My Lords, civil aviation is a cornerstone of our national prosperity, supporting jobs,investment and connectivity across the United Kingdom. In 2025 alone, UK airports handled 2.1 million commercial flights and nearly 300 million passengers. This highlights both the scale of the sector and the need for effective regulation. The Bill before your Lordships’ House will reinforce consumer protections, support economic growth and aviation infrastructure, and enable improved safety standards. In doing so, it will help ensure that the UK remains an attractive and competitive aviation hub for years to come.
I am sure that noble Lords will wish to consider the case for this Bill. The sector has changed profoundly in recent years. Rapid technological advances, new aircraft capabilities and the emergence of new airspace users, such as drones, have created complexity for which the current framework was not designed. At the same time, the UK has lost certain powers to update regulation following EU exit. The sector has also faced external shocks,such as the recent instability in the Middle East and the unprecedented disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic. To manage this, we need a framework flexible enough to respond to volatility, embrace innovation and prioritise passengers. That is the purpose of this Bill.
My Lords, before I start my remarks, I draw attention to my declaration in the register of interests as the non-executive chair of RVL Aviation.
The Minister will, I hope, be pleased to know that I, for one, broadly support the Bill, although there are some areas where I have some questions and concerns. Where I agree with him—he set this out clearly in his letter to Peers—is on the importance of the sector: how important civil aviation is for the UK, particularly given our global interests and the number of jobs it supports in the economy, and indeed its importance for economic growth. I completely agree with that. He also set out in that letter the fact that there is an awful lot of change and that we are global leaders in some of the development of new technologies, and therefore some of the regulation around those technologies. I know that, when I was leading the department, we gave clear direction to the CAA about engaging with industry to make sure that we could lead the world in developing some of that regulation.
Let me go through a number of areas of the Bill and set out where I agree and where I have some questions for the Minister. On airspace modernisation, I strongly support what the Government are trying to do. It was an area I was involved with when I was Secretary of State. It has a lot of benefits in terms of improving efficiency for airlines, reducing costs, reducing carbon emissions and making use of very congested airspace, particularly in the London area, more efficiently. But I am struggling with exactly what benefit the power in the Bill will generate in practice.
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, for introducing the Bill and for the briefings that he and his team have kindly provided to Members of the House. We approach this Bill with an open mind and with a clear desire for greater clarity and certainty. Its relatively short length masks the complexity of the systems it seeks to update and reform, as well as the significance of the mechanisms chosen to implement those changes.
On the face of it, the Bill seeks to strengthen consumer protections, support economic growth and infrastructure, and modernise and enhance aviation safety. Of course, those are all laudable aims. However, the policy space that the Bill occupies is both crowded and contested, and the interaction between its different elements requires great scrutiny. Airspace modernisation is long overdue, but it may also facilitate increased capacity and, potentially, airport expansion. Likewise, the stronger consumer protections are clearly needed, but we must be confident that the measures proposed will work as intended in practice.
The Bill provides a framework rather than a finished product. It establishes significant delegated powers and relies heavily on secondary legislation, placing key decisions one step removed from parliamentary scrutiny. For these reasons, we will seek further clarity and assurances across three principal areas: first, the relationship between airspace modernisation, airport expansion and our environmental commitments; secondly, the delivery of improved and effective consumer protections; and, thirdly, the scope and use of delegated powers within the Bill.
My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of the Aviation Accessibility Task and Finish Group. In July 2025, we produced an independent report. I thank the team at the Department for Transport, the members of the group and the industry, which was very open about how we can improve travel for disabled people. However, we found that not one airline or airport universally gets it right even most of the time. Our 19 key recommendations were made in the context of no legislative time, but I hope we now have a chance to impact what we do for disabled people.
After much consideration, the task and finish group looked at five themes: training, passenger information and communications, non-visible impairments, mobility aid design and handling, and tailored service and delivery. It became clear that there is a lack of data. It is hard to know how many disabled people fly annually, depending on the definition, but it could be around 1.5% of all passengers. The Library Note on this Bill, which was very helpful, said that the satisfaction rate for disabled people was only 82%. There is also a lack of data on when things go wrong. It is hard to know who to contact or complain to, how to resolve issues and even who has responsibility. Recognising that the industry has many moving parts, this Bill presents a significant opportunity to do something very different for disabled people.
My Lords, tomorrow morning the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which I have the honour to chair, will be meeting to consider, among other things, the civil aviation Bill. It is not impossible to imagine that the committee will have something to say about the delegated powers proposed in the Bill. My speech today, however, gives me the opportunity to contribute to the policy substance in it, which I am very supportive of. I am delighted to be able to take advantage of this opportunity because it is a Bill which has the potential to make a real difference to people’s lives.
It is a pleasure, and somewhat humbling, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, with her enormous expertise and of course powerful eloquence, which it has been a great pleasure to hear so many times on disability issues in this Chamber.
Today, I want to talk about my mother, Anne, who sadly died in her 90th year back in 2018, and people like her. Let me explain what I mean. My mother was born into poverty in 1928. There was certainly no prospect of her travelling abroad, let alone by aeroplane, when she was growing up or as a young woman; nor, indeed, was there any such prospect when I was growing up. But things change, and, in her 50s and 60s, she thought that she should try to make up for lost time—and then, why not carry on into her 70s and 80s? Of course, as we get older, travelling gets more complicated, but she loved getting around, whether by bus—on that, my noble friend the Minister will no doubt be pleased to hear that she absolutely loved the P4 bus from Brixton to Lewisham Shopping Centre well into her 80s—by train or by automobile.
My Lords, I welcome the three main aims of this legislation, which were well set out by the Minister. The Government are right that the aviation industry has been growing reasonably well and could make a bigger contribution to growth and prosperity in our country. The Government are right that safety is a vital priority behind which all parties in this House would unite. They are right to realise that, as technologies change, aeroplanes evolve and our airspace becomes ever more congested, it is necessary for a Government to accept the prime safety responsibility and ask whether the rules and guidance are still correct, and whether the regulatory authorities are doing their job in carrying out their task of enforcing safety.
We all want to see good conditions for passengers. That has to be a balance, because if you go too far in regulating in favour of super service then the price can go up too much. The Government must form a judgment on what is an appropriate minimum level of service quality to require so that no one is left in a bad way. This is particularly true of disabled people, as we have been hearing. However, they have to be careful not to overdo standards, which then prices people out of the market and it becomes a middle-class indulgence.
