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Civil Aviation Bill

My Lords, I am in some difficulty. If I present arguments against the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, he says that they are not good enough and that they were not last time, but I shall say the same thing again. He presented his arguments last time, and he said the same thing again. My arguments will not be good enough for him because they were not last time, but neither were his. We do not accept some of the basic premises on which the noble Lord argues. He says that I am not to use the departmental brief. I do not need to use the departmental brief because the principles that the noble Lord puts forward are so mistaken that all noble Lords who do not have the benefit of the departmental brief will see why the Government have right on their side. In straightforward terms that have nothing to do with the complex arguments in my departmental brief, the Opposition are saying that we should change UK law for UK aircraft involved in this situation because this is a UK matter. The Government say that airlines and aircraft are involved in international travel. War and terrorism are international phenomena. The damage done may be in this country, but it may be overseas. The matter cannot be governed by international law alone; it is an international problem that needs an international solution. I am sorry if my department thought of this and it seems that I am therefore guilty of having learnt it from the departmental brief, but I assure noble Lords that that is not so. That is the fundamental division between us. I could reiterate the argument in a range of increasingly diffuse and subtle ways, but that is the heart of the difference between us. That is why the noble Lord was forced on two previous occasions to repeat his arguments—to his own satisfaction, but not to mine—and that is why my refutation on two previous occasions did not meet his requirements and will not do so today. I have nothing further to add to the overall position than that. My noble friend introduced an extra dimension, and I shall take a shot at responding. I spoke from the wretched departmental brief on a previous occasion, when I said that we thought that the amendment emerged from some comparison with maritime law. My noble friend has made that explicit today. He said that international maritime law provided for different aspects, so why cannot we attribute to aviation law similar concepts? There are several international conventions in maritime law to which the UK and many others are party that address ship owners’ liability for acts of terrorism and the resultant pollution. Noble Lords will recognise that the law of the sea has to cover those issues because of, in particular, pollution of a third party’s territory. Liability and compensation are treated hand in hand. There is no international convention governing aviation law in those terms, so we have nothing to fall back on. There is no corpus of law governing the international provision of aviation that meets that point. The noble Lord was kind enough to say that he thought that I would seek to produce some argument along the lines of an international solution. Both he and my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis have indicated that they are doubtful about the extent to which the International Civil Aviation Organisation could produce an early solution to this complex problem. They are right to have those doubts. None of us thinks that the development of treaties that govern this area will be easy or speedy, so I share their doubts on that point. Before my noble friend intervenes again, I should say that it is recognised that, in the shorter term, the Government accept the need to be ready in case airlines are exposed to totally uninsurable risks. After 11 September 2001—I am sorry for repeating what I said in Committee and on Report—I said:"““Should another terrorism incident lead to a lack of third party insurance, such that the UK aviation industry was unable to operate, the Government’s intention would be to intervene as we did after September 11th””.—[Official Report, 8/3/06; col. 834.]" On those occasions, we identified the same gap that noble Lords have identified in this debate. We took the necessary action as a stop-gap measure. We hope that there is never occasion to do that again, but we undertake that, if necessary, we shall act in like manner. Aviation cannot be subject to anything except international law in the long run. That is why we cannot abstract from international aviation law a parallel with maritime law, and that is why the amendment will not hold.