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

Lord McLoughlin Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support the words of my noble friend Lord Young, and will add one small piece of information. While the passengers would not necessarily have compensation for the delays or cancellations in those circumstances, the airlines still have what is called a duty of care. Once an aircraft is delayed, food or refreshments should be provided, and hotel accommodation if the passengers have to remain in the airport overnight. So they sustain that cost, albeit in exceptional circumstances.

[Lord McLoughlin (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support to the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Young. One of the things I find slightly worrying in the letter from the Minister to my noble friend is that he says:

“Were NATS to be made responsible for paying compensation, almost half of the cost would fall to the taxpayer”.


That is a fairly interesting line of defence from the Minister, because we are about to renationalise the railways. Therefore, any cost delays from Delay Repay will fall to the taxpayer. Will we see a policy from the Government that does away with any Delay Repay repayments to the passenger, as those faults would now impact on the taxpayer? That is a very interesting scenario. I wonder why the Government are approaching delays that are caused by an organisation that serves airlines differently from those caused by one that may well in due course serve the rail passenger.

My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham has ably put the case and shown the inconsistency in the Government’s position. Should he test the opinion of the House, I very much hope that we give the Minister that mandate to go back, renegotiate this and come forward with a proper proposal that gives the right compensation to airlines in due course.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

I am a little hesitant to start the Front Bench responses before I triple-check that nobody else wants to speak.

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Moylan, Lord Grayling and Lord Young, for raising these important issues. On the theme of parliamentary scrutiny, we on these Benches support the spirit of Amendments 16, 17 and 29 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. They seek to mandate the affirmative procedure for regulations, and we attempted to suggest similar amendments in Committee. The Bill delegates vast, unscrutinised powers to the Secretary of State to redefine passenger rights, so it is only right that Parliament retains the ability to debate and approve these changes before they take effect. I have previously mentioned signing a blank cheque that allows for the fundamental alteration of consumer standards via the negative procedure. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, I also acknowledge that the Minister has changed his position on that and signed one of the amendments from the noble Lord on this issue.

I will not revisit or rehearse my comments in Committee about the need to deliver on the threat of a fatal Motion, which we have got into in the past. Sometimes, the muscular possibility of delivering on that threat is the only way of dealing with these procedures. I fully recognise that both the Conservative Benches and the Labour Benches have a long-standing tradition of not doing that.

We welcome government Amendment 28, which requires the CAA to report annually on its enforcement functions. We see this as a necessary step towards the transparency that we called for in Committee. However, while we welcome the technical corrections in government Amendments 30 and 31 regarding the concurrency arrangements, we remain concerned by the potential for regulatory fragmentation. Probing Amendments 7 and 12 rightly ask why both the CAA and the CMA require overlapping powers. We believe the regulator must have teeth, but those teeth need to be clearly seen and defined. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on that.

On Amendment 13 from the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, while we support proportionality, we feel that confining financial penalties only to “systemic failure” risks leaving individual passengers in the lurch. We worry that it might defang the regulator in a way that prioritises industry margins over individual dignity—a common theme that I have already pursued on previous groups.

On Amendment 65 from the noble Lord, Lord Young, I read more on this issue this weekend than on almost anything else to do with the Bill. The only thing I can say is that we on these Benches still have an open mind on this issue. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. Normally we would follow the noble Lord through hell-fire, but I have had discussions with Commons colleagues and have read everything I can on this issue. We wait to hear the Minister’s response.

Finally, Amendment 15 would require a statement on international alignment. As we have previously argued, any divergence from EU standards must be used as a lever for enhancement, not a race to the bottom. If we are to move away from established protections, the public deserve a clear technical explanation of why that divergence is in their interest. I look forward to the debates that this has thrown up and to the Minister’s response to these amendments.