Where I have more doubts about the Bill is when it comes to the detail. I found the 316-page impact assessment heavy going. I do not know whether other colleagues bothered or whether they did not get to the exciting conclusion at the end—I must have missed the exciting conclusion at the end. It was repetitious, very generalised and very high-level. It was clearly a piece of work done by officials who were given an impossible task. They were meant to work out what regulatory changes are going to be made and ask the usual questions of an impact assessment, on the costs of these regulatory changes and the benefits of carrying them through, as some things you will have to do because they are for safety but, for lots of other things, you will have to make a judgment about the trade-offs. Are the costs too high or are the benefits exciting enough to go for it?
My Lords, I wish to speak specifically to the measures in the Bill to support airspace modernisation and aimed at delegating aviation safety and operations rule-making to the CAA. I thank the Department for Transport staff who took the time to brief me ahead of today’s debate.
I trained to fly while in the Royal Air Force in the early 1990s. For full disclosure, I failed at the end of tactical weapons training, so although I have several hundred hours of flying under my belt, my latter career in the RAF, until I left 15 years later, was as a flight operations officer—still, perhaps even more so, intimately involved in the business of aviation and airspace.
It was such a long time ago that we navigated by map and compass, even in a fast jet at 500 mph. We had no GPS; we corrected for wind based on the much less advanced weather forecasts of the day and some dead reckoning. We set our watches each morning with a hack at the morning met brief based on the speaking clock—I think most Members are just about old enough to remember that. Come to that, our recce briefs on Russian military equipment, for that was still our focus then, were delivered via slides in a rotary carousel projector—again, I think Members might remember those. Our cockpits had more in common with the 1950s than with the glass cockpits and flight decks of today.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Antrobus. I begin by declaring my membership of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Aviation, and indeed as an aviator who contributes greatly every year to the CAA. Let me say at the outset that I broadly support the objectives of the Bill. The Minister referred to the essentials of the Bill in his opening speech. They were the subject of the communication of 20 April 2026 from the DfT to the chair of the CAA outlining the DfT’s expectations and priorities for the next period. They include: growth and innovation; the economic regulation of aviation; airspace modernisation; the decarbonisation of aviation; modernising the CAA’s focus on aviation’s passenger and freight customers, so as to put the consumer first; and efficiency, effectiveness and resilience. I will return to those in a while.
First, I want to identify a glaring omission in the Bill. It is conspicuous by its absence. No reference whatever has been made in the DfT’s priorities to general aviation. There is not one mention in the whole of the Bill to what is, for many in the industry, the front door to their career, whether they be air crew or ground crew. Why should we be concerned that there is no mention of general aviation in the Bill? It is a section of the industry that contributes £4 billion to the UK’s economy and supports some 40,000 jobs. This may be seen as a small slice of UK aviation’s £50 billion to £100 billion GDP footprint, but it underpins things such as pilot training, emergency services and business connectivity.
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The Bill takes an important step to strengthen consumer protection for passengers. Although the sector serves millions well, when things go wrong some may face uncertainty and delay in securing redress. The Bill introduces a power to strengthen air passenger rights through secondary legislation, ensuring that they keep pace with case law, international standards and a changing landscape. This will allow the Government to tackle the issues that matter most to passengers: delays and cancellations, baggage loss or damage, injury or death, protections for disabled and less mobile passengers, and redress mechanisms for individuals.
I am acutely aware of the difficulties that disabled passengers can encounter when flying, including poor and inappropriate service, long waiting times, and damaged and lost mobility aids. I have heard concerns expressed by noble Lords from all sides of the House on challenges that they have faced themselves or when travelling with family and friends. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, led my department’s Aviation Accessibility Task and Finish Group to identify ways to improve without legislation the travel experience of disabled air passengers, but this Bill will provide the Government with the powers to strengthen legal protections where necessary to ensure that the system works for all passengers, including those who require assistance.
Crucially, the Bill strengthens enforcement. Unlike other regulators, the Civil Aviation Authority currently relies on court action to protect consumer rights. This is slow and resource intensive. The Bill will give the CAA direct consumer enforcement powers, aligning it with the Competition and Markets Authority. That will allow earlier and more effective intervention, quicker redress and greater passenger confidence.
The Bill supports the modernisation of UK airspace. The UK has some of the busiest and most complex airspace in the world, yet much of its design dates back to the 1950s. Modernisation is therefore essential to maintain and improve safety, reliability and efficiency, as well as to reduce emissions and noise for communities. Without it, it is estimated that, by 2040, as many as one in five flights could face significant disruption. The Government have established the UK Airspace Design Service to deliver the most complex airspace changes, beginning with London. The Bill complements that work by strengthening the Secretary of State’s existing powers of direction, enabling her, where necessary, to direct those involved in airspace change to implement approved designs. This provides a more robust power of last resort, ensuring that modernisation can proceed effectively.
The Bill broadens who may be charged for the provision of air traffic and air navigation services. This will ensure that the cost of providing better air services, including funding the UK Airspace Design Service, can continue to be recovered fairly, as new types of airspace service users emerge.
On slot reform, the Bill enables a more agile and resilient approach to airport slot regulation, a framework that has remained largely unchanged since the early 1990s. Effective slot allocation is essential, not only in times of disruption but to maintain capacity, connectivity and competitiveness. The Government must be able to respond swiftly and proportionately when demand changes or operational pressures arise. The Bill therefore introduces a delegated power to amend slot regulations when needed, replacing powers lost after EU exit.
Recent experience has shown why that matters. The pandemic demonstrated how quickly aviation operations can be disrupted, and more recent instability in the Middle East has reinforced how quickly external events can impact aviation, resulting in the need for an urgent statutory instrument to be brought before this House in the next few days using powers that will no longer be available after 23 June. The Bill therefore provides a much-needed mechanism for updating slot rules when circumstances require it in the future.
Finally, the Bill strengthens the aviation safety framework. The UK has an excellent record on aviation safety and these measures will help ensure that it is maintained. However, since EU exit, all changes to safety regulations—mostly highly technical and routine updates—must be delivered through statutory instruments. This process is time-consuming, resource intensive and duplicative; it is unsuitable for an international and fast-moving sector such as aviation, where global safety standards evolve continuously.
