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Civil Aviation Bill

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The record of individual airfields is uneven, with some doing better than others. It is certainly true, though, that we now operate under the absurdity whereby it is all in the hands of the airfields themselves. The Government state that they want to lower noise and emissions, but there is also the additional point—the Minister did not touch on it at all—about the trade-off between noise and the two sorts of emissions. Aircraft design can largely determine the extent to which planes do better at one at the expense of the other, but we have heard little discussion today about how the two are to be traded off. More importantly, as several Members—including my hon. Friends the Members for Hertford and Stortford, for Putney (Justine Greening) and for Windsor, and, indeed, the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor), who is sadly no longer in his place—have said, the Bill could have one particularly perverse effect by removing the caps on night flights to many airfields in the country. When my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State delivers his crate of Nightcap, brewed in his own constituency, to the Secretary of State, I hope that the whole ministerial team will reflect on the fact that that aspect of the Bill would be a step backwards.