To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they intend to take to alleviate the problems, including queues, cancellations and delays, being experienced by travellers at airports and ferry ports in the United Kingdom.
My Lords, clearly, this is a topical issue that is causing much concern to many people. I am sure that all noble Lords will have read reports in the press, heard interviews on the radio and seen scenes of chaos at airports on the television. For example, yesterday’s Daily Mail reported:
“No end in sight to holiday nightmare. Airlines ‘resign themselves to summer of chaos’ and Heathrow boss warns of 18 MONTHS”—
its emphasis—
“of misery as passengers face more mayhem today with huge queues and bag collection in ‘disarray’”.
Today’s Daily Mail reported:
“The airline chaos causing travel misery for Britons plumbed new depths today as a video showed baggage falling off an overloaded conveyor belt and left strewn across the floor in Manchester Airport’s arrivals hall.”
However, we must remember that this is about individuals and families, not generalities. We should not lose sight of how this has impacted on people who were just hoping for a holiday. Tuesday’s Mirror quoted Ali Haynes, who arrived at Luton Airport with her partner and five month-old baby three hours before their easyJet flight to Palermo was due to depart, only to learn that the plane had been grounded. She said:
“We’re now stuck in Luton departures with no information on what next. Holiday ruined.”
The Financial Times reported on Michael Norman, who tried to fly back to Manchester from Faro, Portugal, on Sunday. He said that easyJet did not tell passengers that their flight was cancelled until they were at the departure gate. He said:
“We have no idea, it is as if they abandon you … they should not be flying people out on holiday if they cannot fly you back”.
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, for initiating this important debate. I speak from the experience of working to support the chaplaincy of Gatwick Airport—I was glad to hear the Minister speak so positively of her experience of coming through it recently. However, like so many other parts of the aviation industry, the airport was dealt a harsh blow by the Covid pandemic. Many staff who were foreign nationals, though receiving furlough payments, went back to their home countries and have not returned to work in the UK. This affected the security department, hospitality industry and the hotels especially, and it has had a devastating effect on the economic life of the town of Crawley, which was already in receipt of investment from the towns fund as part of the Government’s levelling-up programme.
It has been hard to replace this pool of experienced workers, nor has it been easy to recruit new staff locally, especially for specialist jobs that require a significant period of training to meet a necessarily high standard of security. The Government have provided some assistance by amending airport security regulations, but there is a plea from Gatwick that Ministers do more to ensure that there is sufficient resource to process security and ID checks as well as manage the border and process passport applications.
I understand from my colleagues at Gatwick Airport that the salaries it offers in recruiting new staff are comparable to those in other airports and in other sectors, comparing well with salaries for posts of similar responsibility in the NHS, education and the service sector. We found that the package at Gatwick is sufficiently attractive to draw new staff from the police force and from British rail management, so also depleting staffing in those important services.
New staff, especially younger recruits, are experiencing verbally threatening behaviour in their working lives which they have not experienced before and find very disturbing. This rarely seems to be addressed in their training, with the result that many people just do not turn up for their shifts or have even resigned, thus creating more staff shortages at short notice on terminal concourses.
My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount. I support my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton and congratulate him on securing today’s debate and the expert way in which he introduced it and laid out the context for what I hope will be its main purpose: finding out the Government’s view of what is going on and what, if anything, they are trying to do about it. It is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate. I have learned a bit about chaplaincy services and, as someone who goes on some on the trains to which he has just referred, I know exactly what he means about the mix of commuter traffic and people who are visiting this country, sometimes for the first time.
Today’s debate is very timely. It is not very popular with the Government Benches so far as I can see, but I understand that it is still very timely because we all know that it has been triggered by what we saw happening over Easter and over the recent Whitsun half-term; and, in the summer that lies ahead, these problems are likely to cause even more chaos. I do not know if the Minister happened to see the news last night; I should think that from time to time she does. At the moment, there is no end of scenes of luggage and queues, and more news about flights being cancelled. In fact, it is not difficult to film huge queues at airports these days, and we have also seen photos of air crews helping to get luggage off planes because there were not enough baggage handlers.
My own experience, for what it is worth, has not been as bad as that. However, on a recent flight back to the UK, the plane landed on time but there was then an inordinate delay while finding enough ground crew staff to find it a berth and take the luggage off. Maybe that has happened to other noble Lords. As for the queues that can arise at passport control, as happened at Heathrow on 24 May, I have known the sheer frustration at seeing large numbers of automatic entry gates seemingly shut because of a lack of staff. I thought that the whole point of these e-gates was to make returning to the UK streamlined and quick for British citizens. No wonder we are told that some airlines are now taking action to cancel even more flights because they know that in the current circumstances there simply are not enough staff to cope with the work.
3:08 pm
Viscount Waverley (CB)
My Lords, I apologise to the House at large and to the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, for speaking before time. I fully concur with him that it would be helpful if Ministers were minded to speak first and then we could all join in accordingly thereafter.
