Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill [HL]

Committee (1st Day)

Clause 1 agreed.

Clause 2: Direction to progress airspace change proposal

Amendment 1

1: Clause 2, page 2, line 8, leave out paragraph (c) Member’s explanatory statement This is a probing amendment to clarify who may be covered by “another person with functions relating to air navigation” with regard to who is able to prepare and submit airspace change proposals.

My Lords, the support on these Benches for the principles of this Bill should come as no surprise to anyone in this House or the aviation industry. Several previous attempts have been made by the Government to introduce a Bill along these lines, but they have been interrupted by general elections.

You would have thought that by the time we reached this stage, following several government consultations, the Bill would be fool-proof and that the Government would have thought through everything very clearly. That is not the case. Despite the length of time it has taken to get here, and despite all the organisations involved in aviation having been consulted and agreeing that there is a need for airspace modernisation and also agreeing about the need for the Government to have powers of direction over the process, the Government have managed to upset almost everybody involved.

Amendment 1 is a probing amendment to try to tease out exactly who the Government have in mind in their reference in Clause 2(2)(c) to

“another person with functions relating to air navigation.”

Clause 2(2) already refers to airport operators and to “air navigation service providers”, which is a pretty broad term. This is a very sweeping power for the Government to give themselves. Subsequent to the passing of the Bill, they will be able to designate some other organisation—not yet thought of, one assumes—to prepare and submit airspace change proposals. The Bill gives the Government pretty draconian powers. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee memo notes that there are eight uses of Henry VIII powers.

The Government have consulted widely, but there is concern, especially from the Airport Operators Association, that rather late in the day they have, for instance, introduced a new element into airspace modernisation proposals. It agrees, and I agree very strongly, that there is a need for co-operation between airports on this. Modernising airspace is a very difficult process. It is needed for environmental reasons, but at the end of it you have some local residents who are extremely happy because planes no longer fly over them, but other local residents are extremely unhappy because the planes fly over them an awful lot more. It is also a very costly process for the airports concerned, and all airports are not the size of, or have the financial prowess of, Gatwick, Heathrow and so on. Some very small airports will be involved in this process. They are now very concerned that a new element relating to the reallocation of underused airspace has now been introduced. Will the Minister say what that phrase means and why has that element been introduced?

I remind noble Lords that this is not an issue only of enabling airspace to be, in some neutral manner, used to the maximum but of the convenience, comfort and environment of the people who live near airports. It is also very much an issue of safety. Oral Question 1 earlier today raised a number of loopholes and grey areas in relation to private and leisure pilots. The Minister, in her Answer, made it quite clear that the Government are looking at this whole area. Therefore, it is justifiable to ask what the Government have in mind in bringing this new, additional factor into airspace modernisation; it was not a factor when the consultation was done at the end of 2018. I beg to move.

My Lords, Amendment 1, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, seeks to clarify the phrase in Clause 2(2)(c)

“another person with functions relating to air navigation.”

I shall start by addressing that phrase and then move on to the other parts of airspace modernisation and how the powers to which it refers might be used.

To give a little background, Clause 2 gives the Secretary of State the power to direct any person involved in airspace change, following consultation. Consultation will come up a number of times today; this is a very consultative process, as indeed it must be to work. After consultation with that person, the Secretary of State can direct them to do three things: first, to prepare or submit an airspace change proposal, an ACP, to the Civil Aviation Authority, the CAA; secondly, to take steps to obtain approval to an ACP that has already been submitted; and, thirdly, to review the operation of an ACP after it has been approved. Those are the three things that the Secretary of State can direct.

In Part 1 of the Bill, any

“person involved in airspace change”

is defined as, again, three things. First, they could be an airport operator, and one might expect that in most cases the airport operator would indeed be involved in putting forward the ACP or making sure that it progresses; secondly, they could perfectly well be an air navigation service provider; and then there is that third term to which this amendment relates—it is a probing amendment to understand what sort of person

“another person with functions relating to air navigation”

could be. For example, they could be part of an existing body such as an industry association or an airspace change consultancy brought in after the consultation, perhaps, to look at how the process of the ACP is working. Or they could be from a new body set up to deal with a specific ACP or a group of ACPs. One might imagine a circumstance in which a group of airports set up a new ACP in order to help another airport to deal with its airspace change.

I am very interested in what the Minister said about who might be involved in seeking changes. Yes, it could be done to help a small airport to get better access to its flights or controls, but it could be done to keep someone away. In other words, it could be done to prevent competition. My worry would be how much it would cost for a small airport to oppose or indeed promote these things if those circumstances arose.

I think we will get into the detail of how airspace change proposals work in the next group of amendments. It is the case that there is a master plan that is overarching—I think hand gestures are needed to describe this—and covers the whole of the south of the country. Within that, there are then 17 airports that may need to make airspace change proposals to a greater or lesser extent in order to fit the master plan. When an airport, be it small or large, puts forward its airspace change proposals, those are considered by the CAA according to the criteria as set out in Section 66 of the Transport Act 2000.

Section 70.

The noble Lord has just corrected me that it is Section 70, and he is absolutely right.

Within all this, it is the CAA that will ensure that airspace change proposals are appropriate. It is not the case that one airport will be capable of coming along to try to duff up another, because both airspace change proposals will be considered as they move through the system. The CAA will look at them, and equity between the two will be one of the important considerations that it will look at.

I turn back to the reasons why this change is possibly not needed. Airspace modernisation, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned in her opening remarks, is a complex and multifaceted programme. There is the master plan, which will sit over the entire new airspace design, but that makes up just two of the initiatives out of the 15 that comprise the airspace modernisation strategy that has been set out by the CAA. For example, one of the initiatives, as is rightly also set out in the Transport Act, is that the use of airspace has to be equitable for all users. The Government are looking to ensure that airspace is not controlled—I do not want to say “unnecessarily” because I do not think it would be fair, but there might be controlled airspace that could become uncontrolled and therefore allow a greater number of users to use it. I am thinking particularly about the general aviation field, and I certainly know that gliders have sometimes had difficulties because for them uncontrolled airspace is much easier to use.

However, any change in airspace will always go through a process, and that process will have safety as its absolute priority. I think noble Lords will be aware that the number one thing that we have to do when we look at airspace is ensure that planes are safe to fly. It will also take into account the airport’s particular growth plans, so an airport could not turn around and say “No, I’m really sorry—I need that back”. These are fairly long-term decisions and, as I am sure the noble Baroness is aware, the process takes a significant time. However, it is also consultative so there will be a consultation process not only with the general aviation sector but with the airport itself; it will be able to give its reasons why it would like to maintain that airspace as controlled, if indeed that is what it wants to do.

Can my noble friend confirm that the words of paragraph (c),

“another person with functions relating to air navigation”,

also include the Ministry of Defence?

My noble friend is right. It may well include the Ministry of Defence, although I would expect that department to fall under the airports section because if it was putting forward airspace changes, as I believe it will be doing for RAF Northolt, it will be the sponsor in that regard.

I thank the Minister for that response, and I will read her words carefully before Report. I am of course aware that this kind of phrase is a delightful catch-all, which Governments like to put in legislation in case some organisation crops up at a later stage that they have not thought of now. However, there is an important argument to be made here about ensuring that we have clarity at this point on exactly what the structure is. That is partly because it is always a welcome situation but also because there is quite a lot of interlink between the Secretary of State, the Civil Aviation Authority, the airport operators and the aviation providers. It is important that people have their tree of command and its requirements pretty clear in their minds but, having said that, I am happy to withdraw the amendment at this stage.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.