Clause 1 - Aerodrome charges: noise and emissions
Civil Aviation Bill
12:15 pm
Karen Buck (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Regent's Park and Kensington North, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman was half right in predicting what I was going to say. Where he was not right was in assuming that ''specified'' means ''designated''; it does not. It means an airport that the Secretary of State can specify for that purpose.
I shall first outline the broader reason why I disagree with the amendment. The Government's policy, as we have stated in earlier amendments, is that decisions on how to deal with the local environment should, as a general rule, be left to those local circumstances, reflecting the diverse nature of airports and their operation. The new subsection contained in clause 1 gives the Secretary of State the powers to direct specified, not designated, aerodromes to make use of the powers in section 38 as amended by the clause. The Government's intention in making the provision is to ensure that where an airport operator is unwilling to take up those powers, even though local circumstances mean that there is a strong case for so doing, the Secretary of State could ensure that charges might be fixed by reference to noise or emissions of aircraft.
The hon. Gentleman's amendment would mean that rather than being able to make such directions to specified airports, all airports—both designated and non-designated—would have to be directed to fix their charges with regard to noise and emissions. The Government are not comfortable with that blanket approach, for the reasons that I have given.