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Civil Aviation Bill

I also support my noble friend Lord Faulkner’s amendment. I fail to see the argument against a £1 or even a £2 levy. Maybe you can fly to Madrid for £10, but it costs £13 to get from Paddington to Heathrow—unless you get on the train that stops at every station but which does not say Heathrow on the front because they do not want you to pay £9, which is £4 less. As other noble Lords have said, the whole thing is crazy. Why should ATOL continue if this one does not continue? Often you are flying on the same planes and you are flying to the same destination. Whether or not you have booked accommodation at the other end is irrelevant these days. I hope that my noble friend will not answer by saying, ““Let’s abolish ATOL instead””, because being stranded abroad is different. I imagine that the British embassies in the countries where people get stranded must love it when that happens, because it produces an enormous amount of work—and it probably serves them right if there is no other means of getting back—because there will be people who do not have £100 or £200 to pay for the fare back and have to go through the rigmarole of borrowing money from the embassy and all that that entails. So there is a lot more work to be done on this. I look forward to the Minister’s response. It is a crazy system. We have to keep going on this issue, because the situation is unacceptable at the moment.