Civil Aviation Bill

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Standing Committee B

Tuesday 5 July 2005

(Afternoon)

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairmen: †Sir Nicholas Winterton, Mr. Edward O'Hara

†Afriyie, Adam (Windsor) (Con)

Atkinson, Mr. Peter (Hexham) (Con)

†Brake, Tom (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)

†Brazier, Mr. Julian (Canterbury) (Con)

†Buck, Ms Karen (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport)

†Crausby, Mr. David (Bolton, North-East) (Lab)

†Greening, Justine (Putney) (Con)

†Gwynne, Andrew (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)

†Hodgson, Mrs. Sharon (Gateshead, East and Washington, West) (Lab)

†Keen, Alan (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)

†McGovern, Mr. Jim (Dundee, West) (Lab)

†Moffatt, Laura (Crawley) (Lab)

†Pugh, Dr. John (Southport) (LD)

†Roy, Mr. Frank (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)

†Smith, John (Vale of Glamorgan) (Lab)

†Stringer, Graham (Manchester, Blackley) (Lab)

†Syms, Mr. Robert (Poole) (Con)

Mr. Geoffrey Farrar, Dr. Hannah Weston, Committee Clerks

† attended the Committee

[Sir Nicholas Winterton in the Chair]

Civil Aviation Bill

Clause 2

Regulation by Secretary of State

of noise and vibration from aircraft

Amendment moved [this day]: No. 14, in clause 2, page 2, line 41, leave out subsection (2).—[Justine Greening.]

4 pm

The Chairman: I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:

No. 35, in clause 2, page 2, line 43, at end insert

', and may also issue penalties on aircraft, otherwise legally permitted to take off or land, which exceed the maximum take-off noise limits, specified by the Secretary of State,'.

Justine Greening: I think that I will start with a reprise of the comments that I made before lunch, to set in the context of the amendment. The amendment would remove the part of clause 2 that gives the Secretary of State the powers to remove the movements limit. As I was explaining, at present, noise at designated airports is controlled via a mix of controls. On the one hand there is a quota count system, which examines the absolute estimated noise that people have to bear on the ground, and on the other there is the control exerted by the movements limit, which limits the absolute number of aircraft able to land during periods such as the night-time period, during which, currently 16 flights come into Heathrow.

My argument is that, while we have the next regime of the night flights consultation, which will run up until 2012, we should use that time to get the real facts and data that is needed to make an informed assessment of whether the Secretary of State should have the powers to remove the movements limit. By that I mean several things. First, we need to start to measure the actual noise, as we have already discussed in the Committee. Close to the immediate Heathrow area, for example, there are noise sensors, but further out—in the hinterland, where local people are very much affected by aircraft noise—there are far fewer controls in place to manage what they have to put up with. There is a similar situation with regard to many of our airports. We must therefore start to look seriously at measuring actual noise on the ground.

Secondly, returning to the speech that I made on Second Reading, we must look at how that noise affects people. I believe that it is something like 20 years since the last large-scale study that examined the impact of prolonged and sustained aircraft noise on people who have to bear it day to day and, in my constituents' case, every night.

Thirdly, we need to examine whether there is an economic case for continued night flights at Heathrow. There are currently 16 night flights, transporting 2,000
 
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to 3,000 passengers every morning, each of which will manage to wake up several hundred thousand Londoners, who also contribute to the London economy. I am not aware of any robust public work that has been done that adequately stacks up whether there is an economic case for those night flights that outweighs the economic benefit that my constituents, and many others who are woken by night flights, contribute to London's economy.

Finally, I believe that before we confer any further powers on the Secretary of State to remove the movements limit, we need to be clear as to what the Opposition's and the Government's policies are on excessive noise. We touched on that matter earlier today, and it has been made all the more relevant by our earlier discussion on targets. I urge the Minister, if she is not able to give us further information on that policy today, to give us the information on Report, or to issue some guidelines about what might constitute excessive noise. I would be happy to discuss that matter further with the Minister at a meeting, when we could address face-to-face some of the issues that my constituents have to put up with on a day-to-day basis.

Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening) on her cogent defence of her constituents in this matter. Putney, as she has reminded us already, is under the flight path for Heathrow.

The provision that amendment No. 14 would strike out is one of the most controversial bits of the whole Bill. We spent time discussing it in a more general way on Second Reading, but my hon. Friend has given us the opportunity to focus closely on it. It is worth quoting one or two of the protestor groups. For example, Mr. Steve Charlish, the leader of a group of Leicestershire residents, who is concerned about noise from Nottingham East Midlands airport, comments:

''The Civil Aviation Bill is looking at discretionary powers to allow a greater number of relatively less noisy aircraft into London airports. This surely is going to lead to more night flights, not only around the airports but along flight corridors nationwide where these aircraft will be transiting through night time hours, destroying tranquillity over very wide areas.''

