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Civil Aviation Bill

I support the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, who made a masterful presentation of why the levy should be made. The Government should be consistent when talking about light-touch regulation. I have extracted answers from the Minister in the past few weeks about the number of Irish-based road hauliers who flout the regulations. In the past three months almost a third of Irish road hauliers here are breaking the drivers’ hours regulations and in one case the answer the noble Lord gave me was that the same operator had done so 10 times. I have introduced that into this argument, because EU Jet was an Irish company. It operated hardly any flights from Ireland and was acting as a predator on British people. The Government have a duty to protect people against such predation. I sympathise with the Minister, because the answers that the Minister gave on Second Reading were probably written by someone else, but they were full of holes, and the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has demonstrated that. I hope that the Minister will now come to us, because it is never too late to recant. We would be pleased to hear that.