Doncaster Sheffield Airport

Edward Miliband Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I speak as the constituency Member for Doncaster North. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for securing the debate and for his efforts to help save the airport, which he has talked about. I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton), the Mayors of Doncaster and South Yorkshire and their teams, and my colleagues, including our shadow Transport Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh). I also mention Mark Chadwick of the Save Doncaster Sheffield Airport Facebook page, who has run a brilliant campaign, as the hon. Member for Don Valley said, and the local trade unions, which organised a rally on Saturday.

It is one minute to midnight as far as the airport is concerned. We in this House owe it to the workers who are at risk of losing their jobs, and to the whole community, to work together and do absolutely everything we can in the days that we have left; not to point fingers or play the blame game, but to try to keep the airport open. That is the focus of my remarks. On Saturday, I heard from people who have worked at the airport since it opened in 2005 and I heard the uncertainty, anguish and sense of pessimism that they felt. They expect us in this House to leave no stone unturned in seeking to keep the airport open.

Let us get the position clear: responsibility for this decision lies with Peel. Peel has taken the decision. It has refused the offer of a 13-month subsidy from the South Yorkshire Mayor to cover its losses and keep the airport open while a buyer is found. Indeed, looking at the situation, one can only reach the conclusion that it is determined not to sell because it wants to use the land for other purposes. The problem with the idea that the airport should somehow be purchased by the South Yorkshire Mayor has a flaw at its heart: Peel is refusing to sell. The issue of the compulsory purchase order is important, but it would take at least a year to go through that process.

[Nick Fletcher]

I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman has ever done a business deal—I really do not know—but what we do is put on as much pressure as possible and use every lever from day one. That way, when we have the people in the room, they are thinking, “Is this going to happen?” I have kept quiet all the way through and have not said what I have wanted to say, because I wanted to show a united front with Opposition Members and the Mayor, but it has been like watching child’s play in front of my eyes. We should use every lever we have, pile on the pressure and hope that Peel will sit down and talk to us. I honestly believe that if I had not started this campaign on day one, the issue would have been swept under the carpet, because nobody on the Opposition side of the House wanted it.

[Edward Miliband]

When the hon. Gentleman looks back at this debate, I honestly do not think that he will think that kind of partisanship does him any favours. Of course the council has talked about doing a CPO and has discussed it with him, but it has tried to explain the time that would take.

Our focus needs to be on Peel. We need to send a united message from this House that it can still do the right thing, because there are credible bidders. I urge it to accept the generous offer of the South Yorkshire Mayor as it considers those bids from credible buyers. If it does not do that, its name will be mud in the city and region forever more, and deservedly so.

I also appeal to the Government through the Minister, although I know it is not her area of responsibility; she already answered an urgent question on it earlier. I will explain the background to the legal advice that my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central and I commissioned around the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. We commissioned that because of the national dimension of the services run from the airport, which include the National Air Police Service, search and rescue, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, the airport fire service, oil spill dispersant work and military activity. They are national activities, which is why we think the Civil Contingencies Act is engaged. The short notice given to these services, which have been told to cease operations by 18 November, also gives them little time to prepare and find alternatives.

I will briefly turn to the legal advice of Lord Falconer of Thoroton, who was a co-sponsor of the Act. He is not a lawyer who we found on the street; he was the Lord Chancellor and was responsible for co-piloting the legislation through the House. We have made the legal advice available, and we can obviously make it available to Members here if they have not seen it. He says:

“It is my opinion that under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, the Transport Secretary”—

or, by the way, any Government Minister—

“has clear legal authority to intervene to prevent the closure of Doncaster airport...due to the disruption of essential services run from the airport”.

He goes on, and this is the key point:

“The shortness of the period before closure means for many, if not all, of these services an interruption of their life-saving services, and for some of them potentially a permanent reduction in quality. No doubt some of them will find alternative bases. How good they are and when remains to be seen. In this truncated timetable, in breach of the lease, there is the potential for disruption to these life-saving services.”

For those familiar with the Act, Lord Falconer is applying the test in section 1, which defines an emergency as an event or situation that

“involves, causes or may cause…loss of human life,…human illness or injury,…damage to property,…disruption of facilities for transport, or…disruption of services relating to health.”

He also says:

“There is no doubt that the disruption or interruption of the services described above constitute an event or situation which ‘causes or may cause’ any one of the circumstances described above.”

[Nick Fletcher]

I want this to work—the Civil Contingencies Act to work—and I have spoken at length with the people offering such services, but they have said there will be no disruption to their services. I actually asked them, but it is not something I want to raise on the Floor of the House because we are again showing our cards to Peel.

The right hon. Member keeps on pressing this point, but I have been through it. I wrote to the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State has written back to me and said that she cannot use the Act. This is a Labour peer passing advice to a Labour Member of Parliament, but I still backed it and I still went to the Secretary of State. I have tried it, and I think this is taking us away from the argument that we are here because a £20 million loan never appeared, and that is why we are losing our airport. We have the consortia and Peel around the table, and what we now need to do is press as hard as we can for them to make the right decision. Going on about the Civil Contingencies Act, which we have gone through many times, is not helping.

--- Later in debate ---

[Edward Miliband]

I say to the hon. Gentleman, because he keeps wanting to play the blame game, that there will be time to do so. If we do not succeed, there will be time for him to do all the finger pointing, and for him to put this on his election leaflet and try to blame the Labour party, but do not do it now. Do not do that while we are trying to save the airport. If he wants to do that, let him do that, but do not do it now. Let us work together to try to save the airport.

Would it require boldness and commitment to use the Civil Contingencies Act? Yes, it would. I have to say that the hon. Gentleman says he has clear advice from Government, but the Secretary of State for Transport will not even meet me. I have been in this House for 17 years, and I have never had the experience of a Secretary of State refusing even to meet me, or indeed other Members of Parliament or the South Yorkshire Mayor, over an issue as important as this.

The Government’s position has been that they will do everything they can to save the airport. Lord Falconer is happy to make himself available. Let us get around the table with the Secretary of State. Maybe her advice will be that there is nothing she can do, but why not have the conversation? There is nothing to fear from the conversation. It is almost as though the Government think that somehow they will be culpable if they have such a meeting and engage. They will not be culpable if they have the meeting and engage; they will be culpable if they do not have the meeting and do not engage, and I am afraid that is what they are doing.

I am going to end my remarks, because other Members want to speak, by appealing to the Minister—I know her from another life when she was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the COP26 President, which she did very well and we had a good relationship—that courtesy and commitment demand that we get around the table with the South Yorkshire Mayor and with Members of Parliament to leave no stone unturned. Maybe we will not succeed, but let us try to work together on this. Time is incredibly short, and we owe it to all the workers and to the community to fight all the way until our options have run out. Responsibility lies with Peel, and I appeal to Peel to do the right thing, but I also appeal to the Government to get around the table with us and see whether there is a way forward.