Drones: Consultation Response — House of Lords, 2019-01-07
Topic: Transportation
Denis Tunnicliffe (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for her repetition of the Statement. I see it promises further action, but unfortunately when I look at the detail I see no clear action specified, except the five-kilometre rule. It seems to me it merely says that there will be more meetings and discussions; there is no specific action in the Statement Does the Minister accept that the Secretary of State has a personal responsibility for the safety of operations, particularly at Gatwick, Heathrow and the other major airports? The whole concept of a good safety environment is where one individual can be held personally responsible. In the case of aviation, we have several safety systems but, at the end of the day, somebody has to be responsible. Is it her view that the Secretary of State has this personal responsibility? Does he also have a personal responsibility to the many passengers disrupted because of this incident? I believe that in excess of 100,000 passengers had their travel disrupted by this event The present regulations in relation to 400 feet and one kilometre are pathetic. When I was both a private and a professional pilot, if I got within one, five, 10, perhaps even 15 kilometres of Heathrow or Gatwick without direct permission to do so, I would have been prosecuted, paid a hefty fine and had my licence removed. The idea that a kilometre is of any value is absurd, and there has to be a serious question mark over five kilometres I note that the Statement acknowledges the wider challenge with prisons and infrastructure, and I am pleased that account will be taken of that—but we have known about this risk for many years. I believe there was an incident at Gatwick as far ago as July 2017 and BALPA, the pilots’ union, has been pointing out the potential hazards of drones for a number of years. Why was there not a plan? Why was there not legislation? The noble Baroness and I spent many happy hours together at the beginning of 2018. We did space; we did ATOL; we did vehicle technology; we did lasers. There was every opportunity to squirrel some legislation on drones into those Bills, and indeed I made an informal offer to her predecessor that we would co-operate if the Government had something to bring forward. Some basic legislation could have been introduced Is it the DfT’s view that Gatwick Airport Ltd met its responsibilities? Does it not have a general responsibility for the safety of its passengers? Does it not have a general responsibility to plan in some depth for when things go wrong For part of my career, I was responsible for the passengers on the London Underground. We would respond to any risk by making plans immediately to see how we could mitigate those risks and then we would develop those plans. The mitigation, where practical, would be introduced straightaway. Indeed, in the early 1990s we developed plans to evacuate the Underground very quickly. When in 1992 we found incendiaries on trains, we were able to get the people out within something like 10 minutes. I have to admit that we did not have a plan to then restart the Underground, and it was not a good day for our passengers—but at least they were alive and well. Does the Secretary of State accept that he should have had in place, or caused to be in place, a plan? Does he accept that, if a plan does not exist, it should now I assume that the new powers will increase police activity and responsibility. Will there be sufficient police resources to make this practical The issue of drones has been with us for years, and in my view it has been handled chaotically. This is symptomatic of the whole of HMG at the moment. When will this Government get a grip?