Civil Aviation Bill

I draw the House's attention to my entry in the Register of Members' Financial Interests. I welcome the chance to contribute to the debate. As a member of the Transport Committee, I was involved in the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill. I warmly welcome it and agree with the overall objective of overhauling and modernising the system of economic regulation, which is too rigid and in need of reform. Other Members have spoken about that in detail, and I will not repeat the points that have been made, but I particularly welcome the fact that the interests of passengers will be the top priority of the CAA. It is very important to stress that point. I wish to focus my comments on part 2 of the Bill, and specifically the clauses that will give the CAA the power to require all airports to publish information for the benefit of passengers. I strongly support that and believe that it is vital, in the interests of competition, that the correct information is easily available to passengers. As well as weighing up the performance of airlines on the convenience of flight times and on price, they should be able to weigh up the performance of airports when they make their decision about which mode of transport to choose and which airport to use. I fully appreciate that not all air passengers have freedom of choice about which airport to use, because their geographic location may restrict them to one particular airport or their destination may be served by only one realistically close airport. However, a large number of passengers have a choice of which airport they go to. I offer the example of Milton Keynes to illustrate that point. It does not have a local airport as such, but if I choose to visit family in Scotland, I can either choose to drive up, get the train or fly from four or five airports that are within easy travelling distance. I can use Birmingham, Luton, Heathrow or East Midlands, and even London City is not a huge travelling time away. I have used all those airports to fly up to Scotland, and their performance has varied enormously. I have had some very good experiences and some fairly hellish ones, and I found out about the airports' performance by trial and error. I will not name and shame the airport that was poor —[Hon. Members: ““Go on!””] I shall resist the temptation, but let us just say that there was a song about it a few years ago. I do not know whether the bad experience I had was just on an off-day for the airport or whether it was part of a longer-term performance issue. Proper information should be available about the performance of an airport over time—for instance the time it takes to get through security and the time it takes passengers flying in to get through passport control. Scottish National party Members are not in their place, but I very much hope that flights from Scotland will not require passport control as they wish. There should also be information on other issues, such as airport charges that contribute to the cost of a ticket and charges affecting passengers using the airport. Some airports levy a charge on those simply dropping travellers off at the front gate, and some charge for the little plastic bag we must put our liquids in, whereas others give them out for free. Information on such things is valuable for passengers when they are evaluating which airport to use. Other information that should be included are airports' records on dealing with things going wrong, be that bad weather or strikes. Airports perform differently, and passengers booking some time in advance wish for some reassurance that their interests will be looked after if things go wrong. The requirement to publish environmental information is important, and I am glad to see it in the Bill. I am open-minded about whether there should be a specific duty on environmental performance, but it is important that information on environmental performance is published so that people can choose to weigh it up when deciding how they will travel and from which airport. Transparency is the best guarantor of the objectives we want, and it is incredibly healthy to promote competition. I am aware that different organisations have responsibility for delivering the different aspects I have described. Some aspects are the responsibility of the airports and some are the responsibility of the airlines. Different Government Departments have different duties: immigration and passport control is the duty not of the Department for Transport but of the Home Office. Due weight should be given in the published information to which part of the airline industry is responsible for providing the different services. I support the Transport Committee recommendations on those points. As valuable as that information is, it should not be over-bureaucratic and it should not impose too great a burden on airlines or airports. I would make one suggestion: the new aviation consumer advocate panel, the role and remit of which are a little unclear at the minute, could decide what information was relevant to the interests of the passenger and what imposed too much bureaucracy and cost on airlines and airports. I shall share one further concern: the balance of needs between current and future passengers. For all the reasons I have explained, it is important that information is available to passengers. However, it is clearly in the interests of passengers in the long term for an airport to invest heavily in new infrastructure, even if there is a short-term cost in disruption. Any information that is published should be value added in some way to show performance over a long period, not just as a snapshot. The Bill is a good one and I welcome it. I hope the Government reflect on my suggestions as it progresses through the House, but I am happy today to give it my full support.