My Lords, I thank the Minister for her explanation, but I have to comment that there is something surreal about this SI. It talks about a lack of demand at a time when almost all airports, especially our largest—Heathrow and Gatwick, and one or two others—are struggling to cope.
The Government announced a grand plan of 22 points—this is one of them—and the Explanatory Memorandum talks of
“intervention to facilitate advance planning for a robust and reliable flight schedule.”
There is certainly a long way to go to achieve that, because it does not happen at the moment.
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There are some misconceptions in the Explanatory Memorandum. It talks about “prolonged reduced demand”, and there is evidently not prolonged reduced demand. At the moment, government intervention and the situation at airports are artificially holding down demand. Anecdotally, I can point to several conversations that I have had with contacts, friends and relatives over the past couple of weeks in which they have said, “I’m not flying this summer. I would normally do so”. So demand has returned and recovered, certainly in the leisure market, but it is not being catered for.
I always smile when I read Explanatory Memoranda that try not to mention Brexit. This one does its best at paragraph 7.3 by talking about
“wider challenges to the UK labour market”.
The point is that Brexit is the wider challenge to the UK labour market, which means that there is likely to be a long-term labour shortage. So my first question
to the Minister is: what progress has there been on the Government’s attempts to speed up the training and recruitment of additional workforce? The stories coming out of our airports are truly dire at the moment.
The impact of the Government’s efforts in the short term has been, as I said, to suppress demand to ensure that customers have a better experience, and I understand the good intention behind that. As a result, Heathrow is cancelling a percentage of flights and seats sold. Yesterday, there was a similar story in the Evening Standard about Gatwick. I am told today that Heathrow has specified the flights to be cancelled, which include Emirates flights. The Emirates airline is complaining loudly about this and has coined the memorable phrase “It’s Airmageddon”. It is very bad news for the aviation industry and for Britain that such a phrase is being used about our major airport.
I will be interested to hear the Minister’s explanation of how Heathrow has the right to specify the flights to be cancelled. I understand it having the right to say to airlines, “You must work within certain parameters”, but how can it choose a particular airline? How will that impact the aviation market, because it will distort it? We have had conversations in the past about the distorting effect of the slot process and how we can avoid that. Is it within the terms of the legislation that Heathrow can specify the flights to be cancelled?
My final point is that the two-week timeframe the Government gave the industry for cancelling slots seems very short. Is the Minister satisfied that the decisions were made with due care and attention, rather than in some kind of scramble by the industry to divest itself of some flights to fit the Government’s criteria? I would be particularly grateful for an answer about the Heathrow situation.