Offence of shining or directing a laser at a vehicle

Part of Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 2:45 pm on 21 March 2017.

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Photo of Steven Baker Steven Baker Conservative, Wycombe 2:45, 21 March 2017

In tabling amendment 10, my intention was to probe the Government’s position on the seriousness of this offence, and to ensure that the Committee had an opportunity to discuss the same. Very simply, the amendment doubles the sentence from five to 10 years. In oral evidence, I picked up the issue of the seriousness of the offence, and in replying to me, Richard Goodwin talked about the difficulty of proving a person’s intent:

“if somebody shines a laser and a plane crashes, there is a lot of injury to a lot of people; the consequences at that end are obviously catastrophic.”

I picked that theme up and asked BALPA whether it is possible that an attack with a laser could cause the loss of an aeroplane. Martin Drake replied, “Oh yes, absolutely.” He went on to explain that laser attacks happen during finals for aeroplanes, when pilots are carrying out essential and, in some cases, obvious checks, such as checking whether the wheels are down. He said:

“The vast majority of these strikes happen at night, and you are using all lights. Your instruments are lit up. We have mostly cathode ray tube or LED instrumentation on the flight deck; there are very few aircraft still flying around with the old-fashioned dial-type instruments. The potential for a pilot to confuse whether he is looking at the centre line or a side set of lights—particularly in a crosswind, when you are canted over to deal with that—is huge. It is quite conceivable that if both pilots were affected by the dazzle effect at a critical stage of flight, they could attempt to land down the side of the runway, rather than down the centre of it.”

I asked him to remind us of the maximum capacity of the largest aeroplanes, and he said:

“You could end up with about 520 on an A380.”––[Official Report, Vehicle Technology and Aviation Public Bill Committee, 14 March 2017; c. 74, Q171-173.]

I mention that evidence to the Committee because we need to recognise that this offence could potentially have the most serious of consequences. God forbid that anything like this should ever happen, but we have heard expert evidence that an aircraft could be lost in extremis as a result of a laser attack. I hear what the Labour Front-Bencher says; I tabled this amendment to probe the seriousness of the offence, and am well aware that in the dread occasion of an aircraft being lost, a range of other offences would be available. However, I put the amendment to the Government, and although I do not intend to press it to a Division, I hope that the Minister will say something that others can later rely on about the extreme gravity of the offence.