HC Deb 28 October 1996 vol 284 cc312-3
3. Mr. Welsh

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how much public expenditure has been invested in replacing the London air traffic control centre with the new ATC centre at Swanwick, Southampton. [563]

6. Sir George Young

The Civil Aviation Authority forecasts a capital spend of approximately £340 million for this project, of which £303 million has so far been spent.

Mr. Welsh

Will the Minister acknowledge that the interests of public safety require more than one air traffic control centre in the United Kingdom? Will he guarantee that the new Scottish centre will be built at Prestwick as a public service for the public good?

Sir George Young

The interests of safety must be paramount and there must be contingency arrangements to cope with any failure of one specific centre. As the hon. Gentleman and the House may know, Sir Malcolm Field, the newly appointed chairman of the CAA, is conducting a review of the two-centre strategy. He hopes to complete that review quickly and is well aware of the strong feelings in Scotland about the importance of Prestwick in any future strategy.

Mr. Wilkinson

Why has the new centre near Southampton proved so late in coming into operation? Was that delay in any sense a factor in the decision by the Civil Aviation Authority to conduct a review into the proposed new Prestwick centre? Has the Department of Transport drawn any lessons about the benefits or otherwise of the private finance initiative for such projects?

Sir George Young

The delay was due to problems in integrating software sub-systems into the air traffic management system. More than 2 million lines of software code are involved. Of course we must try to introduce, where possible, tried and tested systems in preference to brand new ones. The review on which Sir Malcolm Field has embarked is due more to the need to revisit a strategy that was started some time in the 1990s and it is being carried out in the light of operational changes and technological advances.

Mr. Andrew Smith

Will the Secretary of State confirm that air traffic control and the paramount need for public safety are, like national defence and policing, the prime responsibility of Government to secure? What views has he received from the Ministry of Defence about the Royal Air Force on the privatisation of the centres? Does he accept our argument that the two-centre strategy must proceed and that the new Scottish control centre must go ahead? For once, will he take some notice of the public, who are overwhelmingly opposed to the privatisation of those centres and see it as profoundly ill-judged dogma?

Sir George Young

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to what I think is his first appearance as shadow Secretary of State for Transport. I know that he will bring with him the disciplines that he exerted as shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury in restraining any extravagant proposals by any of his Front-Bench colleagues. I hope that he will find time to welcome the introduction of a more regular service between London and Oxford which has been introduced by the recently privatised train operator.

I see no reason why the air traffic control service should not be adequately provided by the private sector. The air traffic service is already provided by private companies at a number of our airports. Serco provides such services at nine United Kingdom airports. Other countries in Europe have services that are not wholly provided by Government, so there is no reason why this service has to be provided exclusively by the Government. I wonder why the hon. Gentleman spent so much time abolishing clause IV when he resists proposals such as this for more to be done in the private sector. The best argument for putting the service in the private sector is that the industry is capital intensive. It needs access to private sector capital and should not be restrained by the disciplines of the public expenditure survey.