Orders of the Day — Civil Aviation

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 23 November 1961.

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Photo of Mr Christopher Woodhouse Mr Christopher Woodhouse , Oxford 12:00, 23 November 1961

There have been moments in the last day or two when I feared that my right hon. Friend and myself would find ourselves alone in the Government Lobby tonight, and there have been moments during this debate when I thought there might be no occasion for us to go into the Lobby at all.

This has been a fluctuating debate, and it has covered an enormous amount of ground. There has been a common thread through everything that has been said, or most of what has been said—that everything that was wrong with the aircraft industry and its management and operation from beginning to end is due to my right hon. Friend and the Government, and that anything that, by a miracle, has gone right is due to the singular and exceptional merits of someone else in it. I am hoping to show that this is a travesty of the facts.

I cannot possibly answer every point that has been raised in this long debate I intend to concentrate mainly on those points that have been raised which bear most closely on the terms of the Amendment, but I should like to stray outside those limits for a moment to deal with one or two points that have been raised, incidentally, in a number of speeches on the subject of the operation of airports and air traffic systems. It had not been my intention to deal with this subject, because it has been recently the subject of a White Paper. In that White Paper, there are some provisions which require legislation, and some of that legislation is already under way.

I have in mind particularly the Civil Aviation (Eurocontrol) Bill, and, of course, at some future date there will have to be legislation relating to the creation of an airport authority. That will provide an opportunity for debating these points. The rest of the matters in the White Paper can be dealt with, and are being dealt with at the moment, administratively. The principal one is the sale of Government-owned airports. As the subject of airports was touched on by one or two hon. Members, I should like briefly to answer the points that they raised.

My hon. Friend for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Eden) asked a question about our intentions with regard to Hurn Airport. This is one of the airports which the Government intend to sell to municipal ownership. We are in contact with the local authorities to do that, but the nature of the arrangements is bound to depend on what happens to the neighbouring airport of Eastleigh. There are applications before the Air Transport Licensing Board to renew services from Eastleigh. If those go through, the future of Hurn may be rather different and we shall consider whether to no ahead with plans for the new terminal building and on what scale in relation to the decisions about services.

The hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White) asked a question about an airport in North Wales. I remind her that under the terms of the White Paper it is open to the authority operating the airport that she has in mind to apply for Government assistance, subject to the criteria which are laid down in the White Paper. These are principally indispensability to the national system and the need for financial assistance in relation to the burden on the rates. I cannot encourage the authority to apply for assistance. I can only point out that these criteria will be strictly applied, but it is open to the operating authority to seek assistance if it wishes to do so.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Skeffington) wished to know where I slept at London Airport. The simple answer is, in the general manager's flat—with the window open.

Points were raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir A. V. Harvey) about the future development of London (Heathrow) Airport. A number of complaints about the inadequacy of the airport were made. We are well aware that London (Heathrow) Airport continues to need improving. It always will. No airport can remain in a static condition for ever.. We are working hard in collaboration with the management of the airport to ensure that the necessary improvements are carried out. They are to a considerable extent already under way. Longer runways have been built, no doubt much to the annoyance of hon. Members' constituents who live in the neighbourhood.

The new long haul building is functioning. A multi-storey garage to ease the parking problem will be erected in the next year or two. When the South Wales Motorway is completed, there will be a spur from it to provide better access to London (Heathrow) Airport. Improvements in freight accommodation are in progress. We are also considering the future development of the present site of the northern terminal, which provides a big opportunity for improving the facilities of the airport.

I now turn to the substance of the arguments which have been put against the Government. They have dealt principally with the Minister's relations, first, with the independent air operators, secondly, with the Corporations, thirdly, with the manufacturing industry, and, fourthly, with other countries with whom we are in competition and, in some cases, collaboration.

To deal with the independent operators first, the main subject of debate has, of course, been their accident record. We have had this subject before the House once or twice fairly recently and I do not want to go over the whole ground again. In the interests of hon. Members who were not present on previous occasions, however, I think it right to repeat that the statistics which are used in different ways as the basis of criticism are open to a good deal of argument.

The statistics which I gave in reply to the hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason), although with many caveats, could be used to prove all sorts of things. They could be used, for example, to prove that in some of the years covered by the statistics it was more dangerous to travel by the Corporations than by the independent airlines. Nobody wants to suggest that. It is merely an index of the misleading character of the statistics.

The reasons why the statistics are misleading are several. One is that accidents to British aircraft, whether scheduled or non-scheduled, independent or Corporation, are, mercifully, so few that any accident is liable to give a severely distorting effect to the statistics. Another important factor is that the number of passengers involved in any crash is entirely fortuitous. It may be 60 in one crash and only two in another in aircraft of exactly the same type.

Another reason is that the lengths of stages flown by different operators vary greatly. On the whole, it tends to be the Corporations which fly the longer stages and the independent airlines which fly the shorter and more frequent stages. It is well known that among the potentially most dangerous moments in any flight are take-off and landing. Consequently, there may be more accidents in the case of operators who fly the shorter and more frequent stages than in the case of those who fly the longer ones.

Other bases of statistics could be used which would produce different results. I concede, however, that over the last two or three years, any basis of statistics would show the independent airlines to be less successful, on the whole, in avoiding accidents than the Corporations. This is common ground. What we have to consider in the light of this is how to remedy that situation.

The House is familiar with the instruments which my right hon. Friend has for that purpose. I should like to list them briefly, with the preliminary observation that the essential thing to have in mind is that all these instruments are applicable at the same time to everybody. These instruments are, first, the air operator's certificate, issued by the Director of Aviation Safety under the authority of my right hon. Friend; secondly, a certificate of airworthiness for each aircraft, issued by the Air Registration Board; thirdly, the pilot's licence, with suitable endorsements, issued by the Minister, entitling the pilot to fly particular aircraft; and fourthly, air service licences issued by the Air Transport Licensing Board in the case of United Kingdom operators, and under the control of the Minister in the case of foreign operators coming into this country. Any operator in this country must have all these requirements; they are not alternatives. No aircraft can fly on a civil transport flight unless it satisfies all the criteria requisite for all those permits to operate.

I do not think it necessary to go in detail over all the ground that has to be covered in inspections for each of those permits. I should, however, like to refer to the fact, which has been mentioned in the debate, that in the case of the air operator's certificate, for instance, the onus of responsibility for ensuring that the regulations are conformed to rests with the operator, subject to the perpetual continuing inspection by the Ministry's 48 inspectors. I am assured that they are confident that they can do the necessary work. There are only 40 independent operators to be inspected.

They have, in fact, during the eight months or so since the present system was brought into effect, carried out 330 visits to operators, of whom the great majority have been independent operators. They also inspect the Corporations, but they do not regard it as necessary at present to pay quite the same detailed attention to the Corporations as to the independents. In addition to the 330 visits which they have made, they have carried out 184 in-flight inspections. There is one section of the inspectors corps who are in-flight inspectors who go in the aircraft with the operators to see that they are conforming to the necessary standards.

I mentioned that only 40 operators exist which have to be inspected at the moment. There were originally 38 licences when the system came in; eight have been licensed since then; five licences have been withdrawn, even in the eight months since the system was operating; one lapsed, or was surrendered. Five have been withdrawn, not by any means in every case on the grounds of danger, but in several cases on grounds of the inadequate financial support of the operators concerned, which I mention to show that the conduct of this system of inspection pays the closest possible attention to the financial standing of the companies concerned.

As regards the airworthiness certificate, I think that I need only say, in addition to what has already been said tonight, that there has been no recent case of a crash which has been attributed on inquiry to a failure of airworthiness.