Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

3.15 pm

This Clause is much more straightforward than the previous one. In essence, it allows for an increase in the penalty from two years to five years for the offence of endangering the safety of an aircraft or a person in an aircraft.

The air navigation order in which the disruptive passenger offences are set out is subsidiary legislation to the Civil Aviation Act 1982. The powers set out in section 61(2) of that Act restrict the penalty to two years for conviction on indictment of such an offence. It is clear to me—and, I am sure, to other Committee members—that two years is not a sufficient penalty for the serious offence of endangering the safety of an aircraft: two years for endangering an aircraft that could have 400 people on board is an absurdity in this day and age. This clause amends that Act to raise the maximum penalty for this offence to five years, thereby allowing a subsequent change to the relevant air navigation order.

Raising the maximum penalty to five years carries the advantage of making the offence automatically arrestable, in accordance with section 24(1) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and equivalent provisions in Northern Ireland. Referring back to the example that I gave earlier of the flight from Vigo to Glasgow that went to Cardiff, the offence would have been automatically arrestable. However, as there is no equivalent provision in Scotland, the offence would not have been automatically arrestable in Glasgow. In Scotland, a police constable has a common law power of arrest, which has to be justified depending on the circumstances in a particular case. In practice it may be possible to justify arrests for a serious offence of this nature, but I am advised that it would be far preferable, for legal certainty, to create a power of arrest in statute. Therefore, I give notice that I intend to rectify that by tabling on Report a small Amendment to the Bill to make this offence arrestable in Scotland for when it becomes arrestable in the rest of the UK. It would have been much more advantageous if that had been done earlier, but it has taken a bit longer because of devolution and reserved powers and so on. This is an important part of the Bill, and we need to ensure that things are not only done but done properly. [Interruption.]

If I was on a flight, under the hon. Gentleman's new provision I would almost certainly have got five years for covering my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) in a liquid that could have been alcohol.

I support the Clause. It addresses something that, if it is not an oversight, has been long overdue for correction. How can that law be limited to a maximum sentence of two years when, as the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw said, endangering an aircraft can now mean endangering the lives of in excess of 200 or 300 people?

I am heartened that at a later stage the hon. Gentleman will table an Amendment to do away with the anomaly that applies in Scotland. It is entirely iniquitous that an offence committed on a flight from Manchester to Glasgow would be arrestable at one moment and seconds later it would not be. Doing away with that anomaly is to be welcomed, and I will have no hesitation in supporting the amendment.

As we are getting our own house in order—or our own skies in order—I wonder what is the current legislation on an international basis, within Europe as well as in the wider world. Flights, as we know, go everywhere. Other countries do not have similar legislation, so I would welcome the Minister's views on whether, when the Bill is enacted, such good practice could be exported to those countries.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Miss Widdecombe. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw on introducing the Bill. I wanted to speak on Second Reading but was unable to; I might have said what I am about to say at that time. I want to make some important points.

The Bill dovetails nicely with the Railways and Transport Safety Bill, which received a Third Reading on Monday following a debate. I was a member of the Standing Committee of the Bill. We dealt with drunkenness among staff and aircrew, while this Bill deals with problems with passengers. It is right that they should be dealt with closely together. I have already regaled my colleagues on that Committee with my experience of travelling back from Plovdiv 15 years ago, when all the aircrew drank vodka all the way to Gatwick—a terrifying experience. I thought at the time that we should have had some Laws to deal with such behaviour, let alone to deal with passengers.

Most people who travel by aircraft are perfectly peaceful, well behaved and law abiding, and go about their holiday or whatever in a relaxed way. We are dealing with a small number of people who sometimes have personal problems relating to alcohol or personality traits. A difficult minority of people cause such problems.

In the previous Parliament—before my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) became Under-Secretary of State for Transport—I was in correspondence with other Ministers in the Department about the problem of air rage. I put it to them at the time that we should introduce a penalty forbidding people to fly. Prison sentences and fines are well enough, but not being able to fly—taking away a person's licence for a prolonged period, and perhaps for life for a second offence—would be a serious deterrent.

I put that case. The only argument that came back was from my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South. She made the point that international co-operation would be needed. It might be easy to do that on flights from Gatwick to Edinburgh or Luton to Glasgow, but on flights from Plovdiv to somewhere else it would be more difficult. International agreement would be necessary. I believe that bans on flying for passengers who seriously misbehave should be discussed, and I ask the Minister to consider that for future legislation, if not for the Bill.

Mention has been made of hon. Members flying and behaving themselves. Some years ago, I spent a long flight with my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South. Luton is rather over-represented on the Committee. No one could have been more peaceful than we were. However, I have flown with an hon. Member who was less well-behaved. [HON. MEMBERS: "Name them."] It was many years ago and I cannot remember the name. The behaviour was well short of an offence, but it caused stress. Stress is a serious problem on an aircraft. There are children, the elderly, people who have not flown very much or are frightened of flying. If they see aggression of any kind, such as a shouting argument, that can cause problems that have to be addressed seriously. We are not all relaxed and laid back about flying at 500 mph at 35,000 ft. Some of us take it in our stride, but others do not, and they get agitated.

