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Civil Aviation Bill

Policy schemes exist at the moment—we seem to be talking as though they are a new thing. They do exist and at the moment they are voluntary, whereas the Bill is putting them on a statutory basis. Being voluntary schemes, they have to work in co-operation with airlines rather than against the interests of airlines. Where they do work; they work effectively. Noble Lords have raised interesting concerns about the use of the penalties. I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, was suggesting that it ought to be an incentive for someone to ring up and complain about night noise at an airport because they get a tenner every time. I do not think that we want to get down to that level. As we are aware from our experience in Manchester, there are different occasions when people decide to ring in, and a small number of people seem to bother to ring in rather than large numbers. My noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis gave a suggestion from British Airways; I always take things that British Airways say with a certain amount of scepticism. Most of the major airports have already implemented major noise mitigation schemes, so further schemes are not going to be effective. There is no way that further noise mitigation schemes could affect the noise that some people suffer from and that wakes them up at night. I accept the point about having more transparency. Certainly in the case of Manchester Airport it is in the hands of the consultative committee rather than the airport manager. The airport manager receives the money and then spends the money in consultation with the consultative committee, which will have a scheme that will mitigate a number of things and will bring further community benefits to those areas affected by the noise. That is probably a way forward rather than trying to do it any other way.