Airport Security

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr. Taylor. You normally sit next to me on the Back Benches, but it is nice to see you in an appropriate place. I thank Mr. Speaker for allowing us to have this important debate, which is timely given the circumstances of the past few weeks. I wish to place on record my appreciation of the unsung heroes who did their bit to show, to use local Glasgow parlance, that the UK will not be messed with in circumstances such as those at Glasgow airport. That goes for police, on or off duty, baggage handlers and of course the obligatory taxi driver, all of whom served the occasion extremely well. I also wish to record my appreciation of my own airport, Glasgow Prestwick. The management and staff immediately swung into action and put in place what later became the guidance given to them by the airport security directors by blocking off all the car routes into the airport and to the terminal buildings. It is only right for me to congratulate them on ensuring that that was done without any delays to scheduled flights, despite their having to put up with a number of diverted planes from Glasgow airport. The Government need to address airport security urgently. Over a great number of years, there have been major incidents such as Lockerbie and the one that caused the most concern to the industry, that of 11 September 2001. We must be careful about what we say, because the last thing that we want to do is to give any information to anyone who is likely to use it for all the wrong reasons. As a Member of Parliament from north of the border, I travel frequently on airlines. One could almost describe me as a seasoned traveller. By using airports twice a week, I have got to know the system pretty well, although perhaps not all of it. In addition, I have used airports regularly as a member of the Select Committee on Transport for some 14 years. We regularly examine security at airports, and as a consequence I have picked up something about the system. From that, I recognise that there are four areas of responsibility in airport security: that of the passenger, who in turn expects the airport authorities and airlines to be well versed in their areas of responsibility. Finally, and perhaps more importantly, there are the responsibilities given to the Government and, through them, to agencies such as Transec. The passenger has been affected over the years by increased restrictions, which have been in place for a considerable time. Some of them have regularly created chaos at a substantial number of airports, and at particular airports it has become the norm to have chaos. The question for the passenger is whether they perceive the restrictions that have been imposed as being over the top. One thing that passengers certainly have to put up with, and that I have had to put up with over the years and particularly in the past few months, is the inconsistency of security. In addition, they have to watch other passengers who are travelling through airports for perhaps the first time in their lives and do not have a single clue about how to deal with security, thereby cluttering up the approaches to security areas. One faces other problems. I do not know whether it is parliamentary to show them, but I have with me a knife and fork that were presented to me by a constituent after he had collected them airside at Glasgow airport. He had been to Spain and was refused permission to carry a set of cutlery on to the plane as a wedding present. He went through security and came out the other side, went for a meal and was presented with the knife and fork that I have with me. Now, tell me that they could not damage somebody. The inconsistencies of the system need to be examined better by the Government and their agencies. By virtue of the fact that the airlines have had additional costs, passengers’ fares are being loaded to the extent that they are becoming out of the reach of many of my constituents and, I am sure, those of many of my colleagues. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic tell me that one issue alone is costing them millions of pounds a month: items of hand luggage, on which there is a discrepancy between the UK and the rest of Europe. That has meant that business travellers in particular, instead of coming through Heathrow to interconnect and come back to God’s country, Scotland, are going through Schipol, Charles de Gaulle or Frankfurt airports. That is nonsense, and for too long it has been left as part of the review that is taking place. It needs to be addressed more urgently. Baggage loss in interconnections is another factor. The amount of baggage lost must have security implications. Every time I have interconnected at Heathrow in the past year, I have lost my bags for at least a day and on one occasion for a week. What concerned me on that occasion was that nobody seemed to know where my bag was. Nobody had a clue. They tell people that there is a website on which you can see where your bag is and what the state of play is, but from day one to day seven the information was exactly the same—absolutely zilch. That needs to be examined seriously, because it is clear to me that there are major security implications. Why, at some airports, do passengers who are reconnecting have to go through a second round of security checks? I have never understood that. They come off a plane that has flown from across the Atlantic, where security is tight. They come to Heathrow to connect to a flight northwards and have to go through the security system all over again. That seems to be using unnecessary manpower and should be examined. Surely it is time to consider what is known in the industry as ““reasoned selection””. It is plainly folly that passengers go through the exercise of security twice, which causes long queues and is often responsible for considerable delays in aircraft taking off. I have even had some constituents complain that they have missed flights as a result of such delays. Unless those issues are dealt with, the industry, which is already suffering, will continue to suffer. Let me turn from passengers to the airports themselves. Airports are required properly to resource the security element, and that is right. Although at times there has been a marked improvement—I have to admit that there have been times when such queues were not normal—it is also the case that passengers can guarantee that if they hit Heathrow at a certain time of the day there will be queues out the door. In addition, I understand from discussions about what is happening behind the scenes that, because there are still problems with giving clearance to staff, catering and baggage handling are affected. That is all down to the fact that the airports do not seem to have a grip on the situation. Those are factors that delay airlines and aircraft in doing what they are there to do, which is, of course, to fly. I believe that it was my good friend Michael O’Leary who once said that planes do not make any money when they are sitting on the tarmac. It is clear that frustrations are building up, and many of them are partly caused by airport inefficiencies. It is perhaps unavoidable that I should cite one particular airport owner, given that it controls the great bulk of passenger miles undertaken in this country. The company is BAA. We are told by Mr. Nelson, its chief executive, that it plans to put another £40 million into security, but that it still expects long queues on occasion while it is doing that. That is not good enough. Nor is it good enough to suggest that there is to be an extra 1,400 security guards. That in itself will not help the position greatly unless and until the company starts paying its staff at appropriate rates. In my 15 years of regular plane travel—and, before that, another 15 years of travelling just within Scotland by plane—I have never seen the same security guard at Heathrow twice. That suggests that there is enormous turnover of security staff at Heathrow. The company may be training them, but it is not paying them, and as long as it does not pay them, it is not providing the security that I and, I believe, my constituents require in order to feel safe as we move through airports. Mr. Nelson promises that he will cut queuing to five minutes or less. I cannot envisage that happening in the foreseeable future unless there is an enormous change of emphasis. Finally, on airports, baggage is still going missing. I have already dealt with that in part. I was told that at one time 40 per cent. of the baggage was missing. That is a ridiculously high level, but that was the figure on one day. That is unacceptable. The fact that the companies do not seem to know where bags are at any given time is a clear indication that something is fundamentally wrong with the organisation as it stands.