My Lords, by decoupling my earlier amendments I appreciate that the Minister may have addressed, in part, some of the remarks I am
about to make, through no fault of his own. This group of amendments addresses the second issue of principle and policy I wish to raise with the Minister; he will see that I made this point at an earlier stage in the Bill. It concerns the continued availability and improvement of services for GBA at UK airfields. The GBA community comprises civil aviation operations other than commercial air transport flights operating to a schedule. It represents a multi-billion pound industry in the UK, from executive business jets to flying training, air ambulances, private aircraft operators and pilots.
The Minister helpfully expanded on that generalisation by referring to important GBA services such as search and rescue, mail delivery, life-saving organ transport, law enforcement, aerial survey and environmental protection flights, and the training of future pilots. He also mentioned its growing economic importance for the European manufacturing industry, as stated in Hansard on 29 June 2012 at col. GC144. This recognition of the importance of the sector in the European context was recently enforced by the report to EASA to which I referred earlier.
A 2009 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that only 4% of the 27,000 aircraft registered in the UK were commercial air transport aircraft. As I said before, therefore, we have a Bill before us which ignores 96% of UK registered aircraft and restricts itself to the regulation of those few airports which enjoy a dominant market position. It does not address the needs or interest of the GBA community, or make any attempt to regulate the activities of the majority of airports on which this important sector depends. Sadly, GBA users are increasingly neglected and, at worst, discriminated against, by operators of airports serving predominantly commercial aviation—the sort of airports this Bill is concerned with.
Other threats to the future of GBA arise from the growing pressures on infrastructure, the loss of airfields to development and a regulatory environment which fails to recognise the nature of GBA in formulating policy. If the regulation of airport facilities is framed for the benefit of the air transport user, as it is in this Bill, the inevitable consequences will be creeping marginalisation of other sectors of civil aviation—the GBA. This trend is already evident. I travel wildly as a private pilot—sorry, widely, not wildly; I am glad to say that my flying sometimes is up to scratch—and I find that the provision for GBA in many other countries put ours to shame. The key outstanding issue in respect of a network of airfields is at least considered in the draft aviation policy framework, although access to airfields is as yet unaddressed.
Although I detected an inclination to progress on the part of the Government and the CAA, I tabled amendments in an attempt to speed the process, to protect GBA and to ensure that this important sector can continue to use our major airports. I hope that in his response the Minister will not only acknowledge that there is a problem but set out how the Government intend to respond to it.
I am mindful that when I made a similar point in Grand Committee, the Minister felt that my amendments were deficient because they failed to provide a definition
and description of what was meant by general and business aviation. This time I have adopted a different approach and defined GBA in Clauses 66 and 68 as users of airport operation services. I have also added a definition to Schedule 7.
I recognise that my amendments may yet again have been imperfectly formulated by my team to secure the changes for which I argue. That is in part because the Bill is so narrowly constructed as to exclude consideration of the wider issues that are of such concern across Europe. These deficiencies could be easily remedied if the Minister were to accept the principles behind the amendments and work with me and my advisers in GBA to construct something that would secure what we both wish to see—a wish he articulated in addressing my earlier amendments—namely, a vibrant, energetic and successful GBA sector, thriving with the support of the Government and making a full and growing contribution to the UK’s economy. I beg to move.
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