Draft Airports Slot Allocation (Alleviation of Usage Requirements) (No. 2) Regulations 2021

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 General Committees

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies?

I would like to ask the Minister a series of questions, although I will allow him time to collect his thoughts. The point that the hon. Member for South Thanet makes is very real: there is no free market when the allocation of slots is effectively determined by the perpetuation of existing control. That is a really important point, because it distorts what a free market can offer, including in respect of new entrants. Conversely, however, the Minister made the point that Northern Ireland is outside the remit of the statutory instrument. Pre-covid, there was a fledgling service from Manchester, for example, to the airport in Derry. The flight to Belfast City has been taken off. I have some interest, because I have used those flights in the past. The point I want raise is that, as we have seen the collapse of some individual airlines or routes, those slots will be reallocated. How does the Minister see the process of reallocation taking place? The hon. Member for South Thanet is absolutely right that we have to create the capacity for innovators to come in. It is not the large carriers that look for those new routes; they want to stick with their traditional routes as they know how to make money on those. They leave it to the marginal airlines to look for the new slots. How that will be done is therefore an important issue.

Looking again at the Manchester picture, at one time we had flights from Manchester to Heathrow, Gatwick and London City. Of those, only the Heathrow service now exists. People might say, “Yes, you can travel from Manchester to London,” but if people want to travel onward and use global services, which are served by Gatwick in particular, it is necessary to make alternative arrangements. That is not good in terms of the national interest, and it makes the question of slots really important.

I want to ask the Minister whether he can look slightly beyond the remit of this present SI, which does have an end date, at what the picture will look like and at how we will make sure that the challenge comes into the existing big operators in a way that begins to make sure that we move towards a national strategic market-based solution to national needs.

Finally, we know that at the moment flight is one of the major contributors to climate change. Obviously slot allocation can be part of a process of trying to ensure that we move towards more efficient aircraft. What thought has the Minister and his colleagues put into the question of how slot allocation can be part of helping the industry move towards the lower-offending aircraft that we need to see in our skies?