Civil Aviation Bill
10:30 am
Julian Brazier (Shadow Minister, Transport; Canterbury, Conservative)
I, too, welcome the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Nicholas. I have been privileged to speak several times in Westminster Hall debates that you have chaired, and I can match the Minister's anecdote. I remember one particularly high-quality debate in which we got to the bottom of the issue with almost no audience; Westminster Hall was almost empty, with only one person in the public gallery. At the end, you told us what a good debate it had been, which was important to those of us who had worked hard and felt that we might have been wasting our time.
There is huge public interest in this Bill, which covers issues ranging from climate change to the quality of life of ordinary people. The Opposition welcome the fact that there are no knives in the motion, as it gives us the freedom to range as we see fit over the issues. That is particularly important on this Bill because our main complaint is that it is a bit of a mouse and does not do very much. Most of the more lively debates will be on the new clauses.
I see, Sir Nicholas, that you have and your advisers have done a wonderful job on selecting the order of the amendments. With the possible exception of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, I cannot remember serving on a Bill where the arrangements of the amendments could have been quite as conceptually difficult, because so many of them overlap in so many different and complicated ways. I will try hard not to test your patience by dealing with amendments that are further down the list, but there is so much overlap between them that it may prove impossible not to stray from time to time.
Much of the debate will inevitably be on the new clauses, which is why it is particularly good to have no knives on the Bill. A whole variety of areas seem to be missing from the Bill; it confers many powers, but there are few duties to get anything done. It has almost no checks and balances. We will shortly debate new clauses that cover many of those matters. There are a number of more specialist areas, ranging from safety to the Air Travel Trust. This looks like being a most interesting Committee and I look forward to taking part in debates.