I disclose an interest as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drones. A number of factors made me feel it was necessary to introduce the amendment. The first is that there is no definition of unmanned aerial vehicles. They are commonly known as drones although it tends to upset people in the military if you call them that. I have found it difficult to consider anything of 20 grams or less carrying a man. That is so inconceivable that I think the term “drones” can be used. There is no definition in existing primary or secondary legislation. The closest to a definition is “small, unmanned aircraft”, which is in Article 253 of the Air Navigation Order 2009.
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The second thing that made me feel that we need to start moving down this route is the huge and rapid march in technology. We discussed earlier the whole issue of communications data and how quickly that is changing. The same is true in this area. In 2009, when we were setting up the whole package for Olympic security, we were worried about hang-gliders and unmanned aerial vehicles, but we were talking about quite big unmanned aerial vehicles, which were not necessarily that reliable. Now we have very small, highly reliable and very complex little aerial vehicles which you can buy for as little as £300 to £500. People with access to money—for example, terrorists—can buy lots of them. That is really quite important. Being able to get them so cheaply is apparently known as the Maplin’s factor, which I understand is some sort of store. I was not aware of that; I thought it was something to do with a seaside resort in Wales.
Thirdly, the Civil Aviation Authority has always had rather a light touch on regulation of these things, partly because in the past they were not really such an issue. It stresses that small drones,
“with an operating mass of 20 kg or less are … exempt from the majority of the regulations”,
which is quite worrying.
There is also an increased public interest and concern in the potential for misuse of small drones. That was shown very well in the Independent on Saturday, which gave a lot of examples that have also come out in the media elsewhere. There was a small quad copter flying within 25 metres of a passenger aircraft at Southend and the co-pilot assessed that its conduct was deliberate. The drone was flying at it and there was a very high risk of collision. At Heathrow, an Airbus A320 suddenly realised that it had a UAV very close to it when it was at 700 feet. The drone had not shown up on air traffic control, not surprisingly, because it is so small. That was reported with an incident rating risk of category A, which is the most serious risk of a major accident. There are numerous examples, in France particularly, of these things flying over nuclear power stations and the like. There is a worry.
My reason for tabling the amendment is that there is no specific criminal terrorism offence regarding unmanned aerial vehicles as there is for aircraft, outside of very general Civil Aviation Authority restrictions under ANO 2009. In particular, drones are not covered by Section 4 of the Aviation Security Act 1982, entitled “Offences in relation to certain dangerous articles”,
which has been used as a precedent. That is a worry. We are not grasping this and including it in our legislation. I am not a great one for legislation—I hate legislation—but we need to look at this.
Similarly, while there are some no-fly zones around the UK, we need to identify, consider and regulate them in the sense of being aware of these very capable small drones and their use, particularly in the context of counterterrorism. I have given a lot of examples already, but someone in the aviation field got in contact with me today and said that they were worried that if a number of drones—something like 10 or so—were flown at the ILS system at an airport when the weather was not good, it would shut down the ILS system. Noble Lords can imagine the impact that that would have on an aircraft that was landing.
When the Birmingham Policy Commission conducted a study on the security impact of drones, which was chaired by Professor Sir David Omand, it examined specific risks that he felt needed to be addressed by legislators such as the use of drones carrying improvised explosive devices. They would be easy to make because you need only a very small amount of explosive or a chemical or biological agent. These are things that we have not had to focus on much recently and we hope that we never have to, but they are a real danger. Certainly, for part of my time as a Minister, I was constantly looking at concern about the use of these. Indeed, going back into the late 1990s, we stopped an attack on the north London water supply with ricin, so these are very real dangers that we need to think about.
The public are now becoming aware of drones. A drone strike would probably have more symbolic influence and effect on the public’s morale than the impact of what it did. Bringing down an airliner would be bad, but any incident would have quite an impact on the public.
There is a need for much more informed and open debate—outside the cross-government RPAS working group—on the risks and the response. I am not impressed, I say to the Minister, that the result of our bids for FOIs and information from that group has been very poor. There needs to be more open debate and transparency.
We have been in touch with the CAA. We know that it has very well known difficulties enforcing even the current light-touch regulation to do with drones, but it said that it would quite welcome specific criminal offences because this could supplement its work on reproducing its controls on aircraft. We think that it would acknowledge that its regime was designed before what I call the Maplin factor, and that therefore it does not really address counterterrorism. For those reasons, my amendments are necessary: we need to do this. I beg to move.