The seeming unpreparedness, the random cancellations and the lack of information to passengers is galling, with airlines caught on the hop. For all the justifiable criticism, however, a thought should go out to the poor souls on the ground who are having to field an impossible situation. The whys and wherefores are, in reality, academic. What is required now is to identify what measures are to be implemented to alleviate the situation. Many have been put forward already. I have six, some of which are somewhat duplicates.
First, more resources to vet new staff for security clearance are essential, as the current two weeks to two months is a bottleneck. Many give up and go elsewhere. Secondly, an immediate increase in staff at check-in procedures is fundamental. Thirdly, we need more trained air crew and ground staff to be able to cope with absences. As an interim measure, airlines should organise crews from elsewhere. On Tuesday, a crew was parachuted in from Latvia for my flight back to the UK.
Fourthly, airlines have depleted cash reserves, with many having borrowed heavily to survive the pandemic. Would something akin to the furlough scheme to help airlines recruit and retain their reserve staff be a solution? Fifthly—I was surprised at this—liquids do need to be removed from bags at security checks, but do computers really need to be? Portugal, for example, has removed the need.
Sixthly, the policy of airlines knowingly overbooking flights should end forthwith, a point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate. With the current situation, any seat capacity should be required for those affected by flight cancellations and the like.
On the wider front, if the Minister is minded to reply to this while she is her feet, what is the current situation regarding the registration of outgoing passengers by Border Force, so that we can keep better control of who is actually leaving the country as opposed to having a record of those entering it? Since time immemorial, we have been informed that the process is being sorted. What is the latest on that, if the Minister is minded to respond? If not, I look forward in due course to a letter.
I do not think anyone was aware that the noble Lord intended to do so but, with the House’s indulgence, maybe we can allow the noble Lord to speak for four minutes.
I was saying that I greatly look forward to the Minister’s reply to the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I hope that what I am going to say now will not be taken as any criticism of her; she defends her department’s brief in this House with style and stamina.
However, I have to ask: where is the Secretary of State for Transport? He is Macavity, the mystery cat: when things go wrong, he is never there. We have gridlock at Dover, chaos at the airports; queues at the pumps; a tube strike and a looming train strike, and it seems that none of this has anything to do with the Government and there is nothing they can do to put it right. The Government’s job is to govern. When problems like these arise, it is time for Mr Shapps to step forward.
I heard a rumour that he is moonlighting—that he has something else. Perhaps he is running for the leadership of his party, or maybe he is doing as he did when he first came into Parliament: running, under a pseudonym, a private business offering to make one very rich in return for sending him a small cheque. Whatever he is doing, he should stop it and revert to the job of the department and try to put right the problems so clearly set out by the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I greatly look forward to the Minister reassuring me that that is indeed what will happen.
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The Daily Mail again:
“Furious mother posts picture of her exhausted six-year-old daughter while stuck in Cyprus after Tui cancelled family’s flights TWICE”—
again, its emphasis—
“as experts warn travel chaos is set to get even worse.”
Now, there are many horrendous things going on in this world. For example, there is the suffering of people in Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere overseas and, at home, there is the increase in poverty with families being forced to choose between food and heating. However, I make no apology for raising the issue with the Minister. In the context of what everyone has gone through during the Covid pandemic, we can all sympathise with those who are thwarted in their simple and understandable wish to take a break, typically somewhere warmer and sunnier than they might expect at home. While most of the coverage has focused on those on holiday, it is entirely possible that there has also been an adverse effect on business travellers, who increasingly use budget airlines.
In raising the question I am not really interested in conducting a post-mortem on who has been to blame for this situation. I am not even that interested in hearing about what action the Government have already taken to address the problems. What I would like to hear from the Minister is some empathy with travellers and an indication of what further action the Government might take to help alleviate the distress that is still arising daily—particularly when we are told by none other than John Holland-Kaye, CEO of Heathrow Airport, that, as things stand,
“it will take 12 to 18 months for the aviation sector to fully recover capacity”.
Is there really no end in sight? With my flights booked for later in the summer, I really should declare an interest.
We therefore need to be clear about the Government’s analysis of the reasons for the problems that travellers face, and then what more should be done about them. I think it is reasonably clear that an inadequate response to the recovery of foreign holidays is at the heart of the problems. We know about the impact of the pandemic on the global aviation industry. The Government did the right thing in supporting aviation, but it was not enough: tens of thousands of jobs were cut. In the first lockdown in particular, the industry made significant cutbacks in its workforce. The problem then was the uncertainty about any recovery in travel; no one knew how long the pandemic would last or how it would turn out, so it was unclear until relatively recently when things would get better for the travel industry.
It has been suggested that the airlines should have predicted that there would be surge in demand when the world opened up again. But there were various false starts, and it is not surprising that the industry acted, as it has turned out, with caution. Now, however, it is clear that, with vaccination, fewer border restrictions and no sign of a more dangerous variant, things are returning to something like normal. Flights are returning to levels not seen since 2019 and, as a result, the understaffed airlines and airports are struggling to cope with the increased demand.
