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Civil Aviation Bill

moved, as an amendment to Motion A, leave out from ““disagreement,”” to end and insert ““do disagree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 4C and 4D in lieu, but do propose Amendment No. 4E in lieu of the original Lords amendments””. 4E: Page 1, line 7, leave out ““may”” and insert ““shall, if the number of commercial (freight and passenger) flights exceeds 500 per month”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, I must apologise for the fact that during the summer when the latter stages of the Bill were considered, I was absent due to illness. However, today we are considering Commons amendments. I do not consider that the Commons reasons for disagreement are very clearly stated. The reason: "““Because it is not appropriate to require aerodrome authorities to fix their charges in the manner proposed””," is not very good, bearing in mind that some airport authorities fix their charges in the manner proposed. The Government may well disagree with us that we should have a limit on the size of airports above which a regime would be appropriate, but it is not appropriate to say that it is not right that they fix them in the manner proposed. Turning to the points made by the Minister, I fully appreciate that it is most important that local issues are taken into consideration, but this needs to be looked at from the point of view of not just the airport operator but the people who live underneath airports and suffer from noise and pollution. There are instances that I brought before the House in the early stages of the Bill. Bearing in mind what the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, said just now, I should say that I know something about airports. I specifically visited the Birmingham area to be taken through the whole question of noise and pollution and how they are tracked there. I have been the director of an airport company. I may not have the knowledge that he does, but I am not speaking from a position of entire ignorance on the matter. I went to Birmingham, and the issue there was that the airspace over Birmingham airport is partly shared with Coventry airport. Coventry is quite a big airport, but it does not have a noise and pollution regime, and that raises issues of competition. They are usingthe same airspace, so the issues about whatever international conventions there may be apply to both airports. One airport, in setting its charges and having lower standards of environment or safety, can decide whether an aircraft uses it or the next airport. We want a level playing field, so that airports are competing on the basis of efficiency and not on the basis of one airport having certain standards and another having lesser standards. I take seriously what the Minister said about Amendment No. 4C, and if he can put on record that the Secretary of State will, "““have regard…to the interests of persons who live in the area””," as well as the question of whether competition between airports is affected, I will withdraw my Motion, because I would then be in a position to come to him if a particular case arose—