Civil Aviation Bill - Second reading

Lord Faulkner of Worcester:

My Lords, this Bill gives us the opportunity to debate a wide range of issues concerned with aviation. The fascinating speech we have just heard from the noble Countess is one such, which I am sure we will come back to at Committee. I will concentrate on three issues: the first is the protection of air travellers, which I will refer to last; the second is the Bill's proposals on noise and night flights; and the third, which I shall deal with first and which is perhaps the most important of all, is climate change.

The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, made a remarkable speech. I agreed entirely with his words on climate change, and am particularly pleased that he quoted the research from the Tyndall Centre, and drew the concluded that we have to do something about omissions if we are to have any chance of meeting our 2050 targets of reducing CO2 emissions by sixty per cent.

Perhaps my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis was a little unkind in asking him to commit himself to Conservative policy, but can I tease from him an admission that the logic of what he said is that the only way one can have any chance of meeting those climate change targets is by checking the growth of air travel and reducing the demand for it? I take exception with the Government, this Bill and the aviation White Paper because it contains no provision whatever for restricting the growth of air travel.

Climate change is the most pressing environment issue facing us. In a speech in September last year, the Prime Minister described it as,

"a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence".

Shortly afterwards, our own Sub-Committee D of the European Union Select Committee, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, published an excellent report on climate change. Launching it, the noble Lord said:

"The stark truth is that this is a global problem which unsolved is likely to produce truly catastrophic effects. Only sustained global action will provide a solution.
"Individuals need to change their behaviour. The EU can lead by example but the impetus must be on citizens to consider how they can contribute to global warming - and make changes".

As we have heard, aviation is the fastest growing source of climate changing emissions, and that is where we must start.

It is a pity that the aviation White Paper instead of addressing the climate change issues chose to promote growth in air travel, and sought additional runway capacity in the south east, starting - as we heard - with Stansted by 2013. I suspect my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Hudnall will say more about Stansted, and I do not want to steal her thunder. However, it is worth remembering that Stansted is not fully utilised now, has no continental traffic, and 90 per cent of its flights are operated by easyJet and Ryanair. We heard some examples of how Ryanair treats its disabled passengers at Questions yesterday. Most of us are rather tired of Mr O'Leary's dismissive attitude to any suggestions that his airline should behave like a responsible corporate citizen.

I turn to the issue of noise and nuisance. I trust that my noble friend will have some answers to the points made by the London Borough of Hounslow and the other local authorities under the Heathrow flight paths. They make the point that the Bill appears to remove the limit on the number of takeoffs and landings at Heathrow, and weakens the controls on aircraft movements during the current night quota period. They fear that Clause 2(2) would end the existing aircraft movement limits by replacing, in Section 78 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982,

"limit the number of occasions on which they may take off or land",

with,
"impose limits or other restrictions relating to aircraft taking off or landing".

Given the known lobbying skills of the aviation industry, one can easily envisage a time when it would argue that the introduction of quieter aircraft meant that it had reduced the nuisance caused by noise to such an extent that the night flying restrictions could go altogether. Some persuasive briefing has been issued by the HACAN ClearSkies campaign, the voluntary organisation that campaigns on behalf of residents around Heathrow affected by the flight paths. It makes the point that existing ways of measuring aircraft noise are unsatisfactory.

Again, I agreed with what the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, said about that. It is the frequency of noise events that wrecks a good night's sleep, not the fact that the event itself might be slightly less noisy.

If I am unable to sleep through noise events greater than 90 decibels, it will not make any difference if what wakes me up is measured at 92 rather than 98 decibels. Less noisy does not mean not noisy at all. What makes a difference to my sleep and that of other people who live under the flight paths is the number of times in a night that noise occurs, which is why the numbers limit on night-time movements must be retained.

