Civil Aviation Bill

I shall speak about the amendments to which my name is attached and in support of amendment No. 21 and I would like to deal with them in order of significance. Amendments Nos. 1 and 21 are the most significant. I want to begin by continuing the recent line of discussion in our debate. Every time we have an aviation debate, Members are classified either as modernising aviators or luddites and I want to reach an understanding of our shared objectives for the Bill and the overall thrust of aviation policy. We all want a thriving aviation industry that provides efficient air transport and employment for our constituents and has minimal impact on the global and local environments. However, in recent years, members of all parties have gone further. We want a sustainable aviation industry and to use modern methods as best we can to achieve that. They include new technology, new methods of measurement and so on. We also want the airports to be good neighbours where they are located, cherishing the environment and the quality of life of residents in the vicinity. Successive Governments have stated those objectives in recent periods. There is no more coherent statement of them than that in the recent White Paper on the future of the aviation industry. My understanding of clause 2(2) is that the Government intend to provide themselves with a strengthened tool with which to achieve the objectives for control of noise and, elsewhere in the Bill, emissions. Those are the two most significant environmental impacts of airports. The argument, as I heard it on Second Reading and read it in the Committee proceedings, is that the method for controlling the impact of airports in disbenefits to my constituents and others is currently too crude and provides no incentive for airport operators to reduce the impact. As I understand it, the intention is to retain the power to impose overall limits on movements but to broaden it to enable the Secretary of State to control noise by noise quotas and contours. It sounds rational and the Government’s approach would be viewed as an acceptable modernisation. The problem is that any method that we propose must command the confidence of, most of all, the people whom we seek to protect. In all the discussions and consultations that have taken place in my constituency and throughout London, especially in relation to Heathrow, it is clear that there is no confidence in the Government’s proposals in the Bill. We should listen to the people most at risk. Perhaps the lack of confidence is due to the way in which our constituents have been treated in the past. I do not think that people have been treated as brutally in any major infrastructure development in this country over the past two centuries as they have by the aviation industry. It started with the clearance of Heathrow village and has gone on to involve the imposition of five terminals on my constituency. At each stage, at each inquiry that has taken place, and in virtually every debate on the issue in the House, we have heard the aviation industry, Ministers, civil servants and experts giving us their judgment, according to their expertise, on the limited impact of these developments on my constituents and on Londoners in general. On each occasion, these have turned out to be wild misjudgments, underestimations and, some believe, a tissue of lies. It is on that basis that people no longer have confidence in the proposals being put forward.