Airports Slot Allocation (Alleviation of Usage Requirements) Regulations 2026

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome these regulations. This is a core part of the current responsibility of the department in difficult times internationally. It is absolutely the right thing to do to try to ease pressures on airlines in this environment, as the current geopolitical situation has made many routes much less viable than they were and led to cutbacks around the world in the number of planes flying at the time being.

However—and I think we will come back to this at greater length in debates on the forthcoming aviation Bill—that we are having this debate today indicates that this is a heavily regulated area. We inherited a lot of that regulation from the European Union, and I had hoped, and it remains my view, that this sector should be regulated less than it is. It probably should not need a debate in Parliament to enable an airline, in an international crisis, to take a decision to scale back some of its activities temporarily without the risk of long-term damage to its business. So, in my view, this debate should not need to happen but, in the context of the current laws, it is absolutely essential.

I have a particular concern that I want to raise with the Minister about the impact on some individual airlines. The choice of 5% or 10% does not make complete sense to me, in the context of an environment where the most affected routes are those through the Middle East. I will take a practical example: if an airline like Emirates had two flights a day to a UK airport, they would not currently be viable because of the geopolitical situation. The reality is that tourist numbers to the Middle East have dropped very sharply. I had an email myself today from a hotel in Oman that I stayed in some while back begging me to come back and offering me a good deal to do so, so there is no doubt that numbers have fallen sharply. It is therefore very probable that running two planes a day is not viable for the time being and you can afford only, in practical business terms, to run one plane a day. That is a 50% drop. But if you can only cut 5% or 10%, that does not quite work arithmetically. I am slightly concerned that the inflexibility of the numbers in this regulation will not fit with the practical reality facing a number of airlines, and I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments about that.

My final point is that there were a couple of airlines that did not want this to happen. I am very interested to hear from the Minister why that was. There may be practical reasons, or this may be simply anti-competitive pressures—we can imagine one or two airlines that might want to get in the way of sensible changes to ease pressures on their competitors.

In particular, I want to press the Minister on the issue of the 5% or 10% figures, because it seems to me that for some airlines, if you have very large numbers of slots for Heathrow or Gatwick, fine, that makes perfect sense, but if you have a relatively small number of slots, then you are worse affected than other airlines by the geopolitical situation and it may very well not work at all. I will be interested in the Minister’s comments on that.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend and the statutory instrument that he has moved. I understand entirely that it is designed to support a resilient aviation sector, and I just want to ask one question.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee referred, as indeed did my noble friend, to the example of 2022, when, as I understand it, there was a 30% hand-back of slots. I just want to ask, if the information is to hand: what happened afterwards, when the temporary provision ended? Did the slots go back in precisely the same way to the airlines that had them at the time? The reason I ask is because I am curious as to whether, in the current conditions, a 10% hand-back will result in these eventually being handed back to the same airlines. It may or may not be the case, but I would be interested if the Minister has anything he might be able to add on this.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this draft instrument and explaining its purpose, and for the advance meeting with his officials and the briefing they sent. As with all such measures, we need to look not only at the administrative detail but at the practical impact on passengers. Other noble Lords referred to the impact on the airlines themselves; quite a bit of my comment will be about the passengers and about the impact on the wider aviation sector and its sustainability.

These regulations amend the slot usage rules so that airlines at specified UK airports can return a limited proportion of slots for the summer and winter 2026 seasons. We understand the case for flexibility during a period of considerable uncertainty, including in particular the conflict in the Middle East. We do not want airlines to be incentivised to operate empty or near-empty flights simply to preserve the historic slot rights as described by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope. That said, flexibility, in our view, must not come at the expense of passengers. Even where there is some notice, these changes, we fear, could still lead to cancellations with relatively little warning, causing significant disruption to travel plans. In a period when household budgets are under pressure and fares remain high, that could mean higher replacement costs for families, as well as losses on hotels, onward travel and other arrangements already paid for. I notice that train tickets is an example that is laid out in the fifth question of appendix 1 of the Department for Transport’s answers to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. That is a very good example of what I am talking about here.

There is, too, a broader question of balance. The airline sector is under pressure. We recognise the need to support its long-term sustainability, but we worry that the burden of adjustment should not fall unfairly on passengers, especially leisure travellers, who are less able to absorb sudden change. We feel that we need to be careful that a measure intended to provide resilience does not instead create avoidable uncertainty for customers.

I have a few questions for the Minister. First, what assessment has been made of the likely pattern of cancellations under these rules, including whether certain groups of passengers are more likely to be affected than others? Secondly, what discussions has the department had with airports about the impact of these arrangements on their income, operations and resilience—particularly given that, as I understand it, two airlines opposed this proposal and airports across the board were against it? Thirdly, what evidence led the Government to settle on this particular threshold when airlines had sought a different level of alleviation?

On a point of clarity, I note that the instrument is made under powers in the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023. Can the Minister confirm precisely how these powers interact with the timetable for these regulations?

Last but by no means least, I return to the impact on passengers. We understand why the Government are seeking to avoid unnecessary flights being operated simply in order to retain these slots, but the answer cannot be to shift the cost of uncertainty on to travellers. If an airline believes that it cannot operate a slot, there must be a clear and fair mechanism for dealing with that in a way that protects consumers as far as is possible. For that reason, although we recognise the intention behind the regulations, we have some scepticism that this is not entirely the right balance. However, I look forward to hearing more persuasive arguments from the Minister.