My Lords, in moving Amendment 17 I shall also speak to the other three amendments in this group, which broadly encompasses the issues of passenger welfare. Amendment 17 would ensure that a licence includes an obligation on the licence holder to publish annual surveys on passenger satisfaction. This would be of considerable advantage to the industry: it would encourage improved performance at airports, and it would certainly give members of the travelling public some information on the relative performance of airports. It would therefore give a basis for what we all would want to see: improvement in passenger welfare at significant airports.
We have not the slightest doubt that there is considerable pressure from the public to improve welfare at airports. That is why the Select Committee on Transport in the other place emphasised that licences should be structured so as to address passenger satisfaction. One dimension of the issue which I am sure will occasion no surprise at all for regular air travellers is the issue of satisfaction with baggage handling. We all know the distress which is caused when baggage goes astray. I remember the time that I arrived in southern Africa and discovered that my baggage had been taken off the aircraft in Kenya, just a little way away. It contained everything that I intended to employ on the trip apart from my travelling clothes. The embarrassment was considerable. Of course, we know endless stories of the difficulties that passengers have had with baggage.
There needs to be a stimulus to improve performance. A requirement on the airport to indentify its efforts in these respects is important. It is not just a question of lost baggage—we all know the inordinate delay that can also occur. Experienced travellers always allow a certain amount of additional time for the retrieval of baggage. However, when one goes to a really efficient airport which delivers the baggage almost as soon as one can get to the retrieval hall, there is a distinct comparison with those airports that seem to have endless waits before the baggage appears.
I believe that improvement is going on in our major airports. On one occasion I came back from China via Paris because I could not get a direct flight to London. I arrived at London Stansted to find that my baggage was waiting virtually as I stepped off the aircraft and went into the hall. That is such a rare experience that I felt obliged to write to the authorities at Stansted to congratulate them on that achievement and to express the hope that it would be repeated on all future occasions—some luck.
These amendments are designed to improve what we all recognise needs to be improved with the handling of airports. The other dimension of which we are all too well aware is that airports have to take some responsibility for stranded passengers. We all recall—mercifully, the memory is ebbing away a little as each month goes by—almost two years ago when for a considerable time Heathrow had thousands of passengers stranded without any help or support of any kind and through no immediate fault of the airport in terms of the climatic conditions. However, it was subsequently identified that the problems lay with the treatment of the aircraft on the ground and the de-icing aspect. We know that there has been heavy investment to improve the situation following that event and that Heathrow should be congratulated on taking that action.
We need to keep up a standard of expectation that reduces the consequences of delay on passengers who otherwise, as has happened in the past, are left in the most unpleasant circumstances and bereft of any indication of what they are meant to do or how they should cope with their circumstances. Even if they could take action themselves, they have no information on which to work.
For all those reasons, passenger welfare is an important part of this Bill. Our amendments are designed to strengthen the Bill in respect of that important feature. I beg to move.