Civil Aviation Bill

No, I will not give way again. It is apparent from what we have seen in the House tonight that there is very little support for the Bill on the Labour Benches. We have had a couple of speeches from Members with specific interests in airports in their constituencies, and it is distressing that we have heard no clear arguments for the environmental benefits of the Bill—be they about noise or emissions. The Bill is arbitrary and incoherent. Perhaps the most dismaying comment was made just a second ago when the Minister said that she thought that local problems were best dealt with at local level. Emissions are not a local problem; they are a global problem. She should perhaps have come up with better solutions to that problem than she has tonight. We are perhaps able on Third Reading to concentrate, as the Minister did, on the travel trust, the insurance against companies going bankrupt. I said on Second Reading that there was a clear argument for saying that the state should not insure anybody at all and that, in the modern world of travel, everyone should insure themselves as they do their house, their life or anything else. We are, of course, compelled to insure our motor cars, largely, as the Minister rightly said, because of the damage that they might do to other people. We have pointed out that it is the inconsistency and inequity of the current regime of travel insurance that has become a complete and utter nonsense. We have inherited a model that was designed in the 1970s, when most people went abroad on package holidays. If a package tour company went bankrupt, the system potentially covered well over 90 per cent. of people travelling in such a way. The rise of low-cost airlines and increased international travel has shifted the balance dramatically away from such models, so far fewer people are now covered by the insurance that currently exists. We also have an insurance arrangement that leaves the supposedly effective model in deep deficit, so the Government are required to top it up. Many travellers think that they are covered when they are not. The perpetuation of the flawed model is thus the one option that is nonsensical. There are two options. One is to say, ““You all cover yourselves””, and the other is to put a quid on everyone’s ticket for perhaps four years so that we can get a kitty to cover people. The Government have shied away from that option by arguing that the modern world says that people can travel on a low-cost airline, insure themselves and somehow get home if they need to. However, an absurd piece of EU legislation called the package travel directive remains in place and that perpetuates the absurdly limited and fragmented model of cover. I have not heard from the Government about how they will introduce consistency after rejecting the model offered by the Civil Aviation Authority. I think that I am right in saying that in the entire history of the European Union, no directive has been repealed by this House. We thus have a constitutional structure that is forcing on us a fossilised picture of cover, and this House, in debating this Bill, has neither the power, nor even the will, to overturn a directive that puts in place something that is now clearly nonsensical and absurd. I ask the Minister to her face whether it is now Government policy to persuade the European Union—perhaps we will have more influence now that we have the presidency—to repeal the package travel directive.