Civil Aviation Bill |
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John Smith: The hon. Gentleman makes some excellent points, but the new clause is worded with those points in mind. The use of the general term “reasonably practicable” is intended to bring all the factors relating to the uniqueness of air travel as a mode of transport into consideration. The new clause would make airlines as responsible for their passengers as other passenger carriers are. Dr. Pugh: I fully accept that that is what the hon. Gentleman wants to achieve, but I doubt whether that would be the result of passing the new clause. He mentioned airline food. Most people recognise that airline food is not the healthiest menu on which to dine
There are risks that are inevitable, risks that are known and risks that one can reasonably expect a passenger to be aware of. The hon. Gentleman’s example of deep vein thrombosis falls outside those categories. It is not an inevitable risk: people can do something to prevent or reduce it. It is not an unknown risk: we know that certain passengers, statistically, will acquire it. It is not a condition, as far as I understand the matter—and I am no medical expert—that passengers can be expected to know they will acquire during a flight. Most people who suffer deep vein thrombosis on a plane suffer it only once, and unexpectedly. That is precisely the kind of risk that airlines should be obliged to tackle. I share the hon. Gentleman’s view about deep vein thrombosis as the target for the new clause. I just wonder whether other matters will be caught in its train. A couple of other small issues arise. The hon. Gentleman mentioned air circulation. There might come a day when recycled air is used to reduce a plane’s weight, thus increasing health risks. There must be a point at which we can gauge whether that is acceptable. I am not sure whether that point would be caught by the new clause. If, for example, an airline decided to recycle more air—for environmental reasons, so that it could carry less liquid oxygen—would it be seen to be taking greater risks that were acceptable? I do not think that the clause mentions staff health. It is probably assumed that if one does not look after the health of staff one imperils the airline. John Smith: That is true; the clause does not refer to the health of staff particularly, but the Bill places a duty on the Secretary of State for Transport to safeguard crew as well as passengers. Dr. Pugh: I wonder about the nature of that. I assume that it is consequential on making the airline safe. It does not make for a very safe airline if staff are unhealthy, with heart conditions and the like, and are imperilled by the process of flight itself. I thoroughly endorse the intention behind the amendment, and if the target is deep vein thrombosis, we should have a clause that endeavours to do something about that. I wonder about the wording, but I warmly support, as we all do, the suggestion that the spreading of good practice must somehow be encouraged. That will be achieved by setting a good example, and by our talking about it and creating publicity, but perhaps there should also be some coercive force to ensure that good practice is more manifest. Column Number: 92 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Karen Buck): I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. O’Hara. I am sure that you will guide us expeditiously through our proceedings today. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan on the consistent way in which he has championed this cause in Parliament. He has shown admirable dedication to it, and, as others have said, he brings a great deal of expertise to bear as a result of his campaigning history. I am also grateful for my hon. Friend’s kind remarks this morning and on Second Reading, which acknowledge the Government’s lead on the issue, the progress that has been made in establishing the aviation health unit, and the funding of research into deep vein thrombosis. I confirm the Government’s support for the goals of safer and healthier travel and better knowledge for airlines and passengers. Those goals have been discussed this morning, and examples of good practice have been acknowledged. There is no doubt that lives have been saved as a consequence of my hon. Friend’s campaigning work, for which he should take a bow. The Government believe, however, that the amendment would not be a useful way forward. Indeed, Opposition Members have given very good reasons why it would not work, and I shall not repeat those points. I am sure that my hon. Friend recognises that there is the question of what the United Kingdom can do and what is required of us in international law. The liability of airlines for the death of, or injury to, passengers is covered by European Community and international law. It is not open to the UK to adopt national legislation that would conflict with our international or Community obligations. The adoption of the Montreal convention in 1999, within the framework of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, concluded a period of intense, and at times difficult, negotiations to forge worldwide consensus from a range of divergent views. In many ways, the Warsaw convention had become out of date, and the Montreal convention is a significant step forward in consumer protection. It does, for example, greatly increase the financial liability of airlines in the event of accidents to passengers. An accident, however, is external to the passenger. It is far from clear whether airlines can or should be held responsible for incidents in which passengers have pre-existing medical conditions. Opposition Members talked about the balance of risk, and questions of definition are apposite. We are not aware of any published research that demonstrates a causal link between flying and deep vein thrombosis. My hon. Friend acknowledged the research, part-funded by the Government, which we hope to publish in August, which we hope will increase our understanding. We also hope to see international funding for another phase of research in order to establish what interventions might safely reduce the risk of DVT still further. Column Number: 93 The hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) asked why UK airlines should pay for health advice that might be of worldwide benefit, and suggested that that could place a competitiveness burden on them. The method of raising the funds for the aviation health unit established under the Bill is open to negotiation between the Civil Aviation Authority and the airlines. Not only UK airlines but all airlines that operate to and from the UK