Civil Aviation Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. I am grateful to everyone, or nearly everyone, who has taken part in the debate and in Committee. We have given the Bill a thorough consideration. I shall be brief in my remarks but I would like to spend a few minutes on an aspect of the debate that we unfortunately did not have sufficient opportunity to discuss. On Second Reading, we promised to return with a statement on our attitude to the Civil Aviation Authority’s proposal for a £1 levy on all air passengers departing from the UK to help us deal with tour operator and airline insolvency. Those amendments were not selected so I placed a written statement before the House setting out our response to the proposals. We decided on balance that regulation on that scale would not be proportionate given that the risk to passengers can be reduced in other ways and that the risk of airline failure is small.