HC Deb 19 October 1992 vol 212 cc213-4W
Mrs. Dunwoody

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what steps he has taken to avoid congestion in European airspace and to increase capacity.

Mr. Norris

The previous Secretary of State for Transport, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh.. Pentlands (Mr. Rifkind) chaired a meeting of Transport Ministers of the member states of the European civil aviation conference, ECAC, in London on 17 March. They reached agreement on a number of points, in particular to reaffirm the European en-route strategy, which was launched in 1990 to harmonise and integrate the operations of each country's individual air traffic control systems; to extend that strategy to include central and eastern European members of ECAC; to launch a new ECAC airports strategy to increase air traffic management capacity in the vicinity of airports; and to initiate work on investigations of new technologies and their impact on the later stages of the harmonisation and integration programme.

The United Kingdom continues to play a full part in the implementation of this work in co-operation with other bodies, including EUROCONTROL and the EC Commission. A further major European project is the creation by EUROCONTROL of a central flow management unit near Brussels. This will take on the functions of the national flow management units at London and four other European centres, and should bring major benefits to the management of traffic flows in Europe.

In the United Kingdom, the Civil Aviation Authority has embarked on its largest and most ambitious investment programme, totalling some £750 million, to provide the equipment, facilities and systems which will enable the increasing volume of air traffic to be handled. The two most significant projects are the new en-route centre, NERC, and the central control function, CCF. NERC, near Fareham, will provide a significant increase in airspace capacity in England and Wales. CCF is a radical change in the way in which airspace in London and south-east England is managed, and will also notably improve capacity. Additionally, recruitment of air traffic controllers by the CAA has increased from 67 in 1988–89 to a record level of 290 in 1991–92.