On another occasion, I travelled with a young man in our party—not an hon. Member—on a very long flight. I imbibe myself, but he was drinking excessively and became very agitated to the point that I thought that he might commit an aggressive act. As it happened, he was sitting next to me, and I spent the night—it was a night flight—talking him down. He told me his life story, which had a certain amount of tragedy in it, that being one reason why he was so agitated, and he calmed down over a period of time. I did not get any sleep but I felt that I was helping him out with his problems. People can get very agitated on flights. Some get to the point where they become aggressive.

Mention has been made of ordinary people and the average working person going on a holiday flight, but we have heard stories recently of wealthy pop stars misbehaving extremely badly on aircraft, although they might get away with it in the subsequent court case. Abusive pop stars with plenty of money are not going to worry about fines, because they are such wealthy people that they can just click their fingers and £1 million appears. They might worry about prison sentences at the end of the day; but I think that it would affect such people very much if the possibility of their ever flying again were threatened. Their livelihood and way of life would be seriously affected by that.

I have seen in restaurants, trains and elsewhere that it can be the wealthy who misbehave, not ordinary people. The wealthy are, perhaps, used to ordering people about and getting their own way because they have money and power. Perhaps we should be looking at deterring those people. They would be seriously deterred if they were banned from flying. We might suggest a scale of penalties, such as five years for a first offence, 20 years and then a lifetime ban—although I hope that it would not ever get to that. A series of penalties, which involved banning people from flying by stamping their passport, could quite easily be arranged within the European Union and with other developed countries, such as the United States. It would be harder to arrange with some smaller and poorer countries, or with countries where the sort of regulations that we are used to are less common.

We have to look at the matter seriously because it is very frightening when someone starts to get aggressive on an aircraft. We cannot pull the communication cord and stop the train; we cannot stop the bus and ask for people to get off. An aircraft is in mid-air, flying at high speed, and nothing can be done until it can find a place to land and the person can be dealt with. If people who misbehave like that know that they might be banned from flying, possibly for life, I think that they would either not fly or not behave in that way. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to think for the future about slightly higher penalties than those in the Bill. The Bill is excellent as far as it goes, but I should like to see stronger penalties and I hope that consideration will be given to that in due course.

Although, as I said earlier, the incidents that we are talking about today are rare, if they do occur the offence is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw said, very serious and warrants the higher penalty. In a recent case, the judge who passed judgment on the person found guilty said that he would have given a higher sentence had that been available. We therefore agree with the police recommendation that the five-year maximum penalty is appropriate.

I thank my hon. Friend for giving me prior notice of an Amendment that he may want to table. It sounds as if, in principle, we would support it. We look forward to seeing it so that we can incorporate it sensibly into the Bill.

The hon. Member for East Devon, who almost caused disruptive behaviour in a Committee by soaking the hon. Member for Newark when he stood up to speak, asked about passengers on foreign airlines. The only circumstance in which we would have jurisdiction there would be when the United Kingdom was the next state in which the plane landed. We would have some jurisdiction then. We also have jurisdiction over UK-registered aircraft, wherever they are.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation has passed a resolution urging states to enact more to deal with disruptive passengers. Like all aviation and shipping matters, these matters must be dealt with internationally if they are to be dealt with effectively. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins) almost answered his own question in his opening remarks. He said that we need international agreement to get a ban on the use of aircraft by people who are seriously disruptive. I would be quite happy for those people to fly once more—on a one-way ticket out of the country, and be gone for ever. Notwithstanding that, what he said makes sense. We in this country lead the world on such issues and we must keep an eye on the matter. We must also consider whether, if this is a growing problem and we feel that the Laws in this and other countries have not been adequate and sufficient to deal with the situation, we can make a further international agreement at ICAO. The issue would be a candidate for discussion at ICAO in future, probably prompted by us.

3.30 pm

Will the Minister clarify something that was discussed on Second Reading? Do individual airlines have the right to ban passengers who have been abusive, or who have contravened an airline directive, from their flights for an unspecified period?

Yes, indeed. That is a good point. If people have been disruptive in the past, airlines may ban them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw pointed out, if a person is acting in a disruptive, strange or drunken way before they board, the airlines have the power and the right to stop them boarding. Perhaps it might be advantageous if some of the companies took up that option and used that power a little more often to narrow the scope for trouble being caused by people who are seriously disruptive on aircraft.

I hope that Clause 2 receives the Committee's support.

Mr. Roy: My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North put forward some excellent examples of air rage. During his contribution I wrote the words, "Vodka all the way to Gatwick". That certainly conjured up some horrific images.

The hon. Gentleman is correct to say that the problem is not just confined to one kind, or class, of aircraft. In my naivety, at the start, I asked companies specifically, "Is this more or less a problem, not so much with low-cost airlines, but with chartered airlines going to Ibiza?"—the hon. Member for North Devon mentioned those on Second Reading. I was told clearly that it was not. The companies said that there was just as good a chance of disruptive behaviour by people travelling first class as there was by people in economy class. My hon. Friends the Members for Luton, South and for Ayr also stated that this was no more a low-cost airline problem than it was anyone else's. We should remember that the problem is faced throughout the airline industry.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North argued for a blacklist. I have brought that idea up with various companies. British Airways, for example, has a yellow and red card system on its flights. A yellow card is more or less a note to say, "Look, calm down a bit." However, if a person were shown the red card, there would be serious consequences; they would be reported to the authorities on landing and the airline would also try to ensure that that person did not fly with it again. British Airways has been speaking to other companies about the blacklist idea.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.