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My Lords, civil aviation is a cornerstone of our national prosperity, supporting jobs, investment and connectivity across the United Kingdom. In 2025 alone, UK airports handled 2.1 million commercial flights and nearly 300 million passengers. This highlights both the scale of the sector and the need for effective regulation. The Bill before your Lordships’ House will reinforce consumer protections, support economic growth and aviation infrastructure, and enable improved safety standards. In doing so, it will help ensure that the UK remains an attractive and competitive aviation hub for years to come.
I am sure that noble Lords will wish to consider the case for this Bill. The sector has changed profoundly in recent years. Rapid technological advances, new aircraft capabilities and the emergence of new airspace users, such as drones, have created complexity for which the current framework was not designed. At the same time, the UK has lost certain powers to update regulation following EU exit. The sector has also faced external shocks, such as the recent instability in the Middle East and the unprecedented disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic. To manage this, we need a framework flexible enough to respond to volatility, embrace innovation and prioritise passengers. That is the purpose of this Bill.
The Bill takes an important step to strengthen consumer protection for passengers. Although the sector serves millions well, when things go wrong some may face uncertainty and delay in securing redress. The Bill introduces a power to strengthen air passenger rights through secondary legislation, ensuring that they keep pace with case law, international standards and a changing landscape. This will allow the Government to tackle the issues that matter most to passengers: delays and cancellations, baggage loss or damage, injury or death, protections for disabled and less mobile passengers, and redress mechanisms for individuals.
I am acutely aware of the difficulties that disabled passengers can encounter when flying, including poor and inappropriate service, long waiting times, and damaged and lost mobility aids. I have heard concerns expressed by noble Lords from all sides of the House on challenges that they have faced themselves or when travelling with family and friends. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, led my department’s Aviation Accessibility Task and Finish Group to identify ways to improve without legislation the travel experience of disabled air passengers, but this Bill will provide the Government with the powers to strengthen legal protections where necessary to ensure that the system works for all passengers, including those who require assistance.
Crucially, the Bill strengthens enforcement. Unlike other regulators, the Civil Aviation Authority currently relies on court action to protect consumer rights. This is slow and resource intensive. The Bill will give the CAA direct consumer enforcement powers, aligning it with the Competition and Markets Authority. That will allow earlier and more effective intervention, quicker redress and greater passenger confidence.
The Bill supports the modernisation of UK airspace. The UK has some of the busiest and most complex airspace in the world, yet much of its design dates back to the 1950s. Modernisation is therefore essential to maintain and improve safety, reliability and efficiency, as well as to reduce emissions and noise for communities. Without it, it is estimated that, by 2040, as many as one in five flights could face significant disruption. The Government have established the UK Airspace Design Service to deliver the most complex airspace changes, beginning with London. The Bill complements that work by strengthening the Secretary of State’s existing powers of direction, enabling her, where necessary, to direct those involved in airspace change to implement approved designs. This provides a more robust power of last resort, ensuring that modernisation can proceed effectively.
The Bill broadens who may be charged for the provision of air traffic and air navigation services. This will ensure that the cost of providing better air services, including funding the UK Airspace Design Service, can continue to be recovered fairly, as new types of airspace service users emerge.
On slot reform, the Bill enables a more agile and resilient approach to airport slot regulation, a framework that has remained largely unchanged since the early 1990s. Effective slot allocation is essential, not only in times of disruption but to maintain capacity, connectivity and competitiveness. The Government must be able to respond swiftly and proportionately when demand changes or operational pressures arise. The Bill therefore introduces a delegated power to amend slot regulations when needed, replacing powers lost after EU exit.
Recent experience has shown why that matters. The pandemic demonstrated how quickly aviation operations can be disrupted, and more recent instability in the Middle East has reinforced how quickly external events can impact aviation, resulting in the need for an urgent statutory instrument to be brought before this House in the next few days using powers that will no longer be available after 23 June. The Bill therefore provides a much-needed mechanism for updating slot rules when circumstances require it in the future.
