§ Mr. Peter Bruinvelsasked the Secretary of State for Transport what discussions he has held with the chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority about the report of the Committee of Public Accounts on financial arrangements for the provision of meteorological services.
§ Mr. Michael SpicerThe Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority has written to me expressing his concern about the conclusions as they affect civil aviation.
§ Mr. Peter Bruinvelsasked the Secretary of State for Transport what information he has about the arrangements for financing meteorological services in other countries and about the extent to which users of such services are required to make a contribution towards the running costs; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. Archie HamiltonI have been asked to reply.
The arrangements for financing meteorological services in other countries vary very widely. The provision of such services to aviation is virtually the only field in which practices for recovering costs have some international similarity, notably in Europe, where the member states raise air navigation charges (including an element for meteorological information) against EUROCONTROL for flights through controlled airspace. The EUROCONTROL organisation then recovers the charges from the aircraft operators concerned. In the USA, however, the recovery system for meteorological services is quite different, the services being paid for out of a government trust fund financed by taxes on airline tickets, aviation fuel and aircraft tyres.