My Lords, it is always good to support my noble friend Lord Whitty. He invariably brings to our deliberations well-argued, well-analysed speeches that in the end boil down to common sense. His arguments are absolutely irresistible, and I cannot imagine that the Government would not want to be positive in their response, in one way or another.
One of the opportunities that you get when living in Cumbria is that when you have clear skies—and we have clear skies more often than the cynics suppose—one sees the indispensability of British airspace to European traffic, using the Arctic routes to North America and beyond. There are mutual interests at stake here, which is partly why this is so urgent. We cannot scramble something together at the last moment as a consequence of the action that we have taken constitutionally; we must plan now for how we are going to guarantee effectiveness in meeting the challenges of that mutual interdependence.
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The safety and well-being of passengers is, of course, something that crosses national frontiers. I can imagine situations post Brexit when it becomes a greater challenge for those operating transport than it was before, because people will want to travel and goods will want to move, whatever happens on Brexit itself, and it makes the co-operation and effectiveness of the inter-relationships between the different operators all the greater.
At this hour, it is not necessary to go on at great length, but this seems to me a practical, sensible and helpful amendment, and I hope that the Minister will be able to show that the Government are taking very seriously the issues at stake.