Finally, the Bill strengthens the aviation safety framework. The UK has an excellent record on aviation safety and these measures will help ensure that it is maintained. However, since EU exit, all changes to safety regulations—mostly highly technical and routine updates—must be delivered through statutory instruments. This process is time-consuming, resource intensive and duplicative; it is unsuitable for an international and fast-moving sector such as aviation, where global safety standards evolve continuously.
As a result, the UK is falling behind on its international obligations, which could impact the safety of the sector. The Bill aims to make safety rule-making faster and more efficient, by delegating technical aviation safety and operational standards to the Civil Aviation Authority. This will create a more responsive and agile framework, helping to ensure that safety requirements keep pace with international standards and the changing landscape.
We recognise that noble Lords, and Members in the other place, will want to ensure appropriate ministerial and parliamentary oversight of this delegation. The Bill includes strong measures precisely to ensure this. The Secretary of State will set objectives and priorities for the Civil Aviation Authority, which will be laid before Parliament, including a forward look at rule-making tasks. The Secretary of State will be able to direct or even override, if necessary, the CAA’s exercise of its rule-making functions using her existing powers.
The Bill also includes binding requirements on the Civil Aviation Authority to consult and notify affected parties, including Ministers, and a duty to report to Parliament on the exercise of this delegated power. This approach gives Parliament a more holistic forward and backward view on aviation safety rule-making, compared with the fragmented and piecemeal view it has in the current system. It also enables much-needed consolidation of the existing, fragmented sources of law, which would otherwise be impractical. This will make compliance for industry simpler and enhance safety.
Alongside this, the Bill addresses an important gap in enforcement. It restores powers, lost after the EU exit, to amend and create aviation safety-related criminal offences where necessary. Without this, some safety rules cannot be fully enforced, making them harder to update and less effective in practice. Taken together, these measures will support a clearer, more effective regulatory framework by preserving the UK’s high safety standards, aligning better with international practice and sustaining public confidence in the safety of our aviation system.
In closing, I know many noble Lords will be interested in how the Bill interacts with the Government’s support for a third runway at Heathrow. I should be clear: the Bill is designed to support the entire aviation sector, regardless of any decisions on expansion. Those with a particular interest in Heathrow will have an opportunity to scrutinise proposed changes to the airports national policy statement later this year.
Before I conclude, I should note that this Bill is an important waypoint, not the end of the runway, for aviation reform—sorry. Following Royal Assent, further regulations will set out the detail for industry and allow for further scrutiny by your Lordships and Members in the other place. The Bill’s application is UK-wide, as aviation is a reserved matter, but some of its clauses touch on transferred matters in Northern Ireland. The Government are therefore seeking a legislative consent Motion from the Northern Ireland Assembly.
This Bill is a measured and practical piece of legislation. It updates the legislative framework governing civil aviation in a way that is proportionate, targeted and grounded in the needs of a modern sector, while remaining consistent with the high standards this House would rightly expect. I hope noble Lords will recognise the value of these reforms and feel able to support the Bill’s passage today. I beg to move.
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My Lords, before I start my remarks, I draw attention to my declaration in the register of interests as the non-executive chair of RVL Aviation.
The Minister will, I hope, be pleased to know that I, for one, broadly support the Bill, although there are some areas where I have some questions and concerns. Where I agree with him—he set this out clearly in his letter to Peers—is on the importance of the sector: how important civil aviation is for the UK, particularly given our global interests and the number of jobs it supports in the economy, and indeed its importance for economic growth. I completely agree with that. He also set out in that letter the fact that there is an awful lot of change and that we are global leaders in some of the development of new technologies, and therefore some of the regulation around those technologies. I know that, when I was leading the department, we gave clear direction to the CAA about engaging with industry to make sure that we could lead the world in developing some of that regulation.
Let me go through a number of areas of the Bill and set out where I agree and where I have some questions for the Minister. On airspace modernisation, I strongly support what the Government are trying to do. It was an area I was involved with when I was Secretary of State. It has a lot of benefits in terms of improving efficiency for airlines, reducing costs, reducing carbon emissions and making use of very congested airspace, particularly in the London area, more efficiently. But I am struggling with exactly what benefit the power in the Bill will generate in practice.
