My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his amusing and thorough explanation of the reasons behind his amendments. I absolutely agree with him that the issue of lost baggage is extremely important. He observed that some airports are better than others.
If your Lordships will bear with me, I should like, first, to speak to Amendments 17, 18 and 19 to Clause 18, on licence conditions, and, secondly, to Amendment 57 to Clause 83, on the provision of information for the benefit of passengers and cargo owners. I can appreciate why the noble Lord wishes to discuss these amendments in a group as they all concern the undoubtedly important matter of passenger welfare but I also believe that there is good reason for speaking to them individually so that particular aspects of the amendments may be considered in full.
I am aware that amendments similar to Amendments 17, 18 and 19 were debated in the other place and I am grateful to have the opportunity to return to them today. I do not think that it can be denied that this Bill already recognises the importance of passengers and their interests. Indeed, this is enshrined in the primary duty which states that the CAA must carry out its functions in a manner which it considers will further the interests of users of air transport services in the provision of airport operation services.
As users of air transport services, passengers will clearly be at the heart of the CAA’s considerations. There can be no doubt that passengers desire and deserve efficient baggage handling services when they travel by air or that, when faced with delays, they are not left without advice and help where appropriate.
The experience of recent years has also demonstrated how vital it is that all airports prepare effectively for potential disruption. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, talked about the disruption from snow a couple of years ago. When I visited Gatwick and saw the lines of gleaming snow-clearing machinery and they told me how quickly they could clear the runways, I was quite confident that the last winter would be a mild one—and that is what happened.
What is clear is that the aviation sector as a whole needs to have effective means to deal with passenger welfare during disruption of services. However, one key purpose of the Bill is to provide the CAA as an independent regulator with the discretion and flexibility to deliver targeted and proportionate licences, containing conditions which it considers requisite after undertaking appropriate consultation. So while I can very much understand and empathise with the sentiment behind noble Lords’ amendments, I am unable to recommend putting them into the Bill.
These three amendments seek to include a requirement in Clause 18 that the CAA should be required to include specified matters in licence conditions. Under the clause, the CAA is empowered to impose licence conditions consistent with its Clause 1 duties, which go beyond matters related to the abuse of substantial market power. Therefore, the CAA will have the power to include licence conditions addressing the matters raised in these amendments when to do so furthers the interests of passengers and freight owners in the provision of airport operation services. Obviously, losing baggage clearly comes into that. However, what should be included in a licence will always be fact specific and will change over time. Therefore, I do not believe that introducing provisions as to express conditions would be appropriate.
Clause 18 provides the CAA with flexibility regarding if and how licence conditions should be included. If we were to use this Bill to set in stone certain points in licences, this would constrain the regulator’s freedom to decide what priority should be afforded to different passenger concerns and what costs should be allowed for the delivery of competing consumer priorities. I do not think it appropriate that government should determine what present and future passengers are most concerned about or what obligations should be included by the CAA in specific licences. Moreover, a prescriptive approach in the Bill is likely to make it more difficult for the regulator to adapt its approach to the changing needs and concerns of passengers. If we were to accept these amendments, this would oblige the CAA to give greater weight to these factors than other matters that might become equally or more important to passengers in future.
I would also seek to reassure noble Lords that they can be confident that the CAA would use the new licensing powers under the Bill to focus on matters such as operational resilience and passenger welfare in
the event of extreme disruption. At the request of the Department for Transport, the CAA in January this year published an indicative licence which includes provisions on operational resilience. The proposals contained in condition 7 of this indicative licence would require the licence holder to operate the airport efficiently and to use its best endeavours to minimise detriment to passengers arising from disruption. It would also require the airport to draw up, consult on, and gain the CAA’s approval for an annual resilience plan, setting out how it will secure compliance with its obligations under the condition. The licence holder is then obliged to comply with commitments it has made in its resilience plan. In drafting this indicative licence, the CAA sought initial views from industry. Once the Bill is enacted, the CAA will begin to consult on proposed licence conditions for each airport that will be subject to regulation. This process will involve consideration of the extent to which it is necessary or expedient to include conditions in the licence regarding operational resilience and other matters such as passenger welfare.