As a result, the UK is falling behind on its international obligations, which could impact the safety of the sector. The Bill aims to make safety rule-making faster and more efficient, by delegating technical aviation safety and operational standards to the Civil Aviation Authority. This will create a more responsive and agile framework, helping to ensure that safety requirements keep pace with international standards and the changing landscape.
We recognise that noble Lords, and Members in the other place, will want to ensure appropriate ministerial and parliamentary oversight of this delegation. The Bill includes strong measures precisely to ensure this. The Secretary of State will set objectives and priorities for the Civil Aviation Authority, which will be laid before Parliament, including a forward look at rule-making tasks. The Secretary of Statewill be able to direct or even override, if necessary, the CAA’s exercise of its rule-making functions using her existing powers.
The Bill also includes binding requirements on the Civil Aviation Authority to consult and notify affected parties, including Ministers, and a duty to report to Parliament on the exercise of this delegated power. This approach gives Parliament a more holistic forward and backward view on aviation safety rule-making, compared with the fragmented and piecemeal view it has in the current system. It also enables much-needed consolidation of the existing, fragmented sources of law, which would otherwise be impractical. This will make compliance for industry simpler and enhance safety.
Alongside this, the Bill addresses an important gap in enforcement. It restores powers, lost after the EU exit, to amend and create aviation safety-related criminal offences where necessary. Without this, some safety rules cannot be fully enforced, making them harder to update and less effective in practice. Taken together, these measures will support a clearer, more effective regulatory framework by preserving the UK’s high safety standards, aligning better with international practice and sustaining public confidence in the safety of our aviation system.
In closing, I know many noble Lords will be interested in how the Bill interacts with the Government’s support for a third runway at Heathrow. I should be clear: the Bill is designed to support the entire aviation sector, regardless of any decisions on expansion. Those with a particular interest in Heathrow will have an opportunity to scrutinise proposed changes to the airports national policy statement later this year.
Before I conclude, I should note that this Bill is an important waypoint, not the end of the runway, for aviation reform—sorry. Following Royal Assent, further regulations will set out the detail for industry and allow for further scrutiny by your Lordships and Members in the other place. The Bill’ application is UK-wide, as aviation is a reserved matter, but some of its clauses touch on transferred matters in Northern Ireland. The Government are therefore seeking a legislative consent Motion from the Northern Ireland Assembly.
This Bill is a measured and practical piece of legislation. It updates the legislative framework governing civil aviation in a way that is proportionate, targeted and grounded in the needs of a modern sector, while remaining consistent with the high standards this House would rightly expect. I hope noble Lords will recognise the value of these reforms and feel able to support the Bill’s passage today. I beg to move.
In the ECHR memorandum, the department made it clear that it was a last-resort measure. No directions have been made. They have been threatened on some occasions. It went out of its way in that memorandum to emphasise how limited a power it would be. In the Explanatory Notes to the Bill, it said that the use of the clause might be helpful, particularly in delivering airspace modernisation particularly over London. It would be helpful, when the Minister winds up, if he could set out a specific example of where the new statutory power for the Secretary of State would have a practical benefit in delivering airspace modernisation.
The only other thing I want to flag—I do not think this is a genuine concern, but it would be helpful for the Minister to put people’s minds at rest—is that, when there are changes to airspace in terms of flight paths going to airports, there are, of course, perfectly reasonable concerns raised by residents who live near those airports. I wanted to have the Minister’s confirmation that the Secretary of State having this power to direct change will not change any of the existing rights for people to be consulted and have the opportunity to set out their concerns. I accept that it may be perfectly reasonable, in some cases, for decisions to be taken that some residents will not like because they are in the interests of the country, but there should be a proper process and I want to check that nothing in the Bill will change that process and weaken the rights of individuals.
On the ability of the Government to legislate using secondary legislation for consumer powers, I want to get a sense of the government’s thinking and test one of the specific things in the impact assessment. It is worth saying that, generally speaking, the aviation sector—there is one exception, which I will draw on in a minute, and the Minister referred to it—has very high levels of customer satisfaction. I think in the latest CAA consumer survey, it had something like an 88% satisfaction level, which is an all-time high. So, generally, there is not a problem to fix. But the Minister rightly drew attention to a very specific issue, which I suspect at least two noble Lords this afternoon will touch on: how the industry deals with disabled passengers and those who need extra support.
This is one of the questions I have about the CAA’s enforcement powers. There is already legislation in the Equality Act that was carried forward from the Disability Discrimination Act about the steps that all businesses, including airlines, have to take: all the reasonable adjustments they have to make to deliver services for disabled passengers. My question is about the enforcement powers that the Minister is planning to give to the CAA. Will that mean that the CAA can use the legislative powers in the Equality Act to insist that airlines make those reasonable adjustments? Is it able to use that legislation and enforce the rights that already exist? They are not new legal obligations, but I think many people feel that airlines do not deliver on those to the extent that we would expect. Is that part of the enforcement suite that the Government are thinking of? If there are existing laws that are not being properly enforced, my preference would be to properly enforce existing laws, not invent new laws, which may themselves not be properly enforced.
One of the issues I have with the Government taking powers to legislate with secondary legislation is that, although this is not true of every individual company, the aviation sector generally is a relatively low-margin business. Every time you legislate to improve consumer rights it comes at a cost, and you have to balance the rights that you are delivering—the consumer experience—against the cost that you are putting on an industry that, overall, does not make a huge margin. There is clearly a high bar if you make those changes with primary legislation, but there is a lower bar if you make them with secondary legislation. I just want to test whether the Government have any specific plans in mind at this stage that they might use secondary legislation for.
I raise this because, if you look at the impact assessment—it is a very hefty tome; a lot of hefty tomes have been published this week—page 3 says specifically:
“The EU is currently considering updates to Regulation 261, which governs passenger rights during flight disruptions”.
It also says that, if the Government do not have
“the power to amend legislation, the UK cannot promptly mirror or respond to these changes”.
I think that illustrates a mindset that is not helpful.