In the ECHR memorandum, the department made it clear that it was a last-resort measure. No directions have been made. They have been threatened on some occasions. It went out of its way in that memorandum to emphasise how limited a power it would be. In the Explanatory Notes to the Bill, it said that the use of the clause might be helpful, particularly in delivering airspace modernisation particularly over London. It would be helpful, when the Minister winds up, if he could set out a specific example of where the new statutory power for the Secretary of State would have a practical benefit in delivering airspace modernisation.
The only other thing I want to flag—I do not think this is a genuine concern, but it would be helpful for the Minister to put people’s minds at rest—is that, when there are changes to airspace in terms of flight paths going to airports, there are, of course, perfectly reasonable concerns raised by residents who live near those airports. I wanted to have the Minister’s confirmation that the Secretary of State having this power to direct change will not change any of the existing rights for people to be consulted and have the opportunity to set out their concerns. I accept that it may be perfectly reasonable, in some cases, for decisions to be taken that some residents will not like because they are in the interests of the country, but there should be a proper process and I want to check that nothing in the Bill will change that process and weaken the rights of individuals.
On the ability of the Government to legislate using secondary legislation for consumer powers, I want to get a sense of the government’s thinking and test one of the specific things in the impact assessment. It is worth saying that, generally speaking, the aviation sector—there is one exception, which I will draw on in a minute, and the Minister referred to it—has very high levels of customer satisfaction. I think in the latest CAA consumer survey, it had something like an 88% satisfaction level, which is an all-time high. So, generally, there is not a problem to fix. But the Minister rightly drew attention to a very specific issue, which I suspect at least two noble Lords this afternoon will touch on: how the industry deals with disabled passengers and those who need extra support.
This is one of the questions I have about the CAA’s enforcement powers. There is already legislation in the Equality Act that was carried forward from the Disability Discrimination Act about the steps that all businesses, including airlines, have to take: all the reasonable adjustments they have to make to deliver services for disabled passengers. My question is about the enforcement powers that the Minister is planning to give to the CAA. Will that mean that the CAA can use the legislative powers in the Equality Act to insist that airlines make those reasonable adjustments? Is it able to use that legislation and enforce the rights that already exist? They are not new legal obligations, but I think many people feel that airlines do not deliver on those to the extent that we would expect. Is that part of the enforcement suite that the Government are thinking of? If there are existing laws that are not being properly enforced, my preference would be to properly enforce existing laws, not invent new laws, which may themselves not be properly enforced.
One of the issues I have with the Government taking powers to legislate with secondary legislation is that, although this is not true of every individual company, the aviation sector generally is a relatively low-margin business. Every time you legislate to improve consumer rights it comes at a cost, and you have to balance the rights that you are delivering—the consumer experience—against the cost that you are putting on an industry that, overall, does not make a huge margin. There is clearly a high bar if you make those changes with primary legislation, but there is a lower bar if you make them with secondary legislation. I just want to test whether the Government have any specific plans in mind at this stage that they might use secondary legislation for.
I raise this because, if you look at the impact assessment—it is a very hefty tome; a lot of hefty tomes have been published this week—page 3 says specifically:
“The EU is currently considering updates to Regulation 261, which governs passenger rights during flight disruptions”.
It also says that, if the Government do not have
“the power to amend legislation, the UK cannot promptly mirror or respond to these changes”.
I think that illustrates a mindset that is not helpful.
If the Government think that there are gaps in consumer protection legislation for British passengers, then they should make those changes because they are the right thing to do in themselves, and make the argument for them. The Government should not blindly follow and respond to things that the EU is doing. If the EU is doing things that are sensible, and that we think are sensible, we absolutely should do them, but we should do them anyway. If the EU does things that are not sensible, I see absolutely no reason why we should follow it. The whole point about leaving the European Union was that we could make decisions for ourselves. If we think things are sensible, we should do them, and we should not worry about whether the EU is doing them; if they are not sensible, we should not do them. I am afraid that the impact assessment betrays the fact that the Government, if they get these secondary legislative powers, will just mirror exactly what the EU is doing, whether or not it is sensible. I hope the Minister can put my mind at rest on that.
