General Aviation (Persons on Board, Flight Information and Civil Penalties) Regulations 2024

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Gascoigne (Con)]

My Lords, the purpose of these regulations, laid under paragraphs 27BA and 27BB(6) of Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971 and Section 32B(6)(b) of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, is to require owners, agents or captains of international general aviation flights to submit information about the flight and the persons on board online and in advance of the flight. General aviation flights are those that do not operate to schedule. They include large commercially operated business jets, air taxis and private pilots in light aircraft. The regulations also amend the Passenger, Crew and Service Information (Civil Penalties) Regulations 2015 and make a failure to comply with the requirements of the new regulations liable to a civil penalty of up to £10,000.

The safety and security of our citizens is the Government’s top priority. We are committed to implementing resilient border security processes for all modes of international transport for counterterrorism, policing and immigration purposes. A key part of our border strategy is the ability to know who is travelling or intending to travel to and from the UK’s border before they arrive or depart. Through the provision of advance passenger information, known as API, our border officers can quickly determine who does and does not pose a threat to the UK or to UK interests and, importantly, can prevent travel in accordance with the authority to carry scheme 2023.

All airlines making scheduled commercial international flights to and from the UK, other than for some flights within the common travel area, are required to provide API for all individuals on board their aircraft. Additionally, all passengers arriving on scheduled international flights are subject to full passport control checks at the border. Individuals arriving in the UK or leaving the UK on international general aviation flights are not all subject to the same checks. Many international general aviation flights operate out of private airfields and landing strips where there is no permanent border control or police presence. This means that a requirement to provide API forms a key part of our approach to managing international general aviation flights and individuals on board.

Those operating international general aviation flights are currently required to provide data in advance of departure for customs purposes, and on some routes for security purposes, but they are not currently required to provide the information electronically in a way that enables law enforcement to process it efficiently. In order to effectively assess the risk posed by individuals on board international general aviation flights, our border control authorities need not only to know who is intending to travel in advance of their journey to or from the UK commencing but to receive the information in a way that supports effective processing to clear individuals posing no concerns and to focus on subjects of interest.

Submission of flight information, online and in advance, will allow Border Force and other law enforcement authorities to analyse and quantify the extent of the potential threat and level of risk. It will enhance automated checking and intelligence-led decision-making to improve the effectiveness with which resources are deployed to meet flights.

Last April, the Home Office undertook an eight-week consultation, targeted at the general aviation sector, on regulations to require information about general aviation flights and persons on board to be submitted electronically in a manner that enables automated watchlisting. Respondents to the consultation understood the reasons for doing this, and most were supportive of the introduction of the regulations.

To be clear, these regulations will not require the provision of new information over and above what is already required. They simply specify the manner in which the information must be supplied: it must be provided online. More than 50% of submissions are already made electronically and the regulations will have no impact on them. There will be a small impact for pilots and operators who submit their flight information via email or even fax. Border Force has a free-to-use web service, known as “Submit a GAR”, hosted on GOV.UK, which general aviation owners, agents or captains can use to comply with these regulations. For individuals arriving and departing in private aircraft, these requirements reflect and support the Government’s intention for a fully digitised border system providing greater ability to know and have control over who is travelling to, entering and leaving the UK.

We recognise the significant economic benefit the general aviation sector provides to the country and that the majority of owners, agents and captains are making information available to the border authorities and the police about their international flights and the persons on board. The Government believe that these changes are sufficiently balanced with the needs of border security and law enforcement. It is of paramount importance that information about persons on board is received in a way that enables automated border checks and pre-departure action to be taken. Therefore, I commend the regulations to the Committee. I beg to move.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a private pilot and an aircraft owner and operator. I welcome the regulations that the Minister has outlined. Looking at the consultation response document that was published, it seems that very few issues caused any sort of concern, and that this comes under “common sense”. I emphasise that the general aviation sector is acutely aware of the privileges that it enjoys and hence is a highly law-abiding section of the community that is keen to play its role in the policing of our borders.

