§ Mr. Brothertonasked the Secretary of State for Trade how many scheduled passenger air journeys within the United Kingdom were conducted by private airlines in the past 12 months; how this compares with the previous 12 months; and if he will encourage further competition between airlines for domestic journeys.
§ Mr. TebbitThe latest convenient period for which figures are available is the calendar year 1979, when private sector airlines carried 2,500,178 pasengers on 113,874 domestic stage flights. The comparable figures for 1978 were 1,949,052 and 89,002 respectively.
Any British airline already has the ability to apply to the Civil Aviation Authority for a licence to begin a service on any route on which it thinks that it can operate successfully, but experience suggests that most domestic routes do not 8W found that the complainant had (a) suffered discrimination and (b) suffered injured feelings; and what was the average compensation in each instance in each year since 1976.
§ Mr. Mayhew[pursuant to his reply, 2 May 1980, c. 592–93]: Under the Race Relations Act 1976 two complaints of dismissal on grounds of racial discrimination have been upheld by industrial tribunals. Both were heard in the period 1 July 1978 to 30 June 1979.
I regret that I cannot separately identify amounts of compensation relating to such complaints. The amounts of compensation awarded by industrial tribunals in respect of all upheld complaints under the employment provisions are:
generate enough traffic to support more than one airline profitably.
Provisions in the new Civil Aviation Bill are designed to create the conditions in which sensible competition can flourish.