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Civil Aviation Bill

On Second Reading, in Committee and in another place, our Front-Bench spokesmen stated that the time had come to marry better the twin desires of extending the opportunities offered by world travel and bringing the airlines on board as partners in achieving serious environmental goals, whether they are global or for people’s local environments. However, from a reading of the Bill, it sadly looks more and more as though the Government’s idea of partnership is based on what is going on in Downing street. We wished to remove clause 2(2), because it was painfully apparent that we had to allow residents and airports to co-exist more harmoniously. The Government’s announcement a few minutes ago about Heathrow to 2012 is welcome but prompts questions about other designated airports and Heathrow after 2012. As hon. Members know only too well, the issue is the balance between numbers and quotas as a means of controlling noise. The mitigation of noise and vibration from aircraft taking off and landing at designated airports—Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted—is achieved, as the Minister said, by restricting the number of movements and by the noise quota. Noise can be a considerable impediment to the quality of life of people who live near an airport or under a flight path, as Members on both sides have made clear. If the noise of an aircraft taking off wakes someone, it does not matter if it is only just loud enough to do so or is extremely loud. Furthermore, as has been made clear by Lord Hanningfield, our Front-Bench spokesman in another place, the quota system itself, which is all that will be left, is highly technical and often incomprehensible to the people it is meant to protect. Less noise does not always mean less disturbance, and that is emphatically the case if the system of measurement leaves something to be desired. While noise is measured in decibels, the level equivalent—Leq—is an index of aircraft noise exposure. It is a measure of the equivalent continuous sound level averaged over a 16-hour day from 0700 to 2300, and is taken during the peak summer months from mid-June to mid-September. The Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise—HACAN—and Clear Skies, a voluntary organisation that campaigns on behalf of people affected by flight paths, have issued a joint paper that makes interesting reading. It argues that the level equivalent system underestimates aircraft noise in three key areas. First, it can be misleading to average out aircraft noise, for the obvious reason that if someone is woken by noise, it does not make much difference how loud it is. Secondly, low-frequency noise is ignored by the measure. Thirdly, and crucially, the Leq classifications often underestimate the minimum level of noise that annoys people. The HACAN-Clear Skies report claims that low-frequency rumbling is a significant component of aircraft noise. Including it in the measurement can increase the noise of a plane passing overhead by about 8 decibels. More to the point, many improvements in aircraft noise are primarily concerned with mid to high-frequencies. Perhaps the best way to illustrate its shortcomings is to cite the example given by Lord Hanningfield, who said that"““a single Concorde on departure has””—" perhaps I should say, ““had””, given the sad loss of that great if noisy aircraft—"““the equivalent noise energy of 120 Boeing 757s. Thus, a Boeing 757 departing every two minutes for four hours produces the same level equivalent as two minutes of Concorde, followed by three hours and 58 minutes of silence.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 March 2006; Vol. 679, c. 772.]" I urge the House to consider whether it would prefer to have the magnificent opportunity to see and hear Concorde in their skies again for two minutes or four hours of aircraft taking off every two minutes. Under the Leq system, on which we will be entirely reliant after 2012, the two events will be treated as equivalent.