It appears that the biggest problem is the recruitment that is needed to fill the gaps in staffing required to meet current demands. Airlines and airports need countless different jobs to operate, from security guards to cabin crew, but there are widespread staff shortages across much of the economy following the pandemic. Many people who previously worked in the industry have also found better jobs elsewhere, without the pressure of shift work and relatively poor pay. It has also to be said that there is no doubt whatever that the problem in recruitment in the UK has been exacerbated by Brexit. I am not trying to reopen the issue of Brexit, at least in the context of this debate, but as a result, there are simply fewer people available to work in the industry. To the extent that it is possible for EU citizens to work here, the terms of employment that they now face because of the additional restrictions make the work far less attractive.
I hope that the Minister will not strain our credulity by claiming, like one of her colleagues, that Brexit has improved the staffing situation. I hope that she will admit the problems and, accepting that Brexit is done, look at what scope there is within the agreements that have been reached to adjust the rules on employment to alleviate the staffing problems. We know that there are also problems with the rate at which new employees can be recruited. Some of the jobs are sensitive, requiring lengthy background checks and training.
My question today is: what more will the Government do to alleviate this situation, or are they effectively saying that everything that could be done has been done and that it is really up to the airports, the airlines, the ferry ports and the ferry companies to solve the problem?
This is an indication of a serious shortage of able people from whom to recruit in order to sustain a service industry that cannot offer working from home, which has become the norm since the pandemic. Those working in the transport and hospitality aspects of tourism continue to look to government for investment in recruitment, training, maintenance of quality and delivery of service.
In this context, I urge serious consideration for the role of chaplaincy in an airport, which is comparable with a hospital, prison or school, where those served are not simply the users but the staff, who face significant challenges. Airport chaplains minister to distressed travellers as much as they contribute to sustaining the morale, professional aspirations and quality of life of staff in such places, in order to deliver the best possible service. Salaries for chaplains represent good value for money and should be required for best practice on the part of any company running one of our airports.
The successful presentation of the UK to foreign travellers is formed by first impressions. Emerging from a well-run airport at Gatwick, they will find that Network Rail has done good work on improvements to Gatwick rail station, but the quality of trains on offer is then poor. Apart from two Gatwick Express services an hour, the other trains have no provision for luggage and are often already crowded and very uncomfortable. The mix of suburban and international travellers is not a good start to a happy visit.
There is no doubt about the significant disruption. I will cite a couple of examples which the House may well know about. First, on 28 May, easyJet announced that it would cancel more than 200 flights. The airline said that about 24 flights from Gatwick would be cancelled each day between 28 May and last Monday. Secondly, British Airways cancelled 120 short-haul flights to and from Heathrow Airport on 3 June, although it did say that the cancellations were pre-planned and that passengers had been given advance notice. Thirdly, TUI announced that nearly 400 flights would be cancelled from 31 May until the end of June.
Then there is the issue of delays. For people at Manchester Airport on 29 May, it was not good enough for the airport to apologise for the delays at check-in and baggage reclaim and say only that the reason was that there were issues facing several airlines. Of course, very few of the thousands of people who have been adversely affected in recent weeks—and who will be in the months to come—will be watching today’s debate. However, if any of them are, I hope that they will see that Parliament is an important forum for their complaints to be heard and answered.
Mind you, am I the only person to look at what is happening—to see the airport queues and the cancelled flights and the delays that people face at airports and to learn that it is taking far longer than it should for people to have their passport applications processed, and to be told that the Government cannot process in good time the numbers of security applications now being made for airline and airport staff—and then discover that the Government have now announced that they want to reduce the size of the Civil Service?
It feels as though these are the ingredients of what we might otherwise call a failing state. People are entitled to ask who is to blame for all this. Like my noble friend, I am not here to indulge in a blame game because I hope there will be a educative purpose to this debate—to identify who might be to blame for what—in the hope that we can put things right. I often feel that in a debate such as this the Minister’s speech should come first, to enable us to contribute our views in the light of the Government’s arguments. However, it is up to my noble friend Lord Davies to do that in his winding-up remarks.
What has been going wrong? Is it that too many people want to travel? As my noble friend said, after the Covid restrictions of the past two years, it is hardly helpful to blame people for wanting to travel again. Is it because the airlines have acted recklessly? I hope the Minister will tell the House whether she agrees with the Secretary of State, who has apparently said that airlines and operators had
“seriously oversold flights and holidays”.
Is it, as the airlines claim, because it is taking too much time to get security clearances for the staff they now need? Here it seems that the Government have a case to answer. The director-general of IATA recently said that security clearances which used to take three or four weeks are now taking as long as three months. Can the Minister tell the House whether this is true and, if it is, what the Government are doing to fix it? Has it in some way all been affected by the war in Ukraine because Civil Service resources have understandably been diverted from regular Home Office tasks to deal with the urgent need to process visa and asylum applications? Or is it for some other range of reasons? Some people have suggested IT glitches, supply chain issues and even runway maintenance problems.
Whatever the explanation, it all amounts to something of a perfect storm with fuel and energy prices and the cost of living rising, which we are about to address in the next debate, and rail strikes looming, and those planned might not be the only ones. Air travel problems are an ongoing problem and the Government at least owe the country an explanation for what is happening and what they think is going wrong. I hope the Minister can tell us what it is, together with any government plan to remedy the situation because action is needed. I much look forward to her reply.