Civil Aviation Bill

I have two responses to my hon. Friend’s point. First, it was nobody’s decision but those local authorities to sell their shares. Secondly—I hope that this is more conciliatory—when I was listening to the speech made by the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan), I was concerned that people in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire find it difficult to identify a noisy aeroplane passing at 4 am. In a country where we and the Government believe in open government, it is strange and perverse that it is impossible to find out which aeroplane is making a noise. If I am chosen to serve on the Standing Committee, I intend to use my best endeavours to help to do something about that, as it is not a reasonable position. Often, it is an old aeroplane going off its flight path that makes the most noise. If people could identify it—under the Bill, they could not only identify it but fine those involved—it would go some way towards ameliorating the situation. That is an offer to help hon. Members who have that concern. Before I speak about the clauses that deal with noise, air pollution, public airport companies and the air travel fund, I should like to do what other hon. Members have done and put the Bill in the context of the aviation industry, but I shall do so from a slightly different perspective. Hon. Members have said already that about 600,000 jobs depend on aviation and that it contributes just over £10 billion to our gross domestic product. Its impact is almost equivalent to the whole car manufacturing industry and double the size of the aerospace industry. It has a profound effect on the economy. When we think about aviation, we usually think of the 180 million to 200 million passengers who fly each year, but we tend not to focus on the fact that 20 per cent. by weight of this country’s exports go by air. Many industries depend on getting their component parts by just-in-time flights into our economy. The air freight cargo business has grown almost threefold in the past 10 to 15 years. It is a dynamic part of the economy. I make those points because, hon. Members often talk about their own aerodrome or airport in such debates. On many occasions, they talk about the problems of noise and air pollution that are inevitably associated with airports, but if this country is to earn its living as part of an increasingly globalised economy, international aviation is as important to us as the internet. We cannot compete with the growing economies of India and China, let alone with the United States and the European Union, if we do not support our aviation industry and help it to continue to be successful—and by successful, I mean to grow. I suspect that it is not well known that this country’s aviation sector is the second largest after that of the United States—it is vital to us—so I start from almost the opposite point to some other hon. Members: we must succour and support the aviation industry and then look at how we deal with many of the effects. If we are to have a successful freight and cargo industry, there must be night flights. Given the industry’s current structure around complicated integrators, it is simply not possible for this country to compete if we do not have night flights and, probably, an increasing number of them. How do we deal with that? We do so with compensation, quieter aircraft and by controlling pollution. That is what we should be debating, not whether we take this country from the forefront of one of the most exciting and important industries in the world economy.