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Armed Forces Bill

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Garden, for making a point about the authorised height, because it occurs to me that from time to time on separate operations, individual flights, individual days and individual periods of flying that the regulations or the limit—if I may call it that—on height may well be altered not every day but with the full authority of those who are on the ground and know what they are doing. One might need a degree of flexibility in this, and I hope that the noble Lord’s amendment, let alone what the Minister proposes in the clause, might allow this degree of flexibility. My mind goes back to the tragic events at the Mull of Kintyre, which will be familiar to my noble and learned friend Lord Mayhew, and to the report on those events that referred to various aspects of a particular helicopter flying at a particular height. There might well have been, and probably were, specific height restrictions for that particular operation on that particular day, but I hope that the amendment proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Garden and Lord Thomas of Gresford, and any reply given by the Minister, allows such flexibility for a particular height restriction. I am advised that there is a general height restriction of 500 feet for aircraft flying low over my home in Scotland. It might be 250 feet at certain times. I hope that there is flexibility in the noble Lord’s amendment, let alone in the Bill.