My final point is a matter that most people in the travel industry hoped and expected to see in the Bill, but that has been excluded from it. I listened carefully to what the Minister said about the matter. I refer to the proposal from the Civil Aviation Authority that a £1 levy be imposed on all outbound air passengers from the UK to fund a new scheme that would provide protection for all air travellers who have the misfortune to be stranded abroad through the collapse of an airline or tour operator. That would replace the existing air travel organisers licensing bonds - the ATOL bonds - which the CAA has run for the past 30 years, and provide comprehensive consumer protection for everyone.

Perhaps my noble friend did not address sufficiently the fact that the travel industry has changed dramatically in the past few years, and legislation has not kept up with those changes.

Not so long ago, close to 100 per cent of consumers enjoyed financial protection when booking travel because they went with tour operators. Now, with the advent of no-frills airlines and websites, barely half of them enjoy financial protection, although most of them think that they do.

Thirty years of the ATOL system has led consumers to believe that, when they buy a scheduled airline ticket, they will be protected if something goes wrong, but that is not now the case. Consumers also believe that if they book accommodation, car hire and other ancillaries from an airline website, they will be protected if things go wrong. Again, that is no longer the case.

The situation that I describe affects others as well. The traditional tour-operating industry is strictly regulated by the EU package travel regulations of 1992. Traditional tour operators have their cash tied up in bonds to protect consumers, have many onerous responsibilities to their customers, have to pay VAT on their margins and are forced to spend hundreds of hours of management time on administration in connection with bonds. None of those responsibilities or costs applies to the airlines or web-based companies that now compete head to head with the traditional tour-operating industry. The £1 levy - or something similar - would provide the opportunity to level the playing field between traditional tour operators and the airlines, which now increasingly behave as if they are tour operators, but without having the same legislative burden.

[Lord Russell-Johnston: My Lords, has the noble Lord's attention been drawn to the recent case in which the insurance ombudsman found against Thomas Cook, which had resisted supporting the payment of insurance to a girl who had had her leg amputated three years ago? The problems being outlined are not confined to the recent-entry companies to the holiday industry. ]

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, whose point reinforces my argument. I agree that it spreads it wider.

On Third Reading of the Bill in another place on 10 October, the junior Minister Karen Buck said, as my noble friend did today, that the Government had decided not to accept the CAA's advice, and that the public should have the right to decide whether or not to buy insurance to protect themselves financially. The Minister said that an across-the-board levy of £1 was "disproportionate".

I urge my noble friend to reconsider the matter. Members of the public who buy holiday packages already pay for their protection. They have no choice because the tour operators are obliged to include such cover in their holiday prices. The Government said that it would help consumers to learn more about air travel insurance, but they seem to have overlooked the fact that such insurance costs a lot more than £1. In addition, that insurance does not arrange repatriation for those who are stranded abroad.

The most recent airline to go bust is EU Jet, to which my noble friend referred, which used to fly out of Manston in Kent. It collapsed in July at the height of the holiday season, leaving 12,000 tourists abroad and another 27,000 people waiting to travel. The CAA in its report of the collapse said:

"If a managed scheme with a central administrator was in place, repatriation could have been arranged more cheaply, at no cost to passengers, and they would have been able to travel as intended with little or no disruption to their holiday and therefore less anxiety. Passengers yet to travel would also receive a refund irrespective of whether they paid by credit card or debit card".

EU Jet was one of 18 scheduled airlines in Europe that have collapsed in the past four years. It will not be the last because there is still overcapacity in the airline market. More consumers who believed themselves to be protected will have their holidays ruined when more airlines collapse, and they will incur costs that they have not budgeted for.

I hope that we can come back to the subject in Committee, and that even if the £1 levy is not acceptable to the Government, we can consider an alternative way of providing the same sort of protection to customers as the tour operators. I hope that we will have the chance to discuss those matters, and the matter to which the noble Countess, Lady Mar, referred to. I look forward to the later stages of the Bill.

© Lords Hansard 1 November 2005