Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to his appearance on the Sunday Morning BBC television programme on 5 June 2022, what further steps his Department is taking on airport security; and whether he has had recent discussions with representatives of the aviation industry on these steps.

Ministers and officials have been meeting regularly with the aviation industry. The Secretary of State met with members of the sector on 1 June 2022 which included discussing aviation security.

While the industry is responsible for security at airports, my department has always worked with industry to develop proportionate aviation security regulation that mitigates the threats that we face.

On the 29 April we laid a Statutory Instrument before Parliament to make use of our newly won Brexit powers to allow Ministers greater flexibility over regulation. This allowed us to agree temporary changes to permit certain training to be undertaken while background checks are completed, helping to speed up recruitment times.

Having listened to industry, we also agreed that an HMRC employment history letter can be temporarily used as a suitable form of reference check (with safeguards) – this should help to reduce the time it takes to obtain references as these new processes are embedded.

There is no backlog in Government security clearances. These continue to be processed in a timely manner.

We will continue to work with industry to consider and agree, as we have already done, a series of alleviations to aviation security regulations to support the recruitment and deployment of staff. The travelling public however must have confidence that appropriate security measures are in place at airports.