I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions to today’s debate. I hope to get through as many of the questions as I possibly can. I think I can do them all, but if not, as ever, I will pop a letter in the post and try to provide a bit more information.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering raised the airport tax with me beforehand and we discussed it. The airline knows when someone books a ticket, so it knows that it has people who are about to fly, but many people book tickets many months ahead. I suppose that the airline thinks that it will be able to meet those obligations many months ahead, and then it turns out that it cannot. That is where short-notice cancellations come in. We know that there is a significant amount of data in the sector; obviously a lot of it is commercially sensitive, but we are fortunate in that it is shared with the department in certain circumstances so that we can scrutinise what is going on.
I was interested in my noble friend’s intervention about ground handling and operations. That was one of the things we pointed out specifically in our letter to the industry with the CAA, which we sent at the beginning of June. We were absolutely clear with the sector that we need a realistic schedule. This is one of the things that today’s regulations will help to provide. People need certainty.
The second point that we put in that letter was that we wanted all airports to have airport partner working groups. This was particularly to address the issue that my noble friend identified: to make sure that airports are not caught short by a lack of staff in ground- handling operations that they did not know about. We asked them to do that; we also asked them to focus, again, on passengers with reduced mobility, as there have been some dreadful stories of people being left on aircraft. But in all that, there should be no compromise on safety and security. Of course, we also said that all passengers must be informed of their rights and compensated where appropriate.
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I am probably going to say this quite a few times this afternoon, but this is a private sector. The Government are not going to go in and start requiring that sector to do certain things because it looks like a good idea right now. We are doing as much as we possibly can. However, it is a private sector and we expect the private sector to sort itself out. If we can help, we will, which is what the 22-point plan is about and where we can remind the sector of things it should be doing—for example, the airport partner working groups—then we are very happy to do so.
In that vein, the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned training and security clearance. There are two facets to this. The first is that background checks are required, which the industry does. You have to be
able to prove five years of your employment history to work in the sector and we enabled the use of HMRC employment history letters, which are helpful in that regard. The second thing we said on the industry background checks, because it can obviously sometimes take time to confirm someone’s employment, is that training can start during that period; previously, I think we were prevented by EU law from training starting while background checks were ongoing. We recognised that training could start—obviously, certain elements of it would not have been able to start, but at least the basic elements could.
There is a second lot of checks, which are those done by Her Majesty’s Government. Those include UK security and vetting, where there is no backlog and all applicants are being turned around in a few days, so that is not an issue. We have done what we can; the airports and airlines have not also stepped up and been able to recruit the people, given that there are no other barriers than them essentially being able to attract the right people, pay them the right amounts and give them the right terms and conditions. Clearly, that is something they will have to look at but, again, it is not for government to get involved in that. If the sector decides it wants to shoot itself in the foot by not providing a good service then it will, and others might then enter the sector and provide a better service. We shall see how that pans out.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned Heathrow. One of the journalists—I think it was Mr Calder—that the noble Baroness mentioned said that airlines were still selling tickets in that period. Yes, if the cap had not been reached there was no rationale for people not to sell them then. But on the more general situation at Heathrow, it is clearly a very important airport and has its own relationships with its airlines. I have seen the back and forth with Emirates and I should imagine that Emirates is extremely irritated. Heathrow will have to manage its relationship with Emirates, and all the airlines, because other airports are available.
At the end of the day, there are other options and an airline that felt particularly aggrieved might decide to take another option. Again, we are not going to get involved in that. We have no lever with which to get involved to shape how Heathrow Airport manages its business. It has decided to act as it does, which it is within its right to do as the owner of the airport. You cannot just turn up; you have to have a booking. It will be interesting to see how that develops.
Obviously, we all want to see everything go back to normal and our hugely successful aviation sector get back on its feet, but this is not unique. My noble friend talked about half term. I think she said 2% to 3% of UK flights were cancelled; it was 11% in the Netherlands. This is not unique to the UK. However, I reiterate what my noble friend said: I too travelled at that time and had no trouble at all. Not all airlines, airports or times of day are affected. We should therefore make sure that people do not get overly concerned or anxious about the situation.
On short-notice cancellations, there are usually emails and texts—the normal ways one communicates with airlines. I thank both noble Baronesses for raising the
14-day period. We originally proposed seven days, but following the consultation that was increased to 14. That is beneficial for all concerned in terms of planning, and it benefits consumers. If a flight is cancelled within 14 days, the airline loses its right to alleviate that slot, so this is quite a useful lever.
I know it does not feel like it, but there is still reduced demand for aviation globally. The shortage of staff globally—this affects the States as well—is putting a dampener on demand, but some people are still choosing not to travel. The Government are trying not to suppress demand but to manage supply. Our number one concern is getting a schedule that is deliverable. By putting this regulation in place, we will improve the deliverability of the schedule and of whatever supply is out there. I very much hope that all the demand can find an appropriate flight, but I do not know whether that is the case as we have not seen exactly what will happen.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, talked about the Government’s plan for aviation. We have a very capable Aviation Minister who has been working in the sector for a number of years and there are a number of strategic documents out there that set out very clearly what the Government are looking for, such as Flightpath to the Future. We have done all sorts of consultations recently on consumer policy reform. We are also working very hard on the longer-term skills element of this, in terms of how we encourage people into the aviation sector. My honourable friend the Aviation Minister is at the heart of these 22 measures. Although the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, is disappointed that the Secretary of State has not met somebody this summer, I assure him that the Aviation Minister is all over this and has been since the beginning of the year. We have been working on this for months. Obviously, these regulations do not come from nowhere; we have been working on them for a very long time.
The noble Lord asked about some of the elements from the 22-point plan. Point 3 refers to the strategic risk group. It is an important group and yes, very senior attendees from the aviation sector turn up. He reckoned that it could have met at least twice. I assure him that it has met five times and will continue to meet during the summer. I will write to him if I can get any more information about the outputs from those meetings; I suspect a lot of the information will be commercially sensitive, but it may not be and I may be able to provide a bit more input. The operational directors do turn up to the summer resilience group referred to in point 4. That group has met seven times to date and will continue to meet over the summer.
The joint Home Office and DfT ministerial border group would not normally meet if there were no problems at the borders—I do not like having meetings unless something is wrong—and our borders normally function incredibly well. The four meetings that have happened this year so far have been used to scrutinise plans and make sure that everything is appropriate.
On point 6, I can confirm that we get data from the major airlines and the airports weekly. Obviously, much of it is commercially sensitive and therefore is not published.
I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and other noble Lords that the Government take this really seriously. We have tried to intervene wherever we can but, at the end of the day, this is a private sector and we will leave it to the private sector to sort this out. We want our aviation sector to be back to its greatness as soon as possible. This regulation is a small step to help the system to stabilise and then, hopefully, to grow.