Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]

Report

Northern Ireland Legislative Consent sought. Relevant documents: 1st and 6th Reports from the Delegated Powers Committee.

Amendment 1

1: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause— “Purpose(1) The purpose of this Act is to—(a) promote the international competitiveness of the United Kingdom aviation sector;(b) support economic growth in that sector;(c) protect the rights and interests of consumers of air transport and airport services.(2) The Secretary of State must, in taking any actions under the provisions of this Act, have regard to this purpose.”Member's explanatory statement This amendment inserts a purpose clause into the Bill requiring the Secretary of State and the CAA to have regard to the promotion of the international competitiveness of the United Kingdom aviation sector and economic growth in that sector.

1: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause— “Purpose(1) The purpose of this Act is to—(a) promote the international competitiveness of the United Kingdom aviation sector;(b) support economic growth in that sector;(c) protect the rights and interests of consumers of air transport and airport services.(2) The Secretary of State must, in taking any actions under the provisions of this Act, have regard to this purpose.”Member's explanatory statement This amendment inserts a purpose clause into the Bill requiring the Secretary of State and the CAA to have regard to the promotion of the international competitiveness of the United Kingdom aviation sector and economic growth in that sector.

My Lords, this is what I refer to as, in essence, an administrative Bill, in that it does not make large changes to the way in which civil aviation operates but changes significantly the way in which decisions will be made in future about how civil aviation operates. It does that necessarily because many of the decisions that have been made in the past and until now have been carried out under European Union legislation. Since we happily left the European Union, a substitute for that decision-making must be found.

My concern about this Bill throughout Committee has been that the new system has, in many ways, been a terrible botch. One of the features of it has been that very large powers are being taken away, so to speak, from the European Union and given to the Civil Aviation Authority almost without supervision or ministerial oversight: they are, in other words, being transferred to unelected bureaucrats. It is as if the Government have been completely deaf to what we voted for when we voted to leave the European Union.

I will be fairly brief on Amendments 1 and 3, but a few words of introduction are important in this case. The background to them—and I have to say this frankly— is the catastrophic Government we have suffered from in the last two years. They have been so catastrophic that they have had to depose their own party leader and Prime Minister and go outside Parliament to seek a substitute, in order to reset the Government and try to recover from what has been a complete disaster. In that context, it seems quite wrong that the Government should be seeking our trust to take these powers, with almost no parliamentary scrutiny, to pass many of them to the Civil Aviation Authority with very little ministerial oversight, saying to Parliament, “You can trust us to get it right”. I am afraid the basis of that trust has gone.

That is why we have two amendments in this group, one of which, Amendment 1, seeks to give a purpose to the Bill and sets out what the guiding principles underlying the Bill should be: that competition and the economy are important. I know that Governments generally do not like purpose clauses, and I have to admit that, as I think most noble Lords know, even the Public Bill Office does not like them. However, I have reinforced and buttressed Amendment 1 with Amendment 3, which gives specific guidance to the Government on what they need to take into account when making decisions under Clause 1 to do with passenger protection. They focus very much on the opportunities that aviation gives us for economic growth and on the necessity, to that end, of competition and competitiveness in the sector.

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lord Moylan’s two amendments. I have some general remarks about them, and two specific points which are questions to the Minister.

The first point, which I will not labour at length since we dealt with it in Committee, is the focus of my noble friend’s Amendment 1: the importance of growing the aviation sector itself and making sure it is competitive. It is important to have that as a focus, because there are those—some inside your Lordships’ House and also those outside—who want to stymie and stifle the aviation sector, which would be a retrograde step. I should have done this at the beginning of my remarks, but at this point I declare my interest, as in the register, as the non-exec chair of RVL Aviation. I did that one or two moments too late but in the nick of time.

My second point is on my noble friend’s Amendment 3, which is about economic growth more widely and therefore links the importance of growing the aviation sector and its role in growing the economy. I want to put this point on the record because I suspect that a lot of the debate will be focused, rightly, on the impact of many rules on passengers. But it is worth remembering the very significant role that aviation plays in trade, and in not just the volume but the value of imports and exports to and from the United Kingdom. This is very significant. It is important to our overall competitiveness, particularly in high-value sectors, that aviation remains strong to promote the wider economy.

The Prime Minister-to-be has started talking about “good growth”, which implies there is something on the other side of the ledger: bad growth. I make the point that growing the economy should remain the number one priority of this Government and any future Government; it is the basis on which we generate prosperity and raise taxes. Therefore, I reinforce my noble friend’s point that it remains important to have in the Bill both the need to grow the sector and recognition of its importance to growing the economy. Like my noble friend, I will listen very carefully to the Minister’s response to this group and then decide whether, if my noble friend decides to push this to a vote, I am able to support him. At the moment, my inclination is that he should and I would.

My Lords, I support the comments made by my noble friend Lord Moylan. I do not think that there is a very simple solution. Before we covered all the legislation from the European Union, it was fairly straightforward for many decades in this country, as the CAA as a regulator had sole responsibility for all the technical issues, obviously coming under the auspices of the Government, the Secretary of State and certain experts and committees. We then started to debate and bring in a lot of primary legislation from the EU; that was obviously implemented in all member states, including the United Kingdom.

From when I entered the European Parliament in 1999, all these huge subjects—security, passenger rights, traffic rights, airspace restructuring, mandatory reporting, slots, flight time limitations or anything else related—were all debated by the Committee on Transport and Tourism. It was not a small committee; the committees in the European Parliament are not small. Everything was debated very carefully, with different points of view. Experts were brought in. It would take a couple of years to take through a piece of legislation. It was the same system, where there were at least two or three readings.

