Draft Airports Slot Allocation (Alleviation of Usage Requirements) Regulations 2023

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2023 General Committees

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. We are here because maybe we have not fully left the EU, as the Minister said, after the treaty of Windsor—I am not talking about the one yesterday, but about the one in 1386, which made Portugal our oldest existing ally. As the aviation industry kept us fed and watered during the pandemic, let us hope that we can still continue to get our tomatoes after yesterday’s deal.

As an island nation, the UK’s aviation sector is a global leader, and it plays the most vital of roles in connecting us to the rest of the world, whether it be visiting our family, friends or broadening one’s horizons. We meet here to discuss the slots allocations for 2023. The time when the industry was in turmoil and the country was locked down was, without question, the most difficult time ever for commercial aviation. It is really heartening to see the sector bounce back. However, it has still not fully recovered, deeming it necessary to revisit slot allocations in advance of the start of the summer 2023 season, which is on 26 March—just four weeks away.

The season into which we are heading runs out on 28 October 2023. Am I to mark a Tuesday at the beginning of October to reconvene and discuss the same situation? I wonder who I will be facing across the Dispatch Box at that time. The “use it or lose it” rule that applies to slots means that airlines must use 80% of their slots or risk losing them altogether, as the Minister has said. Slots are hugely valuable to airlines, and sometimes it would be financially wise—yet environmentally terrible—to operate ghost flights with no or very few passengers to meet the arbitrary 80% fulfilment rule and keep the slots for future demands.

Let me give a brief history of the issue. The 80:20 rule was scrapped altogether when the pandemic struck. We have since revisited it to offer some alleviation while some travel restrictions were still in place. We also had the 70:30 requirement—again, to respond to the disruption the industry still felt. In a previous debate of this nature with one of the Minister’s predecessors back in 2021, it was believed that it would be 2023 before air traffic volumes had increased to 2019 levels.

The retained EU powers of regulation 95/93 give us the power to amend ratios as we see fit in the light of the industry’s failure to bounce back immediately, up to and including August 2024. It is also prudent for airlines to be able to hand back slots that they cannot use, because we do not want flights to take off when they do not need to so that airlines can retain rights they have had historically.

The proportion of 5% seems about right but, as I stated when I met the Minister’s predecessor back in October, the full impact assessment of the measures is not being carried out because of the short-term nature of the timescales. I hope the Minister will take on board the fact that I am still keen to see a retrospective assessment of the impact of the measures, to ensure that if and when we revisit them, we know that we are taking steps that are appropriate to the time and neither too harsh nor too weak.

As shadow aviation Minister, it pains me to think that we may be back here again in six months, in the run-up to the winter timetable, and then again for summer 2024. We should not be discussing endlessly how to support a sector in which the Government should have intervened more during the pandemic. As passenger demand is still in the recovery phase, it is more important than ever to consider ways to future-proof our airspace as we build back our world-beating capacity. Aviation will recover and grow; it must grow sustainably over the years and decades ahead. The 80:20 rule is very much part of that.

I note that although passengers are expected to benefit from the proposed relief in this legislation by retaining historic levels of connectivity, the explanatory memorandum says that there is a potential negative impact in the form of the prevention of new entrants to the marketplace. As our country tightens its collective belt because of the impact on the family purse of the cost of living crisis, it cannot be that flying and travel become solely the pursuit of the very wealthy, and we must be mindful of monopolisation. We will not oppose the regulations, but I would be grateful to hear the Minister’s thoughts on the points I have made.