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Planning Bill

I accept that these amendments are probing in nature, and I listened with interest to the questions of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I will be equally interested in the Minister’s reply. I am sure that Amendments Nos. 135 and 137 are entirely probing and I await the Minister’s response. It is odd that there is a discrepancy between the phrasing of subsections (5) and (8). One uses the words ““capable”” and ““permitted””. At face value, those amendments would explicitly place a limit on the capacity of all airports’ passenger capacity, which could be altered only if permission were granted. I understand why the noble Baroness tabled Amendments Nos. 136 and 139 as probing amendments. Why have the Government used different measurements of airport activity? I agree entirely with the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Tonge, that the relevance to the public and the communities affected is surely the number of aircraft movements. That is especially the case in relation to climate change. I was interested in the description by the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, of slots being kept open when no passengers were being flown. We are not interested in the number of passengers, but aircraft movements. Amendment No. 138 in the group refers to the hours of operation of an airport. This can be a highly emotive topic for the communities that surround airports and fall under their flight paths. We know from repeated complaints about airport expansion that people feel strongly about the detrimental effects on their lives that aircraft noise can cause. I should not repeat my earlier comments when I spoke to Amendment No. 42 of my noble friend Lord Jenkin, but this issue is tied closely to the points that I raised. The use of airports and their expansion are exactly the sort of issues that must be laid open to proper consultation and public debate. Any major development of airports is bound to impact on communities, whose views must have a chance to be considered. These problems are precisely why the Government cannot reheat old aviation policies and adopt them as national policy statements without proper consultation and compliance with all the current EU directives and regulations.