could contribute to the funding, and the charge could fall in a more concentrated way on long-haul carriers, where the potential risk is greatest. The total amount is £200,000, which is very small and puts the matter into perspective. I doubt whether any airlines would regard that as significantly undermining their competitiveness. The Bill will enable the CAA to take over from the Government the responsibility for funding the aviation health unit by means of a charge on the industry. It is an important step forward, and I ask my hon. Friend to withdraw the motion. John Smith: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her opening remarks and to other members of the Committee who have spoken. They have highlighted some of the issues in this important area. It is true that the Montreal convention has greatly improved the protection of airline passengers. The request to include health was expressly refused at that convention by the airlines, as they did not want health included within liability. I admit that it would be extremely difficult, but not impossible, to change international conventions. Since 9/11, the Americans have introduced measures, not in the area of health, but in safety and anti-terrorism, that over-ride international conventions. I accept that it is difficult. We had a good discussion on the balance of risk. It is a balance, and there are certain risks. People are susceptible to such conditions. My clause would not have made the airlines liable anyway, but the case would have had to have been proved in a court. Adam Afriyie: I urge the hon. Gentleman to continue with his quest for improved health in the aviation industry. Perhaps he will explain, if he is not successful, what other actions he will be taking in the near future to push the issue. I should certainly like him to do so. The Chairman: Order. In responding to that question, I advise the hon. Gentleman not to stray too far from the specific subject under debate. John Smith: I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s invitation to do so, but I shall avoid the temptation. Given my Welsh Chapel background, it could extend the Committee’s proceedings for some time. The point that I want to make is that the balance of risk would be assessed in a court of law. It would not place an undue burden on airlines. All the factors would be taken into consideration. Finally, on the causal nature, the Minister is absolutely right that there is no causal link between flying and deep vein thrombosis, but there are no definitively established causal links between other public health areas, including smoking and lung cancer. The link is an
Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn. New Clause 2 Retention of data by national air traffic services
Brought up, and read the First time. Mr. Brazier: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. This new clause seeks to establish a point of contact for members of the public who are concerned about noise and movements that deviate from the established plans. The Bill does a great deal for designated airports, but relatively little for non-designated airports. There is currently little control over the expansion of flights at such airports. The Campaign to Protect Rural England makes the point that the Bill will not help to tackle the problem of increasing flights eroding tranquillity. It should include provision for penalties to be levied on low-flying aircraft. We are calling here for something much more modest: simply a point of contact. On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) made the point that even Members of Parliament get the run-around when they try to establish whether a flight was grossly away from its flight path, much too low, or flying at completely the wrong time of day. He said:
the airport itself—
9.45 am I am certain that the Minister will tell us that in its present form the clause is unworkable because NATS does not have all this data. The purpose of the probing amendment is to get to the bottom of who does. NATS appears to hold data for flights when they are not in the
The point that my hon. Friend made on behalf of his constituents around NEMA applies to a small number of my constituents who are close to Manston and many other people close to non-designated airports. Let me give an example from Mr. Steve Charlish, who heads DEMAND, the NEMA pressure group. In a letter to NEMA dated 4 July he wrote:
It is possible that it was an emergency flight. As we get more and more flights and as we might lose the night caps and more and more planes fly at night, it becomes ever more important that there is some redress for the public, either directly or through their MPs, although most of us are reluctant to increase our postbag. A central point is needed that people can go to if they believe that flights into an airport are regularly abusing the system and not abiding by the schedules. Under the present arrangements, if even my hon. Friend, who is one of the most energetic people I know, is unable to find out the details about a particular flight, one can imagine what it is like for an elderly lady who has been woken up for the third night running. My hon. Friend said that he wrote to the then Minister last year to ask whether we could establish a single focal point to respond to inquiries designed to ascertain facts such as what plane was where and when. The Minister undertook to do so but wrote to me just before the election to say that she could not do so after all. Residents affected by night flights thus had the injury of nuisance compounded by the insult of bureaucratic abuse. In an overcrowded country with increasingly crowded airspace, we need a method of redress for the ordinary member of the public to discover when the flight paths are being abused and when ordinary individuals are suffering as a result. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. Dr. Pugh: On Second Reading, a number of Opposition Members said that they had regularly sought information but had not been able to find where it resided, even though it was obviously somewhere in the system. Where there are thought to be breaches of, for example, air traffic orders there is an obligation under freedom of information legislation to place the information fairly promptly in the public domain. Therefore, I am sympathetic to the general thrust of subsection (1). However, I wonder whether subsection (2) is not drafted too widely. Some test or hurdle ought to be set, so that people who want information have to state what their purposes are. Otherwise, it will become a plane spotters’ charter—anybody could ask for any information at any time.
