Julian Brazier (Shadow Minister, Transport; Canterbury, Conservative)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

By seeking to get the Government to report on the issue, I shall enable the Committee to have a short discussion on the transfer of powers from the CAA to the European Aviation Safety Agency, and the impact that that is having in a whole range of ways on aviation and industries related to aviation.

I want to make two points in that area. I have no objection in principle to the idea that some of the Civil Aviation Authority’s duties have gone to its European equivalent. Airspace becomes increasingly crowded, and we move a long way in a short space of time. That logic is clear, and we are not discussing any principle. What I am deeply concerned about is the practical effect of what is happening.

The first of the two points that I want to make is profoundly important. In our earlier debate, the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan spoke about the health of passengers; this point concerns the safety of passengers. The system for the provision of certificates of airworthiness has been a cornerstone of aviation safety for generations. It is a system that requires the services of a relatively small body of very highly skilled people whose skills are extremely marketable. The aircraft skills involved are in short supply, and those with them are highly employable.

When the responsibility for airworthiness certificates was moved from the CAA to EASA, EASA had one employee. That was not a problem per se, as it temporarily pushed the responsibility back to the CAA and its counterparts in France and elsewhere to carry on the work as before. The new clause includes a provision on the need to report on the numbers of employees because I am told that the position is almost critical. EASA has managed to attract a number of those key skilled people, and the British certification work is now split between Cologne, where EASA is located, and the CAA, which still employs about 100 such skilled people.

I need hardly tell the Committee how important the activity is. However, I understand that, because it is clear to the people working for the CAA that they have no long-term future in the CAA—the authority is running the activity down as it transfers to EASA—they are finding other jobs and leaving. After President Chirac’s rude comments about England and Finland, and the contribution that they may or may not have made to yesterday’s magnificent result, I must phrase my next sentence very carefully. As someone who spent many years of his childhood in Germany, I have nothing against Cologne, but the plain fact is that Cologne has not proved an attractive place for people with such precious aviation skills, the bulk of them English and French. I understand that there is a similar problem in France, as French mechanics are equally reluctant to work in Cologne.

I do not wish to scaremonger or suggest that large numbers of aircraft will drop out of the sky tomorrow, but there is a major problem. We cannot continue with a situation in which the CAA’s base is declining and EASA, although it is expanding and has more than 100 employees in this area—the Minister may have more   up-to-date data—is frail and there are question marks over the competence of some of the people whom it has managed to recruit. That is an example of a potentially good idea at a strategic level turning into a sad story, as has often happened in the EU, after a silly location is chosen for a new body and the indications are that it is not competent to take on the work.

I want briefly to mention my second concern—my first is obviously the overriding one, as passenger safety is at stake. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson), who has been working on behalf of a company in his constituency on something that again highlights the nonsense that we have got into with the partial transfer of powers from the CAA to EASA. The local company in question is a small firm in Oswestry run by the famous Swedish balloonist Per Lindstrand. It operates balloons that can be winched up and down. I have rather ugly memories of those because my parachuting course started on such a balloon and I found it deeply frightening. The balloons produced by the company that I am talking about are used, however, mostly for spectator activity.

Because the balloon is winched up and down it is deemed to be an aviation product. After the transfer of powers began, Mr. Lindstrand approached the Civil Aviation Authority, which took £48,000 from him. After that, he was dealing with EASA, which initially would not allow the products to be sold in the EU at all, because of a bureaucratic anomaly relating to the certification of the winch that hauls the balloons up and down. Meanwhile, a French rival operating an almost identical product was immediately certified. I pay tribute to the work of the journalist Christopher Booker in exposing all this, and in supporting my hon. Friend.

The EASA certification director eventually signed the air-worthiness certificate for Lindstrand’s aerostats, including the winch, and he could re-enter the market. However, immediately, the CAA, which still has some responsibilities in the area, came up with a new problem. He had to get design organisation approval for the makers of the winch and the software that controls it. It is now necessary to show that the two firms responsible for the winch were competent to build a safe product, even though they had already demonstrated that they were by contributing to a product that had, after a long and expensive process, been certified safe. The same applies to the computer firm that designed the software. It now emerges that the new rules, with that curious and muddled split of responsibilities, have placed as many as 85 specialist UK firms in a similar predicament.

I do not want to develop the point further. I have made it as strongly as I need to. However, I remind the Committee that, meanwhile, the French product, which is almost identical but, I understand, has a genuine safety problem with its winch, has enjoyed problem-free certification during the entire relevant period, under the split of responsibilities in France between their authority and EASA. I do not know   whether the French have 85 companies with similar potential problems, but I have no doubt that they will all be smoothed carefully.

