---

Daedalus Airfield

Indeed. Many of the people involved in Daedalus do not see it as their particular task to encourage civil aviation, but it is the Minister's task. He is the person responsible for ensuring that somebody accepts responsibility, and for identifying that person and the procedure to follow that through. As for the history of flying at Daedalus, the air traffic zone of Daedalus overlaps with that of royal naval aircraft yard Fleetlands, which operates aircraft that have been repaired or serviced. Fleetlands has a regulator—that is specifically and carefully defined in law. The regulator of Fleetlands is Colin Smith, who works for the test and evaluation support division of the Ministry of Defence—the section responsible for air traffic control, airfields and hangers. I have his authority to quote him:"““If the Department of Transport were to ask him to undertake the regulation of Daedalus he would be perfectly happy to do so.””" He went on to say:"““I would require the airfield to meet certain standards. If then having met those standards there is…no reason why general aviation should not continue, providing that the activities are properly risk assessed and appropriate safety management processes were put in place.””" He has talked to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency about a review and overall appraisal. In his role as regulator, he would call that ““a gross error study””. It would be an overall study, checking for serious risks and ensuring that there is a ““deconfliction of different interests”” at Daedalus. There is no valid reason why flying should not continue at Daedalus. Nothing has suddenly made it more dangerous. Everybody in sight is on the public payroll—most of the people in sight are responsible directly or indirectly to the Minister—except the poor general aviation interests. Those people are either operating their own aircraft privately or they have commercial interests. Their interests have been prejudiced by the decision to discontinue general aviation as of tomorrow night. There is no reason why the Minister should not say that he has spoken, or will speak, to all those concerned, and that flying can continue for a limited period of, say, a month while an arrangement for the longer term is hammered out. I wrote to him asking specifically whether he would say that tonight. If he cannot say that, will he at least spell out the programme that will enable us to ensure that general aviation returns to Daedalus, as is the wish of the local community?