If the Government think that there are gaps in consumer protection legislation for British passengers, then they should make those changes because they are the right thing to do in themselves, and make the argument for them. The Government should not blindly follow and respond to things that the EU is doing. If the EU is doing things that are sensible, and that we think are sensible, we absolutely should do them, but we should do them anyway. If the EU does things that are not sensible, I see absolutely no reason why we should follow it. The whole point about leaving the European Union was that we could make decisions for ourselves. If we think things are sensible, we should do them, and we should not worry about whether the EU is doing them; if they are not sensible, we should not do them. I am afraid that the impact assessment betrays the fact that the Government, if they get these secondary legislative powers, will just mirror exactly what the EU is doing, whether or not it is sensible. I hope the Minister can put my mind at rest on that.
On airport slots, the Minister is right: the Government’s current ability to use the power of secondary legislation to amend them expires later this month. We have already seen some examples, both during the pandemic and more recently, where both the last Government and this one had to make very sensible and necessary changes, and this power is a very sensible one to have. The question is the extent to which those powers can be used for wider slot reform. Slots are a very significant economic interest for the sector as a whole; making dramatic changes would be very expensive and should be done only via primary legislation.
We consulted on slot reform when I was in the department. The department has not yet responded to that consultation. It would be helpful if the Government could set out where they have got to on that, when they plan on responding to the consultation on slot reform and, if they were to do any significant slot reform, what they think they would need to do in terms of consultation and engaging with the industry, and whether these powers would be the appropriate ones to use in those circumstances.
Briefly, I have two more points. As many will know, the CAA is a gold standard industry regulator that is respected around the world for having very high standards for aviation regulation. It also regulates our space launch capability. I am very comfortable with the CAA continuing to play that role as a regulator. The bit I am less comfortable about is whether it should be setting the rules as well as enforcing them. There is nothing wrong with the current system where Ministers set those rules. Part of the problem is that, in the past, those rules were set by the European Union. Ironically, when the European Union was doing it, Ministers were engaged in the Council of Ministers in setting some of those rules, but we in Parliament also had a number of scrutiny mechanisms where both Houses of Parliament could look at those rules in detail.
What is not clear—at least, it was not clear to me from the Bill or the Explanatory Notes—is this: if the CAA makes regulations, what is the role of this House and the House of Commons in scrutinising those regulations? Personally, my starting position is that I would prefer that the regulations were made by Ministers, who are accountable to both Houses of Parliament, and that then the CAA gets on and enforces those regulations. Of course, Ministers will be informed by the CAA’s expertise in drafting the regulations, but I think Ministers should be responsible for setting the rules and the CAA should then be responsible for enforcing them and putting them into practice. That is the bit of the Bill about which I am less comfortable.
Finally, the Minister mentioned Heathrow. He will be well aware that—as the CAA has, in effect, conceded—the existing economic model for regulating Heathrow is not fit for purpose. He will be aware that it is consulting, in its document CAP3251, on a range of options for the future of the economic regulatory model for Heathrow. That consultation closes on 15 June. There are a range of options in that consultation, but does the CAA have the power to implement all the options in that document, including, for example, the ability to have competition between different terminals at Heathrow? If it does have the power to do that, that is great. If it does not currently have the power to do that, is the Minister open to using this legislation to make sure that the CAA does have that power, so that when it has concluded the consultation and reached a decision—and when Ministers have reached a decision about how Heathrow’s economic model is regulated—it will have the ability to deliver it?
So, I have a few questions and concerns, but overall the Bill helps to strengthen the aviation sector. It is an important one for the United Kingdom, and I look forward to listening to the Minister’s detailed answers when he winds up the debate.
I turn first to airspace modernisation and slot allocation. The aviation sector remains a vital and growing part of the UK economy. It supports jobs, enables trade and logistics, connects us to global markets and underpins both inbound tourism and outbound travel. According to the latest Civil Aviation Authority data, more than 61 million passengers travelled through UK airports in the first quarter of this year alone— a record high driven by short-haul European flights. Many of those journeys could and should be taken by rail, which is far better in terms of our carbon outputs. Yet this growth also presents a clear challenge.
The Climate Change Committee’s 2025 progress report to Parliament makes it clear that, while overall UK emissions are declining, aviation now contributes a greater share of total emissions than the electricity supply sector. It also warns that continued growth in aviation emissions could place our future climate targets at risk. While we are clear in our opposition to further airport expansion in the south-east, the Government have publicly indicated support for expansion, including a third runway at Heathrow. That policy context inevitably shapes how this Bill is read and understood.
Aviation remains one of the most difficult sectors in which to reduce emissions. While emerging technologies, including sustainable aviation fuels, are welcome and necessary, they have inherent limitations and they are emerging technologies. The Climate Change Committee has been equally clear that, should technology progress fall short, the Government may need to consider demand management measures to remain on track to net zero. Against this backdrop, I welcome the Minister’s clear statement that this Bill is not intended to enable airport expansion, either directly or indirectly, and we are grateful for that.
On these Benches, we recognise the need to modernise our airspace. The UK has some of the most congested skies in the world, and our airspace management systems have not been fundamentally updated since the 1950s. They remain structured largely around ground-based navigation systems that are increasingly outdated. Modernisation, if done well, offers real benefits, improved efficiency, enhanced passenger safety, reduced noise for affected communities and lower emissions through more direct and optimised flight paths. We therefore support this complex but necessary work, including the proposal to establish a UK airspace design service to oversee its delivery.
However, while we understand the Government’s desire for powers to direct this work, including in relation to slot allocation and scheduling, it would be remiss of us not to seek clear assurances about how these powers will be used in practice. In particular, we are concerned to ensure that the powers cannot be used deliberately or inadvertently as a back door to increased airport capacity or expansion, without appropriate scrutiny. In that context, I ask the Minister to reaffirm that decisions taken under these powers will continue to be informed by the independent advice of the Climate Change Committee, and I would also welcome greater clarity on the relationship between airspace modernisation, slot allocation and any future increase in overall capacity or passenger numbers.
At what point does operational reform become, in effect, expansion, and how will Parliament be able to distinguish clearly between the two? Furthermore, what safeguards exist to ensure that, even if the present Government do not intend to use these powers to facilitate expansion, a future Government could not do so without proper oversight? We will seek to work constructively with Ministers to establish appropriate guardrails, including stronger requirements for monitoring, reporting and transparency in relation to the airports national policy statement, the environmental impacts and the effect on our local communities of noise.