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The CAA also expects, where appropriate, for licence conditions to take into account other obligations on service quality standards and the success of codes of conduct and voluntary arrangements being adopted by industry. The Government believe that putting such specific requirements in the Bill as proposed by these amendments such as baggage handling and operational resilience could prove to be a disproportionate response and would place an unnecessary restriction on the CAA’s flexibility to develop proportionate and effective ways to address passenger concerns. The CAA, as the body with the relevant operational experience, is best placed to determine appropriate and effective licence conditions on these and other matters and we must place our trust in the independent regulator.
The duty on the CAA to consult on licence conditions and the appeals framework will provide an effective means of placing accountability on the CAA to ensure that licences at the designated airports take into account the interests of present and future passengers. As I have already said, I entirely appreciate the rationale behind the noble Lords’ amendments. However, I am more strongly persuaded that providing the specialist regulator with a flexible toolkit in the form of licences remains the best way of ensuring that present and future passengers’ interests are protected.
I turn to Amendment 57 to Clause 83. While I am sympathetic to the intention of this amendment, I cannot support it as it is in part redundant and in part inappropriate. Your Lordships may recall that similarly worded amendments were tabled and debated in the Committee and Report stages in the other place and in Grand Committee. Before turning to the detail of the points made by your Lordships with regard to border force and other matters, I think it is important to emphasise the importance of the clause this amendment seeks to alter. Clause 83 gives the CAA a new and important statutory role in promoting better public information about the aviation industry’s performance. This is intended to improve choice in the market and
address what economists call “asymmetric information”, in that passengers do not always have the information they need in order to compare the services on offer. Giving consumers more information on service quality provided by airports, airlines and other service providers will help ensure that markets deliver consumer benefits in practice.
Turning first to the matter of baggage handling and security checks, I reassure your Lordships that the powers granted in the Bill already enable the CAA to publish such information. These issues fall fairly and squarely with the remit that Clause 83 would give to the CAA since there is little doubt that they are of concern to passengers. Indeed, these may well be issues that the CAA will wish to focus on, although it is not for me to prejudge how it would use these new powers.
The other main focus of the amendment is on border controls. The publication powers in the Bill do not extend to the performance of the UK Border Force. This is because the border force is already accountable to Ministers and Parliament. That is a far more effective and appropriate means to hold it to account than to give the CAA the power to oversee its activities. The Government do not believe that it would be appropriate for the CAA to be able to obtain data from a directorate within the Home Office, particularly where there is a threat of a financial penalty if the information is not provided.
I agree that immigration queues can have an impact on the passenger experience but the purpose of the performance reporting functions in Clause 83 is to correct market failure. There is no market for the provision of immigration control services and thus systems designed to deal with market failure are not an appropriate way to deal with the performance of the border force. We should not let a focus on queuing times make us overlook the importance or the sensitivity of the work of the border force. It is, after all, the UK control authority responsible for screening passengers and goods at the border for counterterrorism, immigration, customs and criminality purposes. The Government require full travel document checks to be conducted on all persons, including British citizens, arriving at the UK border. While, of course, the border force and the Government take seriously the issues raised by your Lordships about queue times and the passenger experience, the security of our borders and the checks that need to be undertaken to protect us from those who would enter our country to do us harm have to be paramount.
Having successfully secured the border during the Olympics, the UK Border Force is implementing a robust programme of improvements to maintain performance in future. This includes: additional trained relief staff from elsewhere across the border force, UKBA and other government departments; a substantial recruitment programme, with fully flexible terms and conditions for new recruits; at Heathrow, a new command centre to better manage staff deployment; new staff rosters; and improved ways of modelling demands and resources.
I have listened carefully to the views expressed about the border force. I should also like to reassure your Lordships that the border force fully recognises
the importance of working closely with individual airport operators effectively to manage passenger flows while ensuring that control functions are properly discharged. In addition, the border force has introduced a joint approach for data collection on queues at Heathrow. These data are collected and used by Heathrow and the border force for reporting performance. Heathrow has published queuing data on its website since April 2012 and has recently begun reporting the shared data. The border force also publishes quarterly returns on the clearance of passengers on the UKBF website detailing performance going back to 2010-11. That said, my honourable friend the Minister of State for Immigration, Mark Harper, has agreed to review what additional data may potentially be published by the Home Office to bring greater transparency at an individual airport level while minimising bureaucracy and burdens.
I thank noble Lords for their patience and hope they are reassured that I have given these amendments the thorough consideration they deserve, while understanding the reasons for which I am unable to accept them. I hope that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendment at the appropriate point.