On airport slots, the Minister is right: the Government’s current ability to use the power of secondary legislation to amend them expires later this month. We have already seen some examples, both during the pandemic and more recently, where both the last Government and this one had to make very sensible and necessary changes, and this power is a very sensible one to have. The question is the extent to which those powers can be used for wider slot reform. Slots are a very significant economic interest for the sector as a whole; making dramatic changes would be very expensive and should be done only via primary legislation.
We consulted on slot reform when I was in the department. The department has not yet responded to that consultation. It would be helpful if the Government could set out where they have got to on that, when they plan on responding to the consultation on slot reform and, if they were to do any significant slot reform, what they think they would need to do in terms of consultation and engaging with the industry, and whether these powers would be the appropriate ones to use in those circumstances.
Briefly, I have two more points. As many will know, the CAA is a gold standard industry regulator that is respected around the world for having very high standards for aviation regulation. It also regulates our space launch capability. I am very comfortable with the CAA continuing to play that role as a regulator. The bit I am less comfortable about is whether it should be setting the rules as well as enforcing them. There is nothing wrong with the current system where Ministers set those rules. Part of the problem is that, in the past, those rules were set by the European Union. Ironically, when the European Union was doing it, Ministers were engaged in the Council of Ministers in setting some of those rules, but we in Parliament also had a number of scrutiny mechanisms where both Houses of Parliament could look at those rules in detail.
What is not clear—at least, it was not clear to me from the Bill or the Explanatory Notes—is this: if the CAA makes regulations, what is the role of this House and the House of Commons in scrutinising those regulations? Personally, my starting position is that I would prefer that the regulations were made by Ministers, who are accountable to both Houses of Parliament, and that then the CAA gets on and enforces those regulations. Of course, Ministers will be informed by the CAA’s expertise in drafting the regulations, but I think Ministers should be responsible for setting the rules and the CAA should then be responsible for enforcing them and putting them into practice. That is the bit of the Bill about which I am less comfortable.
Finally, the Minister mentioned Heathrow. He will be well aware that—as the CAA has, in effect, conceded—the existing economic model for regulating Heathrow is not fit for purpose. He will be aware that it is consulting, in its document CAP3251, on a range of options for the future of the economic regulatory model for Heathrow. That consultation closes on 15 June. There are a range of options in that consultation, but does the CAA have the power to implement all the options in that document, including, for example, the ability to have competition between different terminals at Heathrow? If it does have the power to do that, that is great. If it does not currently have the power to do that, is the Minister open to using this legislation to make sure that the CAA does have that power, so that when it has concluded the consultation and reached a decision—and when Ministers have reached a decision about how Heathrow’s economic model is regulated—it will have the ability to deliver it?
So, I have a few questions and concerns, but overall the Bill helps to strengthen the aviation sector. It is an important one for the United Kingdom, and I look forward to listening to the Minister’s detailed answers when he winds up the debate.
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My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, for introducing the Bill and for the briefings that he and his team have kindly provided to Members of the House. We approach this Bill with an open mind and with a clear desire for greater clarity and certainty. Its relatively short length masks the complexity of the systems it seeks to update and reform, as well as the significance of the mechanisms chosen to implement those changes.
On the face of it, the Bill seeks to strengthen consumer protections, support economic growth and infrastructure, and modernise and enhance aviation safety. Of course, those are all laudable aims. However, the policy space that the Bill occupies is both crowded and contested, and the interaction between its different elements requires great scrutiny. Airspace modernisation is long overdue, but it may also facilitate increased capacity and, potentially, airport expansion. Likewise, the stronger consumer protections are clearly needed, but we must be confident that the measures proposed will work as intended in practice.
The Bill provides a framework rather than a finished product. It establishes significant delegated powers and relies heavily on secondary legislation, placing key decisions one step removed from parliamentary scrutiny. For these reasons, we will seek further clarity and assurances across three principal areas: first, the relationship between airspace modernisation, airport expansion and our environmental commitments; secondly, the delivery of improved and effective consumer protections; and, thirdly, the scope and use of delegated powers within the Bill.