I turn briefly to consumer rights. We agree that the current system is not functioning as it should. We also recognise that many of these powers are coming to an end and need to be reformed. From delays and cancellations to lost luggage and overbookings, passengers too often experience poor outcomes and inconsistent enforcement. It is essential that passengers can rely on robust protections and that the regulators have the tools needed to ensure swift and ready compliance.
The fact that the Civil Aviation Authority has, in some cases, had to resort to the courts to enforce basic consumer protections points to systemic weaknesses. We therefore broadly welcome the strengthening of the CAA’s powers, bringing them in line with other consumer rights. However, the Bill also provides for potential divergence from retained EU law in this area. At a time when the European Union is updating passenger protections and the Government have indicated a desire for broader alignment in certain areas, we will be seeking clarity that the intention here is one of convergence rather than divergence.
We also strongly support measures to improve the experience of passengers—particularly those with mobility impairments, who continue to face significant and unacceptable barriers when travelling, particularly in relation to their mobility aids. More broadly, however, we consider that the Bill is overly cautious in its approach to consumer rights. It presents a real opportunity to place passengers more firmly at its centre. There are many issues here that need broad reform, from not separating families or travellers from the people they are with to the size of hand luggage and extra charges added to people’s bills. We would like to see a statutory passenger charter in the Bill to ensure that high standards are not only articulated but embedded in practice.
Finally, on delegated powers, we will consider carefully the forthcoming report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. Given the breadth and significance of the powers proposed, it is essential that appropriate safeguards, limits and mechanisms for parliamentary oversight are in place. I welcome the Minister’s opening comments on that, but more needs to be done and amendments will be needed in this space.
While we broadly support the aims of this Bill, we will work constructively to ensure that it aligns with our environmental obligations, delivers tangible benefits for our communities and provides meaningful, effective and enduring consumer protections.
We also know that there has been a significant increase in demand for assistance. We saw many airports and airlines trying to do the right thing, but the nature of the requests can be very variable. We recognise that what probably most people need is not assistance but wayfinding or help with bags. We need to think creatively about how that customer journey is carried out, even looking at airport design or gate allocation.
Through our work, we heard anecdotal evidence that the lanyard scheme has not always been used properly—stag dos arriving at the airport and requesting lanyards is not in the spirit of the scheme. I have seen people using an aisle chair to get on board and then seeming to walk off at the other end. I am conscious that there can be fluctuating conditions, but not having the right assistance puts huge pressure on an already strained system. One size does not fit all. A number of visually impaired people got in touch to tell me that, when they fly, they are continually told that they need to sit in a wheelchair and be pushed through the airport because that is easier for the staff, rather than doing it in a way that works for the disabled person.
A significant number of people wrote to me to say that various influencers have filmed airports, showing ways to cheat the system, which not only encourages people to think about creative ways to get through the airport, but has resulted in an increase in negative comments made towards disabled people who have genuine needs.
What also came through was that there needs to be a more streamlined method of booking assistance. This is very different from the railway industry, where you could potentially catch a later train or a later bus. There is a real challenge in managing expectation, providing assistance in a reasonable time and being clear about sorting things out when mistakes are made.
We also found out that a lot of the information was joined up. On a personal level, I never look at an airport website, but at one point I was a very frequent flier, and I have travelled through most UK airports. The actual challenge of booking assistance is too varied. For some airlines, it relies on the disabled person knowing a very vague assistance code, or when you get to the airport, you are asked all those questions again. It proves that the system is not working as well as it could.
While recognising that we have an issue with international jurisdictions and that we can control only some parts of the journey, I would also like to look at how we could influence more widely. A lot of the emails sent to me were about equipment being broken and, in some cases, destroyed by not being secured properly during the journey. One thing that the Bill will not be able to sort—but I had a huge number of emails about it—is the issues that passengers who travel with allergies face.
Recently, I had a number of emails from people who use colostomy bags or ileostomy bags, about how they are treated. Each person recognised that security is an important issue and that checks need to be done. One person who wrote to me recently, who flies a lot, said that the only way they are able to manage going through security is by taking their colostomy bag off just as they go through security, covering it up with tissues and tape, and then putting it back on when they go through the other side. That just does not feel appropriate at all.
I broadly welcome the increased powers of the CAA, but, like the noble Lord, Lord Harper, I would like to understand what the best route is to actually securing better treatment for disabled people.
Most of the emails I receive are about being left on a plane, or broken or missing equipment. We have all heard of the numerous tales of Frank Gardner when he has been flying. He has had incidents where his wheelchair was incorrectly tagged and staff were unable to locate it. He has had a couple of very high-profile cases. In May 2022, when it had happened numerous times, he said that disabled passengers appeared to be treated as the “lowest priority”. Sophie Morgan, likewise, a very well-known disability rights campaigner, suffered terrible experiences with damage to her chairs. But most disabled people do not have that platform. Athena Stevens’s chair was worth £25,000. It was irreparably damaged while travelling, which left her unable to travel independently. She estimated that the overall impact on her life and business reached £70,000, due to additional care, having to travel differently and lost work, but only limited compensation was made available. Maayan Ziv—a case in Canada—had a chair that was worth $30,000 and was severely damaged. This became widely known, because there was a lack of understanding of what a wheelchair means. It is not just a suitcase. It is not something that is very easy to replace.
I have had many experiences over the years, including one memorable time flying from Geneva through Charles de Gaulle to Birmingham. When it became clear that my chair was not there, I was asked by a member of staff whether had I ever tried to walk and whether I would like to try to walk. No, I cannot walk. The airline then tried to return two sleeping bags to me and argued that that was my lost property, even though they were clearly tagged to a different airport and another name. My day chair was found several weeks later in Dublin, and it came back to me in two pieces. It had literally been cut in half. It was suggested that I might like to try and duct tape it back together, which did not work. I wonder how much the airline industry is spending on repairs and replacements.
Another incident occurred when I was an athlete, flying with my racing chair—I always found it better to travel with my chair unboxed because they could see what it was. I was travelling with a very cheap pair of wheels, which got damaged, and the airline immediately jumped to replacing them and trying to offer me a very expensive pair of wheels. I was able to say that I needed a spoke key and 20 minutes. There needs to be some proper assessment of damage, ensuring that the level of liability is commensurate with the equipment.
