of the challenges. It is key to highlight that the Flybe collapse, in particular, has been reported as being due to the effects of coronavirus, so we are obviously seeing the impacts of that. We are not where we wanted to be as a Government—we were working hard to secure Flybe’s future. However, he is absolutely right, and as a responsible Department, we are making sure that we have those conversations with businesses and are absolutely on board with what is going on.