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5.30 pm
Mr. David Wilshire (Spelthorne): I had not intended to speak until I heard the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner) express my fears. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) began the debate by making clear what I regard to be the fundamental issue at stake: safety.
During the debate on the timetable motion, I reminded hon. Members who were present that the most recent crash at Heathrow was in my constituency. Because of that, and because of the seriousness of the issues raised by the hon. Member for Kemptown, I have not the slightest wish to play party politics in the debate. I believe that I speak on behalf not only of all 23,000 of my constituents who voted for me at the election, but of all 19,000 who voted for the Labour party, and all 6,000 who voted Liberal Democrat. I am convinced that we all see the matter in the same way.
I shall not make a speech. I merely ask the Secretary of State one clear, simple question, which I shall be eternally grateful if he will answer in an equally simple and straightforward way, so that all my constituents can be clear about what the Government are proposing. The question is this: will the Secretary of State's proposals make things safer for my constituents? That is all they want to know. All the other arguments are peripheral to the question whether they will be safer if the Secretary of State's wishes prevail tonight. I should be grateful if he would give me a clear answer when he responds.
Mr. Todd: I shall be brief. My difficulty in the debate has been the focus on safety and the direct relationship of that argument to the question whether the private sector controls any part of the service. As my intervention indicated, that is partly based on my local experience.
I should declare that my brother-in-law is an air traffic controller who works for the private sector. I have spoken to him about his role and he has given his opinions, which have had little bearing on mine. Nevertheless, I have listened to someone who had some expertise in the matter.
Clearly, although the 13 per cent. mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe) is correct, in many instances the private sector provides the totality of the air traffic control service at particular airports--not for the en-route traffic, but at particular airports. I cannot see why there is an objection to the introduction of private finance to other aspects of the air traffic control service.
Aircraft are constructed and maintained by the private sector, and airports and airlines are run by the private sector. The air services are controlled by the private sector now.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow): East Midlands is an important airport; so is Edinburgh airport. The pilots tell us that there is no problem going into Edinburgh, Glasgow or East Midlands. The problem is going into the fourth busiest airport in the world--Gatwick--and the busiest airport in the world--Heathrow. The issue is control over the overcrowded skies on the approach to the city of London.
Mr. Todd: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He qualifies the position somewhat, by saying that it is a matter of the scale of the operation, not the principle involved. That is a useful development.
My concern is about the emphasis that has been placed on safety as the overriding reason for excluding private sector finance. As I said, we already have plenty of examples of that in the provision of air services in this country.
Mrs. Dunwoody: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Does he seriously think that if there is a legal duty on air traffic controllers to consider the interests of their shareholders, they will behave in exactly the same way as if they have a responsibility to consider only the safe passage of air transport in the United Kingdom?
Mr. Todd: I thank my hon. Friend. I worked in the private sector virtually all my working life, and I never regarded myself as having a legal duty to have regard to the shareholders. I had a legal duty to carry out the tasks given to me. I was not involved in the safety aspect, but I also had a responsibility to my own conscience. I would not expect that to be overridden in any circumstances.
Dr. Desmond Turner: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Todd: I am being more generous than others, but I shall give way.
Dr. Turner: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for returning the compliment. The debate is not about private finance per se, because there is no specific opposition to the use of private finance. The debate is about private, for-profit governance. I hope that my hon. Friend will deal with that point.
Mr. Todd: Indeed. I would have preferred a debate about the relative merits of the Government's model in ensuring corporate governance to focusing on safety as the key aspect of our discussions. My hon. Friend has begun to move in that direction, and that is welcome. There are genuine questions about which model produces the best means of modernising NATS.
I am inclined to support the Government's approach because of the prospect of more robust management in the service, based on the new en-route centre project. I have long held the view that the management of highly complex technology projects in the public sector has been almost universally poor. We must tackle that problem, and that is the second reason for my support for the
Government's position: it offers a better prospect of producing successful, high-technology control systems for our airspace.I have listened carefully to the debate, and I have read the Select Committee report, which was informative. However, none of the arguments deals with the points that worry me. First, the private sector in this country already has safety models. I do not believe that I should return to my constituency and tell my constituents that they should be alarmed by the prospect of the private sector controlling the airspace over their homes.
Mr. John Smith (Vale of Glamorgan): My hon. Friend has been generous in giving way. Does he know that NATS operates in a private environment at some airports and provides not only air traffic services but Ministry of Defence and en-route services, albeit not on the scale of the operation at Gatwick?
Mr. Todd: That is an important point. Many services that NATS wins--that is a key word--in a competitive tendering process, are won on a commercial basis. They are subject to commercial contracts, which the relevant airline operators award.
My short contribution has lengthened because of interventions, but I have tried to make the point that the private sector model is not a problem per se. However, I shall listen to the rest of the debate carefully and learn from it, because I am interested in the model that will best produce a modern and effective air traffic control system to secure as far as possible--it cannot be guaranteed--the safety of air travellers and those who live near flight paths.
Mr. Martin Salter (Reading, West): After 18 months of imploring Ministers from the Prime Minister down to reconsider plans to privatise the control of this country's airspace, I am sad to face the prospect tonight of voting against my Government for the first time to keep faith with a clear pre-election pledge that I gave my constituents and that the Labour party gave the public.
Government is a messy business; it is about doing what works, making compromises, listening to a broad range of views and acting accordingly. In my short time in this place, various Bills have received a bumpy ride, not because of the tactics of Opposition Members, much as they would like to believe that they were responsible, but because of the legitimate anxieties of the Government's supporters. I am thinking in particular of lone parent benefit, welfare reform, the Freedom of Information Bill and the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.
In almost every case, the Ministers in charge listened carefully to the concerns and, after due modification, we ended up with better legislation and a happier parliamentary Labour party. I regret that I am unable to report any such substantial progress on the private-public partnership for National Air Traffic Services. In fact, there will be no partnership and the Bill alarms us even more because the Government propose to sell off 75 per cent. of NATS shares. That is some partnership--a 75:25 split. It is nothing short of privatisation and it breaks the bond of trust that we made with the electorate, the travelling public and the men and women who gave us the finest, most efficient and safest air traffic service in the world.
I have listened to the arguments about private finance and will deal with them later, but I must tell those who laud the fact that non-NATS staff in the private sector
handle a few air traffic movements that the logical extension of that argument is full-scale privatisation of the service, not a part privatisation. If that is what people want, they should say so.I thoroughly endorse the new clauses, especially new clause 36, which proposes the trust model. I want to examine briefly the case against the Government's proposals and in favour of establishing that trust, as recommended by the Labour-dominated Transport Sub-Committee. Several cases can be made against the PPP, even in its 49 per cent. form. There is a political case: it clearly breaches the spirit of what we said before the election. There is strong opposition in the House and the country. The last opinion poll data showed that 72 per cent. of the public oppose even the partial privatisation of NATS. This is a matter of trust in more than one sense.
There is an economic case against the PPP, even in its original form. As the Select Committee report and all the other data made clear, aircraft movements have increased by 7 to 8 per cent. year on year. The industry is highly profitable, but it is a safety industry. In 1998-99, it returned pre-tax profits of £64 million. In many years, it has returned a surplