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Civil Aviation Bill

The reason there is unsatisfied demand for Heathrow and people who would like to fly from there but cannot, is that landing slots at Heathrow are still cheaper than those at other airports and certainly cheaper than they could be. BA uses most of those landing slots, has capitalised the value and does not sell many of them on, partly to ensure that there is only limited competition so it can maximise its profits. I will return to that point, but I have quite a lot of sympathy with the hon. Gentleman's arguments that the regulator should look to ensure that licence holders—airports—are effective as well as economic and efficient. I also have considerable sympathy with the shadow Minister's new clauses on National Audit Office oversight. However, I understand that those are only intended to be probing. I hope that that will also be the case with his amendments, because ultimately I trust the Minister on this issue. I do so for the ultimate reason that, in so many areas of public policy one can pretty much know what the policy will be by looking at where the money is—where the vested interests lie—and at what the civil servants are pressing. Too often Ministers merely oversee that policy solution. In this area I believe that it is the personal, political intervention of the Minister, both as shadow Secretary of State in opposition and now as Minister responsible for aviation policy, that led to, and kept, the Conservative policy against a third runway at Heathrow.