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Civil Aviation Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have participated in the debate. It has given us great food for thought, which we will digest more fully in Committee on the detailed points, of which there are a large number. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I am not able, in what is inevitably a limited speech, to enter into every detail raised this afternoon. Many of them are important Committee points that we will have the chance to discuss fully. I want to deal with the broader issues, particularly as some of them have been raised in sharp profile in the debate. The aviation industry is a success story. Millions of our fellow citizens benefit from that success. Large numbers of them who work in the industry benefit in terms of their livelihoods, but increased air travel has brought great benefits to many. I bear in mind the point made wisely by my noble friend Lord Soley, which is that those in favour of restriction for many ought really to stand up and say whether they are in favour of restriction for themselves. We all recognise that the demand for air travel is a reflection of a good that people wish to consume. That cannot be unlimited, of course, or we could easily arrive at a situation in which vast areas of our country were subject to such intolerable conditions on the ground that we would have reduced the quality of life for our fellow citizens. Many of them might not have had the benefits of air travel but were suffering the consequences of uncontrolled expansion, so we have to strike a balance. The debate has reflected the extent to which that balance is inevitably difficult to achieve, but let me indicate to the House that the Government are not following a policy of ““predict and provide””, the phrase certainly used by my noble friend Lord Berkeley. That is not the case at all. However, we can measure expectations of increased opportunity for air travel and pressure for that, which we are obliged to meet so far as we are able, consonant with having due regard to the interests of those who live near airports and whose case was so ably deployed by a number of speakers. I want to emphasise that the Bill is in broad terms there to strike a balance between those competing interests. We have a great deal of work to do on aircraft emissions and noise levels; that is why I am pleased to report to the House, in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, that during our presidency of the European Community, we are making progress on an emissions scheme. We look forward to some crucial meetings over the next few weeks that relate to that scheme. We all recognise that there is no way in which we can solve the problem on the basis of a UK unilateral position alone. Noise is the other great detrimental feature of airport expansion. I should say en passant that I will use the word ““airport””. My noble friend Lord Smith upbraided me for the archaic use of ““aerodrome”” in the Bill. Part of the measure reforms and refers to the 1982 Act, when aerodromes existed and the terminology was used more frequently. We are therefore somewhat stuck with the fact that we have to refer to the words and phrases in that Act, or it would cause confusion about what we were reforming. He is right; I hope that we will take the House beyond the land of Biggles and other heroes of the 1940s and into the challenges of the 21st century. In doing that, airport noise is of great importance. The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, did not have too many constructive moments. He is against the expansion of Stansted—surprise, surprise. It is wonderful how the Opposition can take up a position like that; they might find it more difficult if they tried to meet demands for expansion in this country. We are concerned about the fact that expansion should be limited to specific areas of the country. The great danger—it would be much more detrimental to the wider community—would be if we went in for a vast proliferation of fresh airfields. Unless he is arguing that, under a future Conservative administration—if that is not an inconceivable thought for the House to accept at this stage—there would be no expansion of air travel at all, he has to replace the expansion of Stansted with some other concept. However, in one of his constructive moments—