That view is echoed by the Stop Stansted Expansion campaign, which has made a number of points:

''As it stands, this amends the Civil Aviation Act in such a way as to empower the Secretary of State to discontinue applying limits to the number of night aircraft movements at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted and replace these with noise quotas alone.''

I am sure that we shall get a technical explanation from the Minister and that we shall be reassured that the Bill will do no such thing. However, looking at the wording, I can understand why the protestor groups are concerned at the idea of replacing a straightforward cap on numbers with a concept of noise restriction. That could mean, effectively, that if aircraft were a bit quieter, there could be more of them at night.

The Secretary of State has said that there would be consultation before there were changes on this issue, although I am not clear about what form of consultation that was. The fact is that flights at night are perhaps the number one concern of people who
 
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live near airports. I support the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Putney in such an articulate fashion. I shall be looking carefully at the Minister's response on what the proposal that my hon. Friend seeks to strike out would do if it were left in the Bill, and at the Government's plans in that area.

Amendment No. 35, in my name, is grouped with amendment No. 14. There is a real concern about excessively noisy aircraft. On Second Reading, that was the issue that came up second most often, after the issue of the number of night flights. As somebody put it, ''You can hear any number of low background noises, but it is the one really shrieking sound that can ruin your afternoon and certainly your night.''

I shall quote a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk):

''Maximum noise limits for aircraft taking off from designated airports have been set for many years, but have only been fully effective since the British Airports Authority was required to install monitoring equipment in the early 1990s. Maximum noise limits are extremely important because obviously it is the noisiest aircraft which cause the most annoyance and because they put a pressure on aircraft manufacturers to produce quieter aircraft. The present limits were set in 2001 and have not been reduced since the banning of chapter 2 aircraft in 2002. The fact is that the limits are very little lower than they were in the early 1990s because some old types of aircraft are still flying. When it is suggested to the Department for Transport that the limit should be reduced and that the penalties should be reduced and that the penalties should be regarded as a charge on noisier aircraft in line with Government policy that airlines should cover their external costs, the civil servants' reply is always that they cannot impose penalties on aircraft which are otherwise legally permitted to fly.''

Hence the wording of the clause that aircraft that are otherwise legally permitted to fly but are exceeding the maximum noise limits should now be fineable. We seek to give the Government that power. The Government have been clarifying powers in a variety of areas that we dealt with this morning. We suggest that they should have an additional power which seems thoroughly justified. To summarise amendment No. 35, where an aircraft is landing and taking off completely legally, but exceeds the Government's noise limits, there should be a power to fine it. I look forward to hearing the Minister's reply to both points.

Dr. John Pugh (Southport) (LD): As I understand it, this is an amendment to an amendment to the Civil Aviation 1982. I read the original script fairly carefully. However one reads it, it appears that the sole, if not the main, tool with which one can mitigate the effect of traffic flights on people living near airports is by limiting the number of flights taking off, particularly at night.

The Government amendment appears to leave that tool there but to make it an option. The other option available is to limit the effect of noise on the surrounding airport by taking noise quotas into account. One is in effect replacing the clear criterion of movement—one knows how many planes have been in—by a less clear criterion. Presumably a quantum of noise is fixed and within that quantum there may be appreciable variation at inopportune times. That causes anxiety. It is not just a matter of what might be the subjective effect of particular noise, or how it might be felt in particular areas, but the fact that
 
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within that quantum there could be a significant and disturbing variation.

There is the suspicion that the Government intend to make it easier for big carriers to have more flights late at night, perhaps on quieter airlines that use quieter planes, but none the less to increase the total volume of traffic. There is an argument against doing that. There is a quite clear environmental argument that says that we should give an incentive to carriers not to increase the number of flights but to ensure that planes are run full at night rather than, as often happens, at only 80 per cent. or 70 per cent. capacity.

The Government could quite easily get rid of the suspicion by adopting a belt and braces approach. They could keep the limit on flights but bring that limit further down if those flights do not fit in with the noise quota. They can get round the difficulties that they have had in court over setting noise quotas and at the same time keep the advantages of the current system. From a tactical point of view too, as the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) pointed out, with consultation now going on about night flights, this is possibly not the right signal to send.

We support the amendment and would like some strong reassurance from the Government, which the public also wants, that this is not a kind of Trojan horse by which we can increase the total volume of air traffic under the excuse that it fits in with some overall noise ceiling.

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Prepared 5 July 2005