That brings me to where we are, because we have a different system. It is clear to me that the CAA is our primary regulator—it is an excellent regulator, in my view. We in the United Kingdom were always seen as one of the paramount countries in terms of regulation for both the maritime and aviation sectors. How is this going to work? On the one hand, we have the Civil Aviation Authority, which is the correct regulator, but, on the other, throughout the Bill there is reference to “the Secretary of State will decide”. Therefore, the Secretary of State decides, but there does not seem to be anything in the middle.

That brings me to the question of how we then bring back very difficult and complex decisions, for example, to the Floor of the House or a Committee. In the European Parliament, when we believed it was a very important issue—such as passenger rights or security—we did not go along with the delegated Acts argument. With delegated Acts, once something was updated, the Commission could then implement those changes without coming back to the Parliament. Therefore, very often, we insisted that, for a number of these subjects, we would have implementing Acts. Therefore, whenever a piece of legislation—for security, passenger rights or slots, for example—needed to come back to be updated, normally within a few years, it would come back to the Parliament and withstand scrutiny by the members of a committee who could call in the required experts.

My Lords, this is a very strange Bill; it is a Bill in search of a purpose, which proposes and transfers substantial powers to a regulatory body but which gives us no road map for how those powers are going to be used. In the debates we have had so far and in the amendments we are looking at this afternoon, it is inevitable that there will be amendments to try to give the Bill a purpose, to limit the use of the powers, because their use has not been explained, and to get some better regulation directly into the Bill, given the absence of any suggestion for improvements in the legislation that we have before us. That includes some very good proposals that we will come to later to improve the lot of disabled travellers, for example. I can understand why people want to get something worth while into the Bill, which is otherwise this rather strange transfer of powers, in order to be able to trust this independent body. We know that there is no urgency about this because we know from the impact assessment that there will not be any costs or benefits for the foreseeable future, and that the CAA will be given about a year after the successful passage of the Bill, if it goes through, to contemplate and review.

I support my noble friend because he is trying to give the Bill an overriding purpose, which should be entirely at one with the manifesto, the plans and the stated intentions of both the outgoing and the incoming Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I think we all agree, across parties, that it would be good if our economy grew faster than it has been growing since the great crash of 2008-09. Surely we can all see that this requires a sector-by-sector response, as well as changes in general economic policy that are not the subject of this debate.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for Amendment 1, but I express concern that it and Amendment 3 are in conflict in their proposed new subsections (1)(c) and (1B)(c). The reason for that was amply explained by the noble Lord, Lord Redwood. He started by saying that this Bill is one in search of a purpose, but went on to say that we are going to improve the lot of disabled people, among other things. I am very grateful that he said that, because proposed new subsection (1B)(c) in Amendment 3 asks the Secretary of State to make it an absolute priority to consider the impact of the regulations on

“the burdens imposed on air transport service providers and airport operators in complying with the regulations”.

Part of the journey of disabled people in buying a ticket, going through various airports and actually flying is that most of the providers would say that all provision for disabled people is a burden. They try to minimise everything they can. Does the Minister agree with me on that? Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, also might like to address that when he comments at the end.

My Lords, I turn to the first group of amendments, Amendments 1 and 3 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. I thank both Front Benches for having met us over the past few days in the run-up to Report. All the insight, information and conversations have been very much appreciated. I admire the attempt of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, to insert an overarching economic growth purpose into the heart of the Bill, which I see as a valiant attempt. I hope that he will in turn look kindly on some of my valiant attempts in further groups.

As he rightly says, the Government should be stretching every sinew to pursue growth, as we did in the wake of the economic crash of 2008 and the extremely difficult days of the coalition Government. I had the enormous privilege of being what one might describe as an unelected bureaucrat, sitting in Cabinet meetings and watching those proceedings. Not a week went by when economic growth was not discussed, and that was a good thing.

Technically, unless I have misread it or misunderstood it in Committee, this is primarily a safety and consumer protection framework, with slots and modernisation as part of it. In mandating that the Secretary of State have regard to promoting economic growth when regulating passenger rights under Clause 1, I worry about subordinating the safety and dignity of the travelling public to the commercial margins of what the noble Lord, Lord Harper, described in Committee as a low-margin industry. It is vital to reflect through this Bill, as we talked about in Committee, the low margins of ordinary passengers who must jump through hoop after hoop to get what is by rights their compensation and, in turn, bear the financial consequence and burden. That is what worries me.

I enormously respect the expertise and experience of the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, and have found it very interesting and educational to hear her knowledge and understanding of this and of the workings of the European Parliament, which were very helpful and useful in Committee as well. I thank her for that. I worry that overloading the CAA with a greater economic growth remit, when it already has one, will create a bit of a conflict. As we have heard, the regulator is being granted vast new powers without robust parliamentary oversight. To anchor them in competitiveness rather than being “passenger first” has the danger of inviting a race to the bottom. We will talk a bit more about that on consumer standards in the next set of amendments.

I agree with some of the commentary about how skeletal this Bill is and how it needs more detail. We tried to test this out in Committee and the government amendments have in some ways achieved that. On this one, we are not going on the same journey as the Conservatives. At the very least, we would add an environmental element if we were expanding that remit. Therefore, we will not be joining them. We will be listening with some interest to what the Minister says, like the noble Lord, Lord Harper, whom I did not realise is not on the Conservative Whip this evening.

Before the noble Baroness sits down, can I reference the point that she made about disabled people? The amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Moylan just says that the Government have to consider the burdens. If you make air travel better for disabled people, you will grow the top line. You will have more people flying and higher revenues. Secondly, the Minister has simply to consider those costs; he may still consider that they are the right thing to do. So I do not think that there is a contradiction in the way that she set out.