§ 3.15 p.m.
§ Lord Peyton of Yeovil rose to call attention to current problems of civil aviation policy, including those arising in connection with the forthcoming privatisation of British Airways and the future of airports in the United Kingdom; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. This is the first time that I have had the privilege of moving a Motion in your Lordships' House, and I am particularly glad that it should be concerned with transport. I am glad because it is possible for me to welcome the reassembly of the various limbs of transport which have hitherto been distributed among various Government departments. I am delighted that transport has been delivered from the thraldom of the Department of the Environment, even if it is still confined in that most hideous of all buildings in Marsham Street.
The timing of this debate and, indeed, that which took place in another place on Friday, will perhaps strike your Lordships as distinctly odd. The Government's lips are, of course, sealed. The fact that they are sealed enabled the Secretary of State in another place to adopt a fairly relaxed position about some of the difficult problems which confront him. The Minister's lips are sealed because civil aviation policy is under review by the Civil Aviation Authority. Air traffic movements limits are at present the subject of consultation. Scottish airports are under review. For good measure, the Select Committee in another place is investigating United States airports, and Stansted, I need hardly say, has been the subject of an official inquiry. While we await that report with eagerness, I hope that it may be permissible to comment what very expensive, long drawn-out proceedings these inquiries have become. I cannot believe that, in a country which prides itself on being able to manage its affairs with some order, proceedings of this kind will be tolerated indefinitely.
However, while accepting the fact that the timing of this debate, for the reasons which I have given, is somewhat odd, we must also assume that it is merely the forerunner of others when the Government have reached their various conclusions and decisions. But we must take comfort from the Government's readiness to listen.
Taking 1983 as the base year, air traffic, measured in terms of revenue-passenger miles, is likely to double by 1995. Indeed, the Secretary of State himself has said that the seven airports of the British Airports Authority, which now handle 45.9 million passengers, will be handling over 100 million by the year 2,000. In those circumstances it is surely permissible to ask what plans the Government have, first, to accommodate 920 that growth and, secondly, for this country to participate in it.
First, I should like to make a few remarks about airports. As the Government are inclined to take notice of what is done in the United States, perhaps I may remind the Government and Ministers that in the United States there is a national aerospace plan—an example which I think we could usefully follow here. In another place last Friday the Secretary of State said, at col. 599, that airports:
should be operated on a fully commercial basis".
I believe that that statement needs some qualification in that there has to be asked the question: to what extent should some airports be obliged to support others, and also what restrictions is it reasonable to place upon airports in the use of their own assets? For instance, at the very time that Terminal 4 is to come into operation next year a limit will be placed upon air traffic movements of 275,000. How reasonable and sensible is the coincidence of those two things?
The Secretary of State has himself said that by 1990 people affected by Heathrow noise will be down to 300,000 from the present level of about one million. What I fear is that in this context, as in others, rules, once laid down, are allowed to outlive their justification, because there is always somebody to be found who wants to stop someone else doing something—and that applies particularly in our country.
I want to ask the Minister, despite all the difficulties that he has in speaking openly today, what other steps the Government intend to accommodate this growth of traffic. I ask that question because some options, it seems, if not finally closed are at least not really very open ones. I refer to such things as Stansted, a second runway at Gatwick, and the possibility of a fifth terminal at Heathrow. There may be a case for the privatisation of airports—and may I pause to join with others in condemning that ghastly word which has so easily passed into our language. It is ugly and misleading. Ministers have it in mind, I do not doubt—and they certainly should—that they will earn esteem or reprobation according to the success or failure of our efforts in accommodating the growth in air traffic.
I should like to pass briefly to the question of communications between airports. It is common knowledge that our air space and our roads are congested, and that rail, save for Gatwick, is not a factor at all. In these circumstances, what view does the Ministry of Transport take of the helicopter? Here I should like to remind your Lordships that as Member of Parliament for Yeovil for many years I was much involved with Westland Aircraft, and I should tell your Lordships that even now from time to time they are wise enough, or foolish enough, to seek my advice. The helicopter is a highly versatile aeroplane. Like others, it is becoming safer, more reliable and less noisy. It has many and varied uses. Incidentally, those who are concerned with its safety should not read just the rather tendentious headlines which arose from a recent report but, to get the true picture, should read the whole report.
