Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing Bill

Lady Hermon Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Karl Turner]

The Minister makes a fair enough point, but with respect, it has been a terrible waste of time debating this matter in the Committee of the whole House when it was previously dealt with in 45 minutes in Committee upstairs. For the sake of appearances, VTAB has been broken up into its component parts and is now being given undue time for debate in this Chamber.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

It is never a waste of time to discuss anything pertaining to the whole of the UK in this House or in a Committee of the whole House. This gives me the opportunity to remind the Minister that we have three airports in Northern Ireland. We are the only part of the United Kingdom that is physically connected to another EU member state—the Republic of Ireland—and it is really important, as has been stated in the debate, that we do not lose air traffic and business from Northern Ireland to airports such as Dublin.

[Karl Turner]

The hon. Lady makes her point on behalf of her constituents, and she makes it well, but I do not think that it requires a response from me.