Michael Gove
Main Page: Michael Gove (Conservative - Surrey Heath)Department Debates - View all Michael Gove's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Katherine Fletcher
The hon. Gentleman may be able to guess from my accent that London is not always at the forefront of my mind when making decisions. As he well knows, Doncaster airport does not have any domestic internal flights, and airlines will set those up primarily from the perspective of commerciality. I agree with him about the importance of regional connectivity. On how communities can best work together to engage with what airports want and how regional connectivity work, I refer him to models mentioned previously in which other airports have a mixture of private and local engagement that really grounds operations within them. On the position on VAT, I am afraid that I will have to write to him rather than commit a snafu at the Dispatch Box.
Michael Gove (Surrey Heath) (Con)
The Minister mentioned the Civil Contingencies Act earlier. She knows—indeed, the whole House knows—that it is a very specific piece of legislation that is intended only to be invoked in the face of a military assault, a terrorist attack or an unprecedented threat to the life of the nation. It is frivolous for the Opposition to call for it in this way, and they know that were it to be invoked by her or any other Minister, it would be subject to judicial review and struck down in the courts. Can she remind us of anywhere else that a mayoral combined authority has constructively acquired an airport, and might the person who did so be a Conservative who is more interested in delivering for people than in posturing on the Floor of this House?
Katherine Fletcher
It is important to commend hugely the work that has been happening at Doncaster airport with the National Police Air Service fixed wing, as well as 2Excel Aviation, the commercial company that in no small part is a preventive for oil spills and provides other important environmental protections. Not only is my right hon. Friend correct about the scale of intervention under the Civil Contingencies Act, but 2Excel has confirmation that it can meet its contracts and determinations in a different way with contingency plans, even further lowering that. I thank Members for their service, but this is not the nature of the emergency for which the Act was set up by a previous Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 2004.