Orders of the Day — Air Corporations Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 4 April 1968.

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Photo of Mr Eric Lubbock Mr Eric Lubbock , Orpington 12:00, 4 April 1968

The hon. Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Robert Howarth) commented on the thin attendance of this debate. That may be because some of us who are interested in aviation were up rather late yesterday discussing Concorde, rather than because of any lack of interest in the affairs of B.E.A. At any rate, I hope so, because other debates in which I have taken part on the affairs of the Corporation have always been reasonably well attended.

As for his remarks about The Times, this is a disappointment which we all suffer occasionally and I am certain that his speech this afternoon will be given its proper attention and the importance that it deserves. I thought that he had much to say of sound common sense, particularly on the re-equipment of B.E.A.

The hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) made his principal criticisms of the Bill from the point of view of the increased charges being imposed by the British Airports Authority. It is clear that the hon. Gentleman has been talking to the Chairman of British European Airways, because much of what he said was quotations from the Chairman's page in the B.E.A. magazine, which I have studied since it came through my letter box this morning.

Of course I have given the remarks of Sir Anthony Milward the attention which they deserve and I have studied his case carefully. What he said—I tried to intervene to point this out to the hon. Member, but he did not give way then—was that his complaint was that there was not proper consultation. He did not complain that there was not any consultation, and his criticism was not directed against the President of the Board of Trade but against the Airports Authority.

If one expects the nationalised industries to behave as commercial organisations, as the hon. Gentleman said he would like them to, it would be better for the consultations to be directly between the Airports Authority and the airlines which are using its services rather than through the intermediary services of the President of the Board of Trade. Surely that would be more convenient.

I would have said that it was impossible for the Airports Authority to consult all the hundreds of airlines which use Heathrow and that it would probably have needed several months to collect all the views, if that was the policy. I have no doubt that Sir Anthony Milward was properly informed of the intentions of the Airports Authority before the final decision. He devoted a great deal of space to this in the magazine, but the amount concerned is not all that great. It is only £200,000 in the coming year on his international routes, which is not a very high percentage of his total expenditure during the course of the year.

He says that he would not mind paying such an increase if he were to receive immediate benefit in the shape of improved airport services, but the British Airports Authority has a substantial capital expenditure programme of its own, and this will be increasingly important as the amount of traffic coming through Heathrow increases and as the number of passengers per aircraft increases.

When one sees the bedlam and chaos in the concourse of London Airport after one of the present generations of subsonic jets arrives, one dreads to think what it will be like when several 747s arrive in the course of the same hour. It is for this reason that the Authority is to spend a considerable sum over the next few years on the provision of facilities for processing passengers' luggage and getting passengers quickly from the aircraft into the Customs Hall and then on their way by various means of transport to central London or other destinations.