My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on taking over full responsibility for air—until the next reshuffle anyway. I think that happened last week.
These are very interesting regulations. As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, I can see that in the Explanatory Memorandum there is a sort of conflict between wanting not to lose slots at airports, wanting to preserve monopolies and wanting to encourage competition. We do not really like running ghost flights if that is the only way to do it.
The question I would like to ask the Minister relates, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, to some of these lists of reasons, which could become cop-outs for just about everything an airline or airport does not want. The noble Baroness mentioned shortage of airline or airport staff and strikes, which have been happening and will probably continue.
Then there is slot limitation. The noble Baroness mentioned Heathrow Airport limiting slots. I looked at the website for Schiphol Airport and it has similar limitations on slots, I suspect for similar reasons. Perhaps the Minister could tell us what is happening to these limitations on slots, certainly at Heathrow, because I think the present one finishes at the end of October. Is that matched with Schiphol and other regional or local airports in Europe? Presumably you have to have similar restraints at either end of a flight, and an awful lot of them go to Schiphol and places such as that.
The other interesting item in the list of reasons, for me, is in paragraph 7.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which is to do with the
“closure of airports or hotels”
and the effect that it might have on the passenger. That is a very subjective way in which to decide on slots, if one is relying on the number of people who are complaining, or what you think the solution is. I am not sure that the regulations will help matters much, in that way.
4.30 pm
I turn to paragraph 12.2. I do not really understand what it means when it refers to airlines, in order to
“retain their historic rights to the most valuable slots”,
seeking
“to consolidate their operations at Heathrow … with adverse consequences for other smaller airports”.
Do the Government actually mind whether that happens? There is lots of debate about Heathrow’s expansion, but surely there is a policy issue here that needs to be taken into account.
The next paragraph talks about “loss-making flights”. Can the Minister give us any indication of how many of those ghost flights take place in a month? Are we talking about hundreds, or thousands, or two—and are they relevant? They are pretty bad for the environment, as the Explanatory Memorandum says, so it would be nice to know how serious a problem it is.
Finally, paragraph 12.4 refers to the concern about negatively impacting
“new entry and competition amongst airlines.”
I shall finish on that note. It is lovely to be able to say that we are encouraging the airlines and making sure that they stay in a good financial state. On the other hand, we have seen over the years how competition has really helped to deliver better services and lower fares. It is a challenge, and I hope that the Minister will keep abreast of those challenges—as well as customer service, at which some airlines are doing very much better than others—when she comes to look again at these regulations in six months’ time.