We have to recognise that equipment is also changing. More people are using scooters than ever before, especially those with fluctuating conditions—they are much easier to travel with than an electric chair. Many noble Lords will see that I have a battery attachment that I use on my chair to get out and about around London. I have never tried to fly with it. We do have to explore the challenges of flying with much of this equipment, especially the safety issues; I know the ongoing work of the implementation group is looking at this. When a disabled person gets all the way to the gate and then finds that they are not allowed to fly—again, I recognise that there are related safety issues—it causes a significant number of problems.
We therefore need more data on the number of people who fly, what they require, and where things go wrong. Also, on wheelchair and mobility equipment protection, I would be very interested to see whether we could try to accurately report, publicly, the number of wheelchairs and mobility aids that are damaged, delayed or lost each year. We also need to look at how we can improve the enforcement and accessibility failures. In the task and finish group, we talked about specific penalties for repeated accessibility failures. That was not possible at the time, but I think it might be now. We should also look at the complaints process to ensure that it runs quickly and smoothly and is not leaving disabled people in situations where their complaints have timed out through no fault of their own.
I would also be interested in looking at requiring the CAA to publish a wider disability impact assessment before implementing significant new regulations. On airport assistance standards, the quality of assistance is variable across the UK. How can we establish minimum standards for passenger assistance, reasonable waiting times, staff training, communications support, and boarding and disembarkation procedures? It would also be very useful to have an update from the implementation group on the work it has been doing since July last year; that would help all noble Lords in addressing the Bill. Currently, everything is just a bit too ad hoc; it is quite difficult to travel as a disabled person, and we should be able to make that better.
I look forward to working with the Minister and his team to improve the Bill.
To come back to today’s subject, she loved travelling by plane. When she was in her late 70s and wanted to visit the country of her father’s birth, we flew together to Dublin. By now, her legs were not strong enough for her to climb the steps up to the plane from the runway like everybody else, but the airline made perfectly good arrangements for a lift—I am not quite sure what the machinery was called—to take her up to the plane in London and back down again in Dublin. It was happy news. On the back of this success, my mother knew that she would be able to come with me and her brand-new granddaughter on a weekend in Rome, and to visit the Vatican, which had been a lifetime ambition for her. The flight out was fine and the Vatican really came up trumps, with the people who worked there, on seeing her frailty, secretly shepherding her into the “staff only” lifts to get her smoothly from floor to floor.
However, on returning to Gatwick, she was stuck on the plane. There was no lift for a very long time. Travelling is tiring for us all—we get hungry, thirsty and very tired—but being left stranded after everyone else is long gone because you need help getting off the plane and into the terminal building and into a wheelchair just is not good enough. She could not face having to go through that experience again. The only way to guarantee that was simply to stop flying on aeroplanes, so she did, and that was that. But my mother’s energy and drive for travel were undimmed, so we took her, very smoothly, to Brussels and Paris via the Eurostar. As I may have already said, she carried on enjoying the bus trip to Lewisham, but there were no more flights because of the way she was treated that time on our return from Rome and the Vatican.
Noble Lords can imagine how I cheered when, four years ago, the BBC’s security correspondent, Frank Gardner—the noble Baroness referred to him earlier— called out, among other things, the UK’s main airports for the way in which, all too often, they treat wheelchair-bound passengers like him. He did so after being left stranded at Gatwick himself, a few years after my mother. His job meant that he had no choice but to keep flying, and this was his fifth time in four years being stranded and left, as he put it,
“waiting in an empty aircraft long after all the other passengers have been off-loaded”.
He went on to say:
“This is nothing short of discriminatory and Britain’s premier air hubs should be ashamed of the way their disabled passengers have been repeatedly treated as a low priority”.
Hear, hear, as I think we say.
Mr Gardner continued:
“The remedy is simple: invest in enough equipment and staff to do the job, pay them properly, sort out the comms so airports know when to expect a passenger with needs, and get on top of the planning and rostering for the allocation of equipment and the teams that operate it. This isn’t rocket science, it just comes down to better planning and sufficient investment. Disabled passengers are not demanding special VIP treatment, they just expect the same level of service as the rest of society. It really isn’t a big ask!”
Fazilet Hadi, the head of policy at Disability Rights UK, said:
“Huge thanks to Frank Gardner for speaking out about this issue. For every disabled person that tells their story about being left on a plane, there are hundreds more of us that don’t. The level of neglect and disregard of disabled airline passengers is truly appalling. The high number of disabled people experiencing poor service led the Civil Aviation Authority to write to airports, threatening to take action if passenger assistance for disabled airline customers didn’t improve. The situation is obviously not getting better and the Equality Act is being breached on a regular basis”.
Today, on behalf of people from all walks of life—whether they are like my mother, who wanted to follow her dreams; like Frank Gardner, who was flying for work; or anyone else, whatever their circumstances— I wholeheartedly support, as all of us can surely do, legislation that will put an end to the excuses, ensuring that the CAA has the powers that will put this right.
Remarkably, this impact assessment concludes that there will be just a small net loss, as a result of the legislation, of just a few million pounds for a multi-billion-pound industry, and so this is well within the margin of error. When you try to find out why the figures are so small, you find that there are practically no benefits identified because this Bill will ensure that nothing happens for quite a long time. It is arranging the regulatory furniture but it will not change what will apply to airlines and passengers any time soon.
The Bill has delay built into it at every opportunity. We read in the impact assessment that it may take a year for us and the other place to get the legislation through and finally into effect. Then, apparently it will take another year before the Government come up with changes to use the very large powers that this legislation will give to Ministers and to regulators without further reference to Parliament. We are being asked to sign a blank cheque, but Ministers have no idea who they will want to make the cheque or cheques out to, let alone how much there may be on them.
The House needs to understand that this is what I would call officials’ legislation. This is not a burning desire of a Minister who knows his subject very well to make changes which are soon going to make a difference to aviation and to economic growth in this country. This is “good management-type” official legislation, saying that we may need these powers and need to copy a whole load of EU regulations that have already passed—or, more likely, that are going to come out soon—so let us have these powers and make sure that most of these things can be done by a regulatory body without any reference to Parliament or by statutory instrument with minimum debate, and that way we do not need to trouble people about it. When the House proceeds to investigate the legislation, it will want a bit more from the Ministers on how they would use these considerable powers.
