Civil Aviation Bill

Clearly, the Bill is beneficial in parts. Clarifying the law on what airport operators can charge for noise and emissions, giving commercial freedom to public airport operators and making the CAA responsible for the health of people on board aircraft are positive developments. There are great concerns, however. The clearest of those is in relation to noise and breaking the link with the number of flights. The Bill does not reflect the House’s concern about that. As hon. Members said, the Bill has a gaping hole. The Minister was decent enough to recognise that by devoting a large part of her speech to the air travel trust fund and the £1 levy. I do not understand why the Government are failing to make moves on that simple issue, especially when the CAA has provided them with a simple solution that has the backing of the Federation of Tour Operators. The introduction of the £1 levy would have made things clear to passengers who are confused about where they stand in relation to cover should the airline they are flying with fail. We are not talking about a small number of people. Each year, 84 million people are travelling without that insurance, and a large percentage of them will believe that they are insured. There are questions that the Minister needs to answer. I asked her about the £100 million of savings in regulatory costs and gave her an opportunity to clarify what cost savings she expected to derive from her proposal, and she was unable to provide those figures. Has the Minister seen the economic analysis by Ernst and Young, commissioned on a brief agreed by the Department for Transport and the CAA, which looked at various options and concluded that a £1 levy on all flights is the most economically rational solution to the issue of providing passenger protection? What does the hon. Lady think of that analysis, and why has it been so readily dismissed by the Government? The Minister of State said on Second Reading that he would listen to Members’ views and take them into account. I am sure that he listened, but there is little evidence that he took into account the views on the air travel trust fund—quite the contrary. Other Members have referred to EUjet. Is the hon. Lady aware that only 16 per cent. of the EUjet passengers were able to take advantage of special offers from other airlines to fly them back? What would she say to the 84 per cent. who found themselves stranded and had to make their own financial arrangements—in some cases, I am sure, at great cost—to get themselves repatriated to the UK? The Minister has given the House nothing in the way of reassurance about how she will tackle the decline of ATOL protection. That is the biggest weakness in the Bill. There are lots of other valid measures, but the Minister and the Government have missed a huge opportunity to address one of the biggest issues in the industry, and I am sure that this will come back to haunt them the next time a UK airline fails and hundreds of passengers are stranded abroad. They will be wondering why the Government did not take up the CAA’s offer of a solution to the problem, but left them stranded.