The Ministry of Transport, despite its newly-won freedom, is remarkably silent, mute, when it comes to
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the subject of helicopters. In another place the Secretary of State confined himself to these words on this subject:
There are helicopters too".
without, I am bound to say, shedding a great deal of light upon the issue to which I am now referring. But the Parliamentary Secretary's handling of the issue was, if I may say so, even more depressing. It overturned, without many reasons, the Civil Aviation Authority's decision to extend for 10 years the Heathrow to Gatwick link. That, I must say to your Lordships, was the echo of a disappointing meeting which I had myself had earlier in the year with the Parliamentary Secretary.
I would now ask my noble friend on the Front Bench whether he will encourage his colleagues to ask themselves these questions. How sensible is it to treat the helicopter in the same way as a fixed-winged aircraft, as is now done at both Gatwick and Heathrow? How sensible is it to treat each landing and take-off of a helicopter as an air traffic movement counting within the quota? How sensible is it to oblige helicopters to fly low over urban areas, thus maximising the noise and increasing, of course the annoyance? How sensible is it to condemn the aeroplane as noisy and not to say what degree of noise is acceptable? Finally, how sensible is it to soldier on without even the plans for a permanent all-weather heliport with adequate land communications?
Perhaps my noble friend would ask his colleagues this question, too. What, incidentally, do they think of the prospects for the civil version of the EH. 101, which the Government as a whole are now engaged in financing jointly with the Italian Government? To take, again, an American example, the United States has a National Rotorcraft Master Plan. Perhaps we might launch ourselves upon such an exercise.
I turn to the question of this country's ability to participate in the growth in air traffic. The Government intend to sell shares in British Airways. They gave to Lord King a remit to repair the airline's fortunes. Of course, the independents would like the Government to carve off a slice of British Airways and give it to them. I do not know (nor, so far as I am aware, have the independent airlines said) how big a slice they are referring to, nor how much they would be willing to pay for it. But I think that your Lordships and the Government would wish to carefully examine the possible implications and repercussions which would attend upon the dismemberment of British Airways.
First of all, there is the possibility—I should have thought the likelihood—that the sale price would, by a measure, be reduced even if the sale itself were not put in jeopardy. It would, of course, involve the Government turning back on the words used by Sir John Nott in 1979:
I do not propose that any part of British Airways should be broken up or sold off".
There would, of course, be repercussions within British Airways itself. It would look to those engaged in the airline as though their efforts—and very considerable they have been—had made but little impact, and that their reward was going to be further redundancies.
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I believe that an inevitable consequence of any serious dismemberment of the airline would be to weaken British Airways, which has to compete with other international airlines as large as or larger than itself. This point was well taken in the Civil Aviation Authority's interim assessment in paragraph 2.2.9 where it says:
In the United States the typical method for dealing with a dominant enterprise under the Anti-Trust laws is to break it up into smaller units. In the United Kingdom this solution has to be weighed against the many advantages to the UK in having a large, strong and highly competitive major flag carrier. British Airways has the muscle to take on the most able and aggressive of the world's largest airlines, some of which have even greater access to highly profitable markets than does British Airways. There is also something to be said for doing nothing to weaken a national airline that has the strength to weather the worst extremes of the economic cycle.
I believe those words are worthy of very careful consideration and should be given due weight.
Dismemberment I believe would be attended by a warm round of cheering from Pan American, Lufthansa, Air France and the rest. Incidentally I cannot help remarking that while I applaud the efforts made by the Secretary of State to obtain Dutch agreement to a reduced fare between London and Amsterdam, nevertheless I doubt the wisdom of allowing KLM free access to this market as a condition of the agreement. I really cannot help feeling that the Dutch minister and KLM must be laughing all the way to the airport.
Sir Adam Thomson has put the case—as one would expect from him—powerfully on behalf of the independent airlines. He has suggested that my noble friend Lord King is conducting himself in the way that Caesar did. Well, those who use Cassius's words must themselves expect to be compared with Cassius: perhaps to have it suggested that they too have a lean and hungry look. It is very hard indeed, for the reasons which I have sought to give, that either the Civil Aviation Authority or the Government will, in these circumstances, opt for dismemberment.
In conclusion, I should like to say this, because I feel that in some of my remarks I may have given the impression that I thought the task of the Secretary of State easy: I do not in any way under-rate the huge difficulties which confront him. I wish him well in facing them. He lacks time, space and money. He has responsibility for transport in a country which has become skilled at protest, and which is much given to inquiries; a country in which people wish to move about freely, but to be as little disturbed as possible by others who are attempting to do precisely the same thing.
§ My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.