Alistair Carmichael
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Alistair Carmichael Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on obtaining time for this timely and important debate. I was particularly impressed by the way he brought together so many people across the party divides with his comments on Edinburgh.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about road and rail services; he will forgive me if I take a different focus. Anybody leaving Orkney on the 6.30 am ferry would be lucky to get to London much before quarter to 10 at night. Anybody driving along the still un-dualled A9 from Inverness to Perth would be lucky to arrive much before 8.30 pm. For us, the most important links between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, and indeed the rest of the world, are airlinks. The codeshare operated between Loganair and British Airways is enormously important for business travel and the visitor economy.
Tourists come to Orkney and Shetland from across the world. Curiously, few of them seem to have heard of Loganair, but they have all heard of British Airways, so when they go on the British Airways website to book a ticket that will take them from anywhere in the world to Heathrow and on through Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen or Inverness into Orkney and Shetland, that is enormously important for us. That code share works better sometimes than others, but it is always a very important service.
The reliance on Heathrow, however, can be something of a mixed blessing for air passengers going from anywhere in Scotland to the rest of the United Kingdom and onward. Heathrow is a massively busy airport—a plane lands there every 45 seconds—so it does not take an awful lot, whether that be weather, some technological breakdown or whatever unforeseen event, for disruption to happen. When it happens, the consequences are always felt most acutely by the short-haul domestic services—in Britain, that is now in effect Scotland, because few short-haul services go through Heathrow to anywhere else in the world.
That situation causes constant anxiety and irritation among passengers going from Scotland to elsewhere in the United Kingdom. The feeling is always that we are harder done by than everyone else. I can understand how that happens, but my recent discussions with British Airways have given me some insight into it. Arrangements in place between the airlines using Heathrow should spread the pain, so to speak, but in essence, because British Airways is such a dominant performer in Heathrow, the other airlines are frankly able to ignore the agreements that are in place. As a consequence, British Airways services—those coming from Scotland, in particular—are left to bear the brunt.
British Airways is therefore the one that gets the criticism, but is not necessarily the one at fault. It tells me that this is something that the Civil Aviation Authority, Heathrow airport, the airlines operating at Heathrow and the Department for Transport could fix between them. My ask of the Minister when she sums up is to make it clear whether she will act as the interlocutor, the spokesperson for Scotland’s air passengers in dealing with those bodies—in particular the Department for Transport—to ensure that we are not always the ones who are left behind.