§ Mr. RedmondTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will investigate the number of occasions on which passengers' unaccompanied luggage has been loaded on to aircraft at Scottish airports in the last 12 months; what steps he intends to take to stop this practice; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. McLoughlinAirlines are required to identify instances where passengers fail to join their flight, and to ensure that any bags checked in by those passengers are not carried without first being subjected to security controls. No useful purpose would be served by establishing the number of occasions on which such bags have been carried from Scottish airports in the last 12 months, nor in placing a total prohibition of the carriage of such bags.
Recent press articles relate not to the above procedure but to a more sophisticated one involving identifying bags which are travelling unaccompanied because, for example, they have been misrouted. The technology necessary to achieve this satisfactorily in the complex environment of a major airport is only now becoming available. A number of promising systems are under development, but they have not yet reached the stage where it would be reasonable for us to set a firm date by which they must be in use.