Mr. Brazier: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman’s points about the drafting. This is designed as a probing amendment. That is why, although I am always reluctant to make the MP the gamekeeper, because of the consequences that that has for all of us, one very easy way of filtering to a small number of specifics is to do what we do with the ombudsman: that is, given that it is expensive to look back over radar tapes, to make the Member of Parliament the gatekeeper. Dr. Pugh: I am not sure that an ombudsman is necessarily the most elegant solution. Perhaps there should be some sort of formal consultation body for non-designated airports through which inquiries could be filtered and assessed, with that proviso. I have no objection to the probing nature of the new clause, or its thrust. Ms Buck: I start by expressing an enormous amount of sympathy for individuals who are disturbed in the middle of the night by loud noises, which they think are made by aircraft that are off course. As Members of Parliament, we are constantly asked to take up issues of that kind—they vary according to where we live—and it is extremely exasperating if we are unable to pin down the cause and, if there is a question of liability, to hold people to account. Having said that, a number of balances have to be struck in respect of the issues, including allowing for our extreme difficulty in relying upon the kind of information that is often presented to us by constituents. Adam Afriyie: I have had a meeting with Janice Kong of BAA, who told me that there is a scheme for Gatwick airport whereby members of the public can go to a website and look at the flight paths and information on incoming and outgoing flights. They can then, if they wish, visit the operations room and look at background data. Will the Minister look at what is going on, and encourage other airport authorities to introduce similar schemes? Ms Buck: I shall be interested to know more about that. We should, of course, encourage good practice at airports, spread that and ensure that the airports do everything possible to address the legitimate concerns of our constituents. For reasons that have been mentioned, I fear that the amendment will not take us forward satisfactorily by providing the kind of option for redress that the hon. Member for Canterbury has outlined. The effect of the new clause would be to place an additional regulatory burden on NATS, in terms of the retention of flight data for flights operating in controlled airspace. One of the unintended consequences of the drafting would be that that would not be imposed on other air traffic service providers. In
Secondly, NATS and other air traffic control providers are responsible for providing an ATC service for controlled airspace—that is, airspace made up of terminal control areas surrounding the major airports and the airways that links those control areas. They may retain radar records for 30 days to facilitate the investigation of incidents. However, flights in uncontrolled airspace are not compelled to receive an air traffic control service, nor are they required to notify the flight for the purpose of receiving permission to fly in such airspace. Consequently, flight data is often not available for such flights. Thirdly, the hon. Gentleman’s proposal to require NATS alone to release information within two weeks of an inquiry being made is more onerous than the current freedom of information regime, which requires disclosure within 20 days. There are, therefore, a number of practical difficulties, although I have considerable sympathy with the problem, and would wish to see everything possible done to ensure that individuals have some form of redress. Promotion of best practice has to be the best way forward, within the general context of the noise measures that are proposed in the Bill. Mr. Brazier: We have had a good debate. I particularly welcome the comments made about best practice at Gatwick. I think it is likely that my hon. Friends and I will seek to return to the matter on Report, having established some aspects of it in the debate. I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion. Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn. New Clause 6 Reduction of noise targets
Brought up, and read the First time. Motion made, and Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:— The Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes 7. [Division No. 4] AYES Afriyie, AdamBrazier, Mr. Julian Greening, Justine Pugh, Dr. John Syms, Mr. Robert
NOES Column Number: 98 Buck, Ms Karen Crausby, Mr. David Gwynne, Andrew McGovern, Mr. Jim Moffatt, Laura Roy, Mr. Frank Smith, John Question accordingly negatived. New Clause 7 Consultative Committees
Brought up, and read the First time. Mr. Brazier: When we debated new clause 4, I commented that it and new clause 7 are almost identical. I do not see any real reason to detain the Committee further on the matter. The issue of consultative committees at airports is important; there is genuine and legitimate concern about it. In our earlier sitting we discussed the issue at Coventry. However, I see little point in repeating that debate. New Clause 8 Duty to report on the transfer of powers from the CAA to the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA)
