Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Grey-Thompson and Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I should just say that of course I respect the views of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and if he looks at Hansard and considers what I said, I will similarly consider further what he said.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate this afternoon. I would just like to pick up on a couple of points relating to my amendments, and I will try not to run into the next group.

The noble Lord, Lord Empey, makes some valuable points about the drop-off charges. Although I have not had emails on that specifically to do with airports, disabled people have issues in terms of access and technology and might find physically paying some of these charges quite hard to do. Although we should be trying to get disabled people and everybody to travel to airports by public transport, that highlights a bigger set of problems that we have with wheelchair-accessible transport in this country.

An amendment was not passed on wheelchair-accessible taxis outside London. It might be quite hard, if you have a specially designed WAV with hand controls, to take it to off-site parking. So, if you then use transport around the airport, there is a whole issue with not being tied down in the buses to get from the parking to the airport. My husband is not a permanent wheelchair user, but if we are going on holiday, he will quite often take his wheelchair with him because he struggles to walk long distances. We would not be able to travel on the same bus together because of the current rules.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, raised hand luggage and made me think of a different aspect not raised today: travelling with medical aids. I have had some emails about that. Some airlines are great, do not charge and are very accommodating, and some are not. It might be a piece of equipment such as a hoist that needs to go into the hold, or something like a CPAP machine, which absolutely needs to be on board with an individual and which is safe to fly with. I think some of that might come into the training in the next group.

I bow to my noble friend Lady Finlay’s greater knowledge on air quality, but the Task and Finish Group looked extensively at toilets. That is outside our jurisdiction in terms of the design, but we could do so much better at the design of toilets. There are some really good examples. The airline crew should help disabled people to the toilet, but not in the toilet—absolutely not. However, because of the poor design of toilets on planes, most people, including myself, absolutely dehydrate ourselves before we fly to make sure that we do not have to use them, even on long haul flights, which creates a whole different set of problems for safety on board a plane. Any influence we could have on smart design—probably outside the Bill—would be very helpful.

I thank the noble Lord for his response; I understand what he is saying. I will be bringing possibly a different version of this amendment back. I do not think it is impossible to look at a form of words that is a tighter list. Maybe a new clause needs to be inserted to give disabled travellers more reassurance on what the Government are trying to do. But at this stage I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.