Civil Aviation Bill

I will not be drawn into anything quite so uncharitable, but I understand the drift of my hon. and learned Friend’s wise and learned comments. One of the great weaknesses of the Government’s environmental policy lies in aviation. They are stumbling over what to do about it. We know that on emissions control, it is outside the main restrictions in international agreements, and it is the fastest growing area of extra pollution; and we now see that on noise, they want to dilute sensible controls because they are under pressure from some in the industry to do so. It is particularly appropriate that today for the first time in the Chamber we have the warning of just how easy it is to make a beautiful building ugly without the right controls on new development, because we see the new screen where the scaffolding supporting it cannot be taken down because apparently that is all part of the revised plan. It seems a great pity that there is no sensitivity to history, tradition and beauty, and I am worried that we have something parallel going on with the lack of sensitivity to the wish of our constituents to have peace and quiet, particularly in the dead of night. The crucial point that the Minister must address is that even if the average aircraft is less noisy than the average aircraft five or 10 years ago when previous controls were introduced, none the less, if there are more of these aircraft still creating considerable amounts of noise, and more of them will be generating that noise at the dead of night when it will be so much more intrusive, surely that is a substantial deterioration in the environment in which our constituents live and something that we should naturally protest about, and on which we should urge the Government to do something better. I hope that the Minister will heed the warning of the ugly screen and realise that it would be bad to make a much bigger intrusion into the environment by diluting many hon. Members’ constituents’ protection from noise. It is our duty to tell the Minister that constituents in Labour seats, as well as constituents in Conservative seats, are upset by the current amount of background noise and that they will be extremely angry if the Government allow far more noise at the dead of night, when it will be so much more disruptive. I strongly support the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Rutland and Melton and for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) and their excellent amendments.