Brought up, and read the First time. 10 amMr. Brazier: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. Column Number: 99 By seeking to get the Government to report on the issue, I shall enable the Committee to have a short discussion on the transfer of powers from the CAA to the European Aviation Safety Agency, and the impact that that is having in a whole range of ways on aviation and industries related to aviation. I want to make two points in that area. I have no objection in principle to the idea that some of the Civil Aviation Authority’s duties have gone to its European equivalent. Airspace becomes increasingly crowded, and we move a long way in a short space of time. That logic is clear, and we are not discussing any principle. What I am deeply concerned about is the practical effect of what is happening. The first of the two points that I want to make is profoundly important. In our earlier debate, the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan spoke about the health of passengers; this point concerns the safety of passengers. The system for the provision of certificates of airworthiness has been a cornerstone of aviation safety for generations. It is a system that requires the services of a relatively small body of very highly skilled people whose skills are extremely marketable. The aircraft skills involved are in short supply, and those with them are highly employable. When the responsibility for airworthiness certificates was moved from the CAA to EASA, EASA had one employee. That was not a problem per se, as it temporarily pushed the responsibility back to the CAA and its counterparts in France and elsewhere to carry on the work as before. The new clause includes a provision on the need to report on the numbers of employees because I am told that the position is almost critical. EASA has managed to attract a number of those key skilled people, and the British certification work is now split between Cologne, where EASA is located, and the CAA, which still employs about 100 such skilled people. I need hardly tell the Committee how important the activity is. However, I understand that, because it is clear to the people working for the CAA that they have no long-term future in the CAA—the authority is running the activity down as it transfers to EASA—they are finding other jobs and leaving. After President Chirac’s rude comments about England and Finland, and the contribution that they may or may not have made to yesterday’s magnificent result, I must phrase my next sentence very carefully. As someone who spent many years of his childhood in Germany, I have nothing against Cologne, but the plain fact is that Cologne has not proved an attractive place for people with such precious aviation skills, the bulk of them English and French. I understand that there is a similar problem in France, as French mechanics are equally reluctant to work in Cologne. I do not wish to scaremonger or suggest that large numbers of aircraft will drop out of the sky tomorrow, but there is a major problem. We cannot continue with a situation in which the CAA’s base is declining and EASA, although it is expanding and has more than 100 employees in this area—the Minister may have more
I want briefly to mention my second concern—my first is obviously the overriding one, as passenger safety is at stake. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson), who has been working on behalf of a company in his constituency on something that again highlights the nonsense that we have got into with the partial transfer of powers from the CAA to EASA. The local company in question is a small firm in Oswestry run by the famous Swedish balloonist Per Lindstrand. It operates balloons that can be winched up and down. I have rather ugly memories of those because my parachuting course started on such a balloon and I found it deeply frightening. The balloons produced by the company that I am talking about are used, however, mostly for spectator activity. Because the balloon is winched up and down it is deemed to be an aviation product. After the transfer of powers began, Mr. Lindstrand approached the Civil Aviation Authority, which took £48,000 from him. After that, he was dealing with EASA, which initially would not allow the products to be sold in the EU at all, because of a bureaucratic anomaly relating to the certification of the winch that hauls the balloons up and down. Meanwhile, a French rival operating an almost identical product was immediately certified. I pay tribute to the work of the journalist Christopher Booker in exposing all this, and in supporting my hon. Friend. The EASA certification director eventually signed the air-worthiness certificate for Lindstrand’s aerostats, including the winch, and he could re-enter the market. However, immediately, the CAA, which still has some responsibilities in the area, came up with a new problem. He had to get design organisation approval for the makers of the winch and the software that controls it. It is now necessary to show that the two firms responsible for the winch were competent to build a safe product, even though they had already demonstrated that they were by contributing to a product that had, after a long and expensive process, been certified safe. The same applies to the computer firm that designed the software. It now emerges that the new rules, with that curious and muddled split of responsibilities, have placed as many as 85 specialist UK firms in a similar predicament. I do not want to develop the point further. I have made it as strongly as I need to. However, I remind the Committee that, meanwhile, the French product, which is almost identical but, I understand, has a genuine safety problem with its winch, has enjoyed problem-free certification during the entire relevant period, under the split of responsibilities in France between their authority and EASA. I do not know
The Minister must realise that it is not the action of drooling extreme Europhobes to call to account moves towards Europeanisation on grounds of practice. The Conservative party has no objection in principle to what was intended; for the reasons that I mentioned earlier, one can see why it makes sense. However, both the examples that I have given make it clear that the transfer is not working. It potentially endangers passengers and puts British firms at a severe competitive disadvantage. I am certain that the Minister could spend 10 minutes describing how burdensome it would be to produce the reports. She, I and the Committee know that the calling for a report would be a device to enable the debate to take place, because the Civil Aviation Bill contains an extraordinary gap, in that it says nothing about the transfer of powers. The aim of the new clause is to provoke the debate and have the Government provide answers on it—not, of course, to obtain a set of burdensome reports. |
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