Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill [HL]

Lord Naseby Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Monday 27th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, it is my privilege to have been an RAF pilot, flying both fixed-wing pistons and jets. I have flown extensively in Pakistan, Canada and the United Kingdom. More recently, my family gave me an hour in a Tiger Moth for my 80th birthday, so I have gone from one end of the aircraft spectrum to the other. I continue to have a deep interest in this whole industry. Indeed, around the corner from where I live is the Shuttleworth Collection of interwar and model aircraft.

It is fair to say—I do not think the Minister will disagree—that we have not exactly been in the vanguard of control. I looked back at my own references in this House and they go back to 2015, so it is five years since we first started discussing these problems. Certainly, for a long time, the USA, France and the Republic of Ireland were ahead of us in this area of consideration. However, I say a big thank you to my party and the Government now in power. In the general election campaign, it was emphasised that we would legislate on this and here we are, one month on. I congratulate those who have ensured that this happens today.

I too will confine my remarks to the areas covered in Part 3 of the Explanatory Notes. I will try not to repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, but we are inevitably covering the same ground to a degree. The key thing that is drilled into any pilot is to keep manned aircraft separate from unmanned aircraft in flight. So far, we have done only a limited amount of testing on the impact of this. That limited amount of research shows that, when problems happen, the result is catastrophic. If something is catastrophic, we ought to take it extremely seriously. We know the risks are particularly bad for helicopters, but it is almost as bad for other aircraft. We know that engine ingestion testing has not yet been completed. That ought to be a priority for those involved in this. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, a lot of work has been done on bird impact. If we can do it for birds, we jolly well ought to get on and do it for drones.

An area which has always been there, but which is even more important now, is wake turbulence. This is a problem for anybody who is flying, but it is nowhere near as big a problem as it is with the difference between a normal manned aircraft and a drone. With wake turbulence, it is highly likely that a drone will be tossed away, with ghastly effects. As the law currently stands, there is no provision for a mandatory minimum wake turbulence separation between drones and aircraft. It seems to me that work should be done on this as a priority.

The Air Navigation Order 2016 includes regulations on unmanned aircraft and new regulations were introduced on 30 November last year. I think it is the view of those of us who take an interest that it would be preferable for deterrence and enforcement if each unmanned aircraft were required to be registered. It has already been mentioned that drivers of road vehicles have to do that. I am the owner of a couple of shotguns. Each of those has to be registered and kept in a locked cupboard which is inspected by the local constabulary. All I can say is that they are an awful lot less dangerous than a situation with a drone.

The Bill includes reference to fixed penalty notices. That is fine, but I hope that when we come to discuss this, we shall differentiate between what I might call small, routine offences and those that are much more serious. If it is serious offences, fixed penalty notices are not an adequate deterrent.

Mention has been made of the need to train the police on their drone enforcement powers. Obviously, that is an area that we have to look at.

There are additional measures, a couple of which were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. I say merely, as did he, that we need to think about these very seriously. On the creation of a criminal offence of weaponizing a drone, that does not necessarily mean putting a bomb on it or anything else; it means altering the drone sufficiently to make it a flying weapon, without it having any combustible material on board. The same applies to safety features being removed.

Mention has been made of drug and alcohol laws coming into line for manned aviation. I think that exactly the same should apply to drones. It is absolutely right that a minimum age should be set, with 18 as an absolute minimum.

Then there is the question of swarming, which I do not think anybody has raised. I suppose that I know a bit more about this, as I am next door to Shuttleworth. I can just see the delight that some talented young man or woman would have in flying two, three or four drones at a time. That has the potential to be exceedingly dangerous, and it should be legislated against. It might be great fun, but it is nevertheless terribly dangerous.

I thank my noble friend on the Front Bench for introducing the Bill. We shall work with her in trying to produce good law for this fascinating area of aviation.