Contributions
2,622 recent contributions in Hansard
HANSARDHS2My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for enabling us, once again, to get the HS2 horse out of the stable for a quick canter round the track. I will focus my…11 Mar 2020HANSARDHS2I wrote some of this brief, so I feel a little offended. I do not have that particular piece of data to hand, which I am disappointed about, but I will certainly write to the…11 Mar 2020HANSARDHS2I suspected that I would not keep the noble Lord 100% happy. I will certainly write to him. I have various elements on the environment but that was not in the topic of the debate…11 Mar 2020HANSARDHS2I will certainly do that; I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for mentioning it. I am aware that he asked some questions about governance and management, which are…11 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeI thank both Front-Benchers for their contributions; a number of very important issues were raised, some of which I can agree with and some of which I probably cannot. I think…05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeMy Lords, the aviation industry is a highly competitive market, and obviously, private companies operate in it. None the less, the noble Lord makes an important point about the…05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeThe noble Lord is right. Virgin is a minority shareholder in Flybe, with a 30% stake. My understanding is the same as his—that Flybe was due to be rebranded as Virgin Connect. I…05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeMy noble friend is absolutely right. We cannot be clear enough that this affects only Flybe, and that at many airports, Flybe makes up only a small number of the flights. At…05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeThe noble Lord raises an interesting point. Air passenger duty is under review by Her Majesty’s Treasury, as indeed are all taxes. The Conservative manifesto set out our…05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeThe Government are working extremely hard to find replacement operators for as many routes as possible. We are confident and have already this morning had proactive responses from…05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeI hear completely what the noble Lord is saying. The route from Newquay to London is clearly incredibly important, which is why it has attracted a PSO, so we are looking at a…05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeMy noble friend raises an interesting point, because there is a lot of misconception around what happened in January and what public funds were or were not made available. The…05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeThe noble Lord raises an interesting point about PSOs. The Government are looking at all options to restore as many routes as possible. We must also be mindful that wherever we…05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeThe noble Lord raises an interesting point. My colleague, the Aviation Minister, will be making calls this afternoon to the devolved Administrations and many other stakeholders to…05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeI thank my noble friend for his comment. I believe that this work is already under way.05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeOn the issue of communications with employees, hearing it on the radio is less than ideal. I am sure it is not how any noble Lord would treat any of their employees. It is not…05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeThe noble and learned Lord is quite right: the Scottish Government have taken a slightly different approach to passenger duty from the UK Government. Discussions with the devolved…05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeAviation services are part of the market economy and we would expect the profitable routes to be taken up by other airlines. As I have mentioned, we have had proactive input from…05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeI thank the noble Lord for his comments. I will certainly make sure that the Treasury sees them.05 Mar 2020HANSARDFlybeMy noble friend makes an important point about the tension between the slots, social responsibility and regional connectivity. The Government will be looking at that issue with…05 Mar 2020