My Lords, it will come as no surprise that I am sympathetic to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stephen, albeit that I accept that it may not be in the right place today, as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, said. However, it chimes with what I have been trying to do over the past 18 months. As I said earlier to the noble Earl and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, we will have the pleasure, on the graveyard shift on Friday afternoon, of discussing my Private Member’s Bill, the Airports (Amendment) Bill, which is designed to deal with this issue, but in a different way.
Things in my region are fine right now—there are 10 or 11 flights a day to Heathrow—but the airline sector is very volatile. Already, Mr O’Leary of Ryanair is trying to buy out Aer Lingus, while Etihad has taken a small stake and is looking to increase it; they are not known for their interest in the regions. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, is that there is a key economic driver here. I have spent quite a lot of time over the years in politics and economic development. One thing is absolutely clear: if you cannot get businesspeople quickly to and from a region, the opportunities to develop economically are severely restricted. People will not go all round the countryside for hours, waiting to get flights. They need to come to a hub and get quickly to a region. Any other route is just a huge obstacle in their way. That is just common sense.
I have attempted to deal with this at two levels, both within the UK and at a European level, because there is a major European component to this. I know that I will have the opportunity to share this with the noble Earl on Friday, but a major piece of work has been undertaken in Europe; by sheer coincidence, it happens to be working in parallel on reviewing its whole slot activity and related matters. I am pleased that the European Parliament, because it accepts the Europe
of the regions, understands and is sympathetic to a lot of these issues. We are gradually moving in a positive direction in Europe, to the extent that the Government will not ultimately be in the position of saying, “Well, we may be sympathetic to what you need, but we cannot do it because it is against European law, and we will have to get that law changed in parallel”.
As the noble Lord, Lord Soley, said, in quoting the letter from the Minister, the connectivity issue is at the core of regional development policy and has been for donkey’s years. That is why we have regional policy in the UK. For years, Europe has been putting large amounts of money into the regions, to improve their connectivity and their infrastructure. There is not much point in doing that if we cannot then fly from a region to a major hub; all the investment is wasted. At least in Scotland, and to some extent in the south-west, there are alternatives, albeit slow ones—that is, road or rail. In our part of the country, we do not have the luxury of that option. In practice, it is basically air or nothing. That is the dilemma that we are faced with. So while I have a lot of sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Stephen, is trying to do, I suspect that he will probably suffer a technical knockout this afternoon. Nevertheless, his heart and his aspirations are in the right place and I hope that the sentiments expressed in the Minister’s letter will be followed up positively.