There is broad support for the regulations, which are not hugely different from those currently in force, as far as I can see. Pilots are used to completing a general aviation declaration, which has not caused any problems. The systems that are used are so much better than they were previously. Technology has really helped. Commercially available applications have a strong interface with flight planning systems. I trust that the Minister can reassure the Committee that this will be the case for the new general aviation declaration format—that commercially available apps will be able to interact successfully and seamlessly.

I have only one substantive question for the Minister and I am sure I know the answer, but none the less it would be reassuring to have it from him. The regulations are cast, as they should be, around the expected arrival location. As we know, aviation, particularly general aviation, can be affected by weather, and we do not want to put in place any regulations that create a perverse incentive to carry on—not to turn back or divert to alternative fields. There can also be technical problems with the aircraft. I would like my noble friend the Minister’s reassurance that nothing in these regulations will affect the ability of the pilot or captain of the aircraft to divert for genuine safety-related reasons, and that we are not baking in any perverse incentive. I know that the Government have consulted widely, and I am quite sure that it will not be the case. None the less, this is a good opportunity for the Minister to make that point.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, these are sensible regulations, but they raise a significant number of questions, including one that the Minister talked about at the outset: moving online from fax. I wonder, do we still have people doing this on the telephone or even by post? Moving into the modern age seems critical to me.

My first question is about the form, which I have just printed out. It is substantially more information than I would give as a passport holder on a regular airline when I go outside the United Kingdom. I presume, but perhaps the Minister can clarify, that that is because of the ability of major airlines to get instant information back from the system. I wonder whether the level of information now available to anybody online is still available to people in this sector, in which case it would shorten the whole form-filling regime.

I will come back to form-filling in just a moment, but the real question that struck me in reading the regulations and information provided to the general aviation sector was the relationship between Border Force’s work and that of the CAA. It is clear to me that flights can be detected and are being tracked by those who control our airspace. I am not certain whether that is because every major airline has transponders, which then indicate exactly where those aircraft are. I do not think that is the case with the general aviation sector but, where it is, that will enable the Civil Aviation Authority to know where these aeroplanes are in the sky and will help detection of flights not designed to land in the United Kingdom. Perhaps the Minister can tell us a little about the relationship between the two.

The second issue is about awareness raising in the sector. I went online to see whether I could join an event, simply to find out whether and how it was taking place. It said on the Home Office website that 20,000 people had been hosted for an awareness event. That sounds to me an extremely high number. If that is the case, that is really quite substantial, but there may perhaps be a fault in the way this information is recorded. So how many people have engaged in the events that have taken place to raise awareness of this change, where presumably they are advised not to use post, fax, telephone or emails but to use the online system?

Paragraph 7.9 of the Explanatory Memorandum talks about 10% of non-compliant people. Can the Minister give a figure for that? That would help me with the first figure about awareness raising and give a sense of the size of the sector we are talking about.

Clearly, these regulations are simply changing the method by which this information is provided, but you have to provide it when you leave and when you come back. Presumably, for the other way around, people in this sector in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and so on are having to do exactly the same thing for us. Are we matching their requirements? In other words, it would seem sensible that, if I were required to provide this information to the UK, I would need to provide that information to France as well. Sharing the data, which I am coming to, would make life a lot easier for people if there were simplification of those procedures.

Finally, I have two technical questions. I note that ICAO or IATA-designated airports or airstrips are permitted to use only the online version. If I have that wrong, I would be grateful if the Minister could tell me, but why is that the case? If it is the case, as I read it in the information pack, it seems to me that we are not capturing all the small airstrips in this country.

My final question is about the requirement to record passport information if you fly to the Republic of Ireland. I have gone across to Ireland, our next-door neighbour, quite frequently, and I often use my parliamentary pass to get across the Irish Sea both ways. If I cannot use it to go to Ireland in the general aviation sector, I would like to know why. As I understand it, that applies to the whole of the common travel area.

I would be grateful if the Minister could answer those questions, but in general terms these regulations seem sensible.