The Minister must realise that it is not the action of drooling extreme Europhobes to call to account moves towards Europeanisation on grounds of practice. The Conservative party has no objection in principle to what was intended; for the reasons that I mentioned earlier, one can see why it makes sense. However, both the examples that I have given make it clear that the transfer is not working. It potentially endangers passengers and puts British firms at a severe competitive disadvantage.

I am certain that the Minister could spend 10 minutes describing how burdensome it would be to produce the reports. She, I and the Committee know that the calling for a report would be a device to enable the debate to take place, because the Civil Aviation Bill contains an extraordinary gap, in that it says nothing about the transfer of powers. The aim of the new clause is to provoke the debate and have the Government provide answers on it—not, of course, to obtain a set of burdensome reports.

Karen Buck (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Regent's Park & Kensington North, Labour)

As the hon. Gentleman has made clear, there is no issue in principle about the transfer. Indeed, the annual report of the CAA confirmed that industry and the Government welcomed the proposal, and the CAA was keen to support an initiative that would provide harmonised and legally binding aviation standards in Europe. There is no problem in principle.

The hon. Gentleman seeks assurances that the transfer is proceeding smoothly. I remind him that we are at a very early stage. Given the scale and complexity of the process across Europe—I believe that it began in late 2003—it is fair to say that there are some teething difficulties. The United Kingdom deputy chairman of the management board is leading a joint agency and national aviation authority working group. That has concluded that, on manpower, there are a number of planning risks and uncertainties that require rigorous and continuous monitoring. He has made a number of recommendations to ensure that proper management and governance processes are put in place to address those, and the management board has accepted them.

The CAA is actively involved in that work, and will continue to be involved in the ongoing work of ensuring effective manpower planning and in addressing other issues affecting the agency and national civil aviation authority interface as they arise.

I can also reassure the hon. Gentleman on scrutiny. There are still many opportunities to ensure that points are scrutinised. The Secretary of State has a very clear duty—laid down in section 1 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982—to promote aviation safety. The establishment of EASA does not detract from that duty, and there are many well established parliamentary processes by which hon. Members can ask the Secretary of State how he is performing it. They can ask him parliamentary questions, call for debates in the House or in the Select Committee on Transport or can hold an inquiry and, because the development   of EASA involves European Union legislation, the European scrutiny committees can examine and, if necessary, debate the measures.

I am confident that all necessary measures are in place to ensure that progress is properly monitored and that the manpower issues are being properly scrutinised to ensure that the transfer is proceeding smoothly. The level of anxiety expressed by the hon. Gentleman is not backed up by the facts. On that basis, I ask him to withdraw the amendment.

Julian Brazier (Shadow Minister, Transport; Canterbury, Conservative)

I am really not satisfied with that answer. The amendment was a probing measure and the requirement for reports a device. Let me make three points. The Minister referred to scrutiny. I did not mention scrutiny at all; that is not the issue. The issue is what happens in reality. Politicians on committees asking questions are not going to save lives on aeroplanes that are unsafe. What saves lives on aeroplanes is competent technicians examining them.

The second point concerns the Minister’s response to the main thrust of my speech, in which she said that manpower planning is ongoing, and that the CAA is assisting in close liaison. My informal information from the CAA is that it does not enjoy the same level of confidence as the Minister about that. It is not a matter of whether it is early days; if those people find well paid jobs elsewhere, they cannot be got back. There is a relatively small number of them in the European aviation industry, most of whom are English and French and do not want to live in Cologne. They are drifting away. It is difficult for the CAA to employ new people, so the fact is that there is a manpower problem. Manpower planning will help, but the numbers are not being addressed and the problem is developing fast.

My third and last point is that the Minister did not make a strong case for the transfer of powers, but suggested in a sentence or two that it is still early days and that we are still finding our way around after only a couple of years. The fact is that the French found their way around on day one; there was no problem with Mr. Lindstrand’s French competitor, which was certified immediately.

The French have found the transitional path; we have not. For that reason, I intend to press the new clause to a vote, although I am quite willing to accept that it is purely a protest in calling for a report.

Edward O'Hara (Knowsley South, Labour)

In accordance with precedent, I give my vote to the Ayes.

Edward O'Hara (Knowsley South, Labour)

In accordance with precedent, I give my vote to the Noes.