Civil Aviation Bill

Debate between Nigel Mills and Jim Fitzpatrick

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding us of the long debate that we had in Committee. Does he agree that recent news stories about delays at Heathrow have only strengthened the argument that it would be in the airports’ interest to publish those data, so that passengers know whose fault the delays are?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I could not agree more. I will discuss previous experience, but, as the hon. Gentleman says, recent experience underscores the expectation that the Government, the authorities or the airports will have to deal with the experience of passenger delays. The horror stories that are starting to come out about passengers experiencing delays of some hours because of shortages of immigration staff and the article in The Daily Telegraph on Monday or Tuesday of this week in which the previous chief executive of UKBA offered some analysis of the problem underscore the fact that there is an important matter to be addressed.

Amendment 9 is the generic proposal. It states:

“A licence must include provisions requiring the holder of a licence to develop passenger welfare plans.”

That is an all-encompassing proposal that we think would cover all the matters that passengers would expect airports and airlines to deal with, including stranded passengers, resilience, delays and all manner of difficulties that passengers might experience. Amendment 10 looks specifically at the position of stranded passengers and suggests that something should be done for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. Amendment 9 states that it should be incumbent on the licence holder to “develop passenger welfare plans”. That does not necessarily mean that the licence holder has to be totally responsible for delivery. There should be engagement with the airlines and a collective approach to that matter. Obviously, the CAA and the Government should be involved in that. I was not narrowing down the responsibility in the way that I misled my hon. Friend to believe.

Passenger welfare plans were a recommendation of the Select Committee on Transport in its pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill. In Committee, the Minister did not give a good reason why she does not believe that those plans should be included in the licences for airports. She said that the CAA will draw up the licences and that it will be a matter for that organisation. We do not think that that provision is strong enough. Given that the primary duty of the Bill is to the passenger, as we have discussed for some months, we believe that the development of passenger welfare plans would reinforce the focus on giving passengers the best experience possible at our airports. They have clearly not had that in previous winters.

The Transport Committee also stated in its pre-legislative scrutiny:

“Where possible, airport licences should be structured so that they address key areas of passenger dissatisfaction.”

I do not need to repeat the statistics on the misery that has been experienced by passengers at difficult times over a number of years. The reports, particularly the Begg report, on what happened to passengers at Heathrow during the disruption of December 2010 make alarming reading, even if one looks only at the headlines. Nine and a half thousand people were sleeping in the terminal, passengers were seeking refuge in subways, a lorry carrying blankets for passengers had to turn back on the M25 because of traffic conditions and very few passengers were provided with water or refreshments. It was absolute chaos and confusion. I am not blaming anybody for that. It is matter of record and fact, and we all want to avoid it happening again.

I anticipate that the Minister will refer us to clause 83 on the collection of information and data, which we discussed extensively in Committee. We accept that clause 83 is drawn widely enough to include the proposals in new clause 2 and amendments 8 and 10, because the airports could be responsible for providing the relevant data. However, given the experience of recent years, we believe that amendment 9 should be a basic licence requirement. The fact that the CAA has suggested that such a requirement could be incorporated and has included it in the example for the Heathrow licence suggests that it thinks that it will do that anyway. We think that the Government should make it a duty on the CAA to make passenger welfare plans a licence requirement.

[Nigel Mills]

Presumably, the hon. Gentleman accepts that clause 83 will apply to all airports and not just to the three that are likely to have a competition licence. Amendment 9 would not be of any use to a load of passengers who do not use Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I accept that point. I suggested in Committee that there should be a delineation of the differences between licensed airports, given that all airports have a licence of some description. Given that the most difficult passenger experiences of recent years have been at Heathrow, given that an indicative licence has been published for Heathrow and given that Heathrow is the market leader and our only hub airport, whatever Heathrow does will be examined by everybody else. If the CAA says that it expects Heathrow to do something, that might be adopted by other airports. We therefore do not think that it would be inappropriate to include this requirement in the licence, even if it applies only to Heathrow, because it would be copied as best practice by the other first-class airports around the country.

We all want to ensure that there is a good passenger experience, especially for those with disabilities, as was discussed in Committee and as is outlined in new clause 2. We hope that the situation will be better as a result of the Bill and are confident that it will be. We congratulate the Government on bringing it forward. However, we think that it would be much better if, in addition to more and clearer data being published on the passenger experience, there was a simple licence requirement, as outlined in amendment 9. We will seek the view of the House on that if the Minister is not able to reassure us in the course of the debate.