I would like more urgency from Ministers. The impact assessment says that nothing is going to happen before three to five years have elapsed, because of the year legislating, the year thinking about how to use the powers, and then the powers coming into effect. In other words—and Labour Peers should think about this—this legislation is basically saying that it cannot make any improvement to aviation or provide any extra growth in the lifetime of this Parliament. That is disappointing.
I am a bit more ambitious than the Government. I find myself saying there are things that could be done now, on a shorter timetable, which could make life better for the aviation sector, its passengers and its users. Take the prime one of growth—that is my main concern. I have always said how much I admire the fact that the Government want to be a growth Government, but I have been critical about how many of the things they do actually achieve the opposite. Here is one thing that is not actually going to achieve the opposite—it is just not going to achieve anything, according to the papers before us—where more could happen.
The Minister says that we will have an opportunity in due course to discuss the expansion of Heathrow. Heathrow is the dominant airport of the UK aviation sector, and the success and growth of Heathrow will be a dominant factor in how well this sector does. Delaying a debate seems a little odd, because surely this should be the prime concern of the Government at the moment. When I look at the plans, I believe the Government have backed the plan that takes the longest and is the dearest. They have gone for the plan where the M25 needs to move, which adds more than £20 billion to the total cost and I suspect will add quite a lot of delay to the whole thing, as well as the actual cost of building the additional runway—whereas there is a rival scheme, at considerably less cost and to a tighter timetable, where the runway would fit on to the existing land extending more eastwards so that we do not have to rebuild the M25.
Maybe the Government are right. I would be interested to hear their case. But we would need reassurances that the M25, during all those difficult works, would not be disrupted. Look at the important transport infrastructure of this country. The M25 is one of the dominant and most important pieces of infrastructure that we have put in, saving all those journeys through London and allowing so much commerce and passenger traffic to flow around the city relatively quickly on a good day. We do not really need a big disruption of that.
As someone who some years ago had as my main business career offering financial advice to Governments around the world, I had to fly quite a lot, rather more than I wanted to in those days. To me, as a travelling businessman earning revenue for my firm and for the country as a whole in selling overseas services, what mattered was timeliness and accessibility. I was interested in total journey time from my house to the office I was going to advise. Quite often there was disproportionate time, trouble and delay in getting from my house, some 35 miles from the airport, to Heathrow to get on the plane, which might even have been on time. Ministers looking at growth of airports and accessibility to airports have to consider surface transportation. There have been improvements in recent years to get better rail access to Heathrow. It took a very long time for those of us who wanted that to break through with the authorities to get it to happen. That now has happened with both an extensive Tube option and a link to the old Great Western main line. But we need to make sure that road access also works for those who wish to use the airport.
It would be useful if the Minister could give us an update on Gatwick, the second very large airport in the London area. There was a plan to have a much cheaper and faster progress to many more passenger movements, with the idea of having a constant-use second runway. That requires shifting the existing relief runway a little, so there is quite a bill of cost. That was meant to be coming along before the end of this decade, and it would be very interesting to hear an update on whether it is going to happen.
The relevance to this Bill is that, of course, as those airport expansions happen, many more slots will become available. We owe it to those who are thinking of venturing very large sums of money to expand Gatwick and Heathrow to let them know what the rules of the game will be when they come to place those slots, and to look to see how they are going to remunerate the large sum of money in the case of Gatwick and the absolutely colossal sum of money in the case of Heathrow, even in the original budgets. Heathrow has all that additional risk from complexity, which could result in needing to remunerate even more capital than is currently envisaged.
While I welcome the three main aims of the Government and think that this legislation could be improved by telling us in detail how they can do things that will improve all those, we need more on the environmental impact on surrounding communities living close to airports. I speak as someone who used to represent a constituency that was some 35 miles or so out of London to the west, where there were problems with Heathrow noise. There are solutions that could be woven into this legislation or general government policy. A new generation of planes should be considerably less noisy. It is possible to construct flight paths that are less intrusive, and it is certainly possible to increase the angle of ascent and descent, which reduces the magnitude of the area affected by the noise nuisance. The more that can be done to encourage quieter aviation, the better. There are also other environmental issues relating to surface transport; I gently sketched them in relation to Heathrow and the M25, but there are similar issues for other airports.
My final point is that while, if you are interested in UK economic growth, of necessity you clearly concentrate on how you develop Heathrow and Gatwick—the giant two—regional airports well outside London can also be extremely important to economic prosperity and commerce. I would welcome more thoughts on how they can promote themselves with a good network of routes that do not require interchanging in London—or in Schiphol, as happens so often at the moment for people flying from northern and western airports. I urge the Government to look again at why this is all taking so long, why there is no sense of urgency and why there is not a much clearer refrain in this that we can go for growth here. One of the great triumphs of the UK economy over the last decade has been the big, successful surge in the export of services. Above all, services need really good aviation links, in the way I briefly described from past personal anecdote. I urge the Minister to see himself as a growth champion and to say to his colleagues in government that we can do better than this.
Today’s modern aircraft, both civilian and military, are in a different world entirely. They could just about fly themselves, except most people are not yet ready and want a pilot in charge of their commercial flight to the Mediterranean for some summer sun. Although passenger-carrying planes are likely to remain crewed for a while yet, the potential and the technology to move freight around in the skies above our heads in uncrewed aircraft are advancing all the time.
Right now, Amazon is trialling drone delivery in Darlington—delivering packages under 5 pounds in weight within a 7.5-mile radius of its distribution centre. The Civil Aviation Authority is working to safely integrate drones flying beyond visual line of sight in UK airspace through this type of trial. It has also authorised air operations to deliver blood and the trial of uncrewed police helicopters. We already have a military uncrewed aircraft, the MQ-9B Protector, flying in UK airspace from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire.
Imagine a time when freight can move not above our garden roofs and fences in small drones but at much higher altitudes, taking lorries off our roads and into the skies. I want that time to come sooner rather than later—and, of course, safely. But, unlike the enormous leaps in technological capability since I first pulled on a flying suit, UK airspace remains largely unchanged—in fact, as some noble Lords have said, since the 1950s. This is unsustainable and not good for our economy, the environment or the aviation industry, both civil and military. Commercial flights alone have increased twelvefold since then.
So I welcome the new powers to enact change to update our airspace. There is so much potential in new and emerging technologies, such as uncrewed aircraft, but the UK has to be able to move with—even ahead of—the times to make the most of the amazing opportunities for growth and ensure that we are competitive in this industry.
