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Civil Aviation Bill

The hon. Gentleman raises a serious point. I shall flash back to amendment No. 1, given that the hon. Gentleman tabled a concomitant amendment which would have deleted the entire clause. He might consider that our approach is preferable because it would delete only the offending parts of the clause, rather than the whole clause. He may want to rethink that. It is fair to say that the technicalities of tracking aircraft are complicated. It is necessary to go through different air traffic control zones. The play-back of radar tapes or information systems is not as easy as replaying a video. There is expense and, inevitably in a matter of nuisance, some people become exercised and are likely to throw a disproportionate number of complaints at an airport, particularly through campaigning organisations. To persuade the Minister, I hope, that I am being absolutely reasonable in tabling the new clause, I thought that a good model for setting up a monitoring system was that of the ombudsman, where we go through the filter of a Member of Parliament. In many instances, the process is automatically ticking the box and sending on the complaint. However, I think that all of us in our constituency life will have said to someone, ““I will send it to the ombudsman but are you really sure? Don’t you think that you are a bit illogical here, there or somewhere else? Aren’t you going over the top? Have you lost your perspective?”” To set up a system that is logical, practicable, fair and sensible, it is reasonable to use a Member of Parliament as a filter. We determined that it would be more persuasive to the Minister to have that layer of approval and sifting so that, as with so many complaints about this place, it is not necessary to field many complaints that are frivolous and malicious. I hope that that argument will be persuasive to right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House.