The 2023 airspace modernisation strategy talked of a core principle; that is,
“the safe integration of all users”.
That is ambitious and I welcome the Bill in supporting that ambition. I also welcome its intention to give the CAA greater flexibility in determining who pays for air traffic and air navigation services. At the moment, airlines and aircraft operators do, but the scope to extend that is only fair in this changing environment.
I also support the delegation of certain operational rule-making to the CAA to ensure a more responsive process. Currently, the legislative framework for aviation safety rules is, as the Government have stated, extensive, complex and cumbersome. Obviously, this change should always have aviation safety at its heart.
I welcome the contributions of fellow noble Lords on other parts of the Bill on which they are infinitely better qualified to contribute. I will not trespass on their territory but listen with interest to their valuable and informative perspectives.
Finally, in returning to where I started, with military aviation, it is imperative that we remember that this civil aviation Bill is not just about civil aviation. Military capability relies on airspace, air traffic services and the CAA. Military aircraft need to train and exercise; defence industry needs to experiment with and assure new capabilities. These are all vital activities in the defence of this nation that need airspace to operate and succeed.
Also, some of our defence air capabilities are military owned but civil registered, such as the Envoy command support air transport aircraft and the Voyager air-to-air refuelling and passenger aircraft. When we proceed to debate this civil aviation Bill, we must remember that we are also discussing military aircraft capability and development and, with that, the defence and security of the UK.
Does my noble friend the Minister agree that airspace is a resource? It is part of our critical national infrastructure, even if it is invisible to most of us who are not airspace nerds, and it is vital that we update it to meet the needs of today and tomorrow.
Since 2018, general aviation has faced pressures from lower disposable incomes, rising costs and economic uncertainty, and this has reduced activity across recreational flying, training and private ownership. Since Covid, GA activity has failed to recover. The CAA’s data reveals a 40% reduction in all GA activities. I understand that the CAA issued only some 1,300 private pilot licences last year. I would expect the DfT to be extremely concerned, instead of which I understand that the department has disbanded its GA section. Perhaps the Minister could confirm and comment on that. As GA supports jobs, skills and pilot training pathways, proportionate regulation and avoiding unnecessary burdens are important to maintaining confidence and investment. Given the circumstances that GA finds itself in, I am extremely concerned that the Government’s enhanced consumer protection measures do not create unintended burdens for smaller airports, aerodromes and GA operators. What assurances can the Minister give in relation to that?
The Minister may well be wondering why there should be concern. Put simply, air crew, such as pilots, do not magically appear fresh out of an easyJet- or British Airways-trained box. They are the result of people starting at the very bottom of the ladder, through gliding, progressing through the private pilot’s licence, many add-on qualifications, instrument ratings and the mountain of exams needed to gain a commercial pilot’s licence—the so-called improver route. All this is achieved at grass-roots level by small flying clubs and schools and small grass airfields at enormous cost to the individual and risk to small businesses with the fluctuating cost of fuel and newly imposed employment taxes.
In terms of airspace, while I accept that the basic design has not changed in 70 years, despite technological advantages—I note that the Government’s policy paper is keen to single out the safe integration of drones, which is to be welcomed, as lower airspace is where congestion, particularly with general aviation, occurs and will continue to do so—I ask: what safeguards are in place to ensure that airspace reform decisions remain transparent and evidence-based and fairly balance commercial, environmental and wider aviation user interests?
The Government seek to expand the CAA’s enforcement powers. What mechanisms will ensure accountability, proportionality and appropriate parliamentary oversight of those powers? I am keen to learn from the Minister how the DfT proposes to safeguard these changes for non-airline operators.
This debate would not be complete without mention of the European geostationary navigation overlay service, commonly known and referred to as EGNOS, the satellite-based augmentation system that improves the precision and integrity of global positioning systems; in particular, the EGNOS Safety of Life Service— note “safety of life”—which is used in safety-critical applications, such as in the aviation sector. Back in June 2022, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Aviation asked Oxera, the Oxford-based economics and finance consultancy, to assess the business case for a temporary reinstatement of EGNOS. It pointed out that
“prior to leaving the EU, the UK civil aviation sector invested heavily into satellite-based approaches because of the significant safety and reliability advantages that satellite-based approaches offer compared to traditional approaches (i.e. non-precision navigational aids) … Despite these investments, the UK is currently the only state in the G20 without useable access to a precise satellite-based navigation system, whereas other countries are increasingly moving towards relying on precision satellite-based approaches”.
What does this mean in reality? It has really serious consequences. It means that remote areas of the United Kingdom that rely on small regional airlines, such as Loganair in Scotland, are unable to operate in inclement weather conditions. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who was due to participate in this debate, has been stranded for a number of days on the Isles of Scilly, which are fog-bound. As a result of our non-participation in EGNOS, the likelihood of aircraft operating into the islands in such conditions is remote.
In relation to air crew training, in addition to the lack of instrument approach training slots, the whole UK professional flight training industry cannot deliver for UK-based students the full range of performance-based navigation training, which is reliant on satellite-based signals. Worse still, all these GPS-supported approaches are only 2D lateral non-precision; 3D precision requires the EGNOS Safety of Life Service to enable the airport to provide this. So training aircraft cross the channel to places such as Jersey and other European countries where a full suite of approaches are available, as they still benefit from the EGNOS signal in space. This is a major revenue and talent loss to the UK GA sector. Similarly, air traffic control offices cannot do more than train in simulation for 3D approaches.
Lastly, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Air Ambulances, of which I am a member, is pushing government hard across a range of topics. As we speak, there is a reception to launch a report on the case for safeguarded 24/7 on-site hospital helipads. A big part of its lobbying is on the lack of helimed point-in-space procedures for hospitals, which are EGNOS reliant. The loss of EGNOS access weakens aviation safety and NHS trauma care goals. Without reinstatement, increasing air ambulance mission cancellations put these strategies—and patient outcomes—at risk. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what the Government have in mind in relation to EGNOS.
I will end here but implore the Minister to again consider reinstating EGNOS membership as a matter of urgency. Above all, I implore the Government to give due consideration to general aviation when prioritising their goals and directions to the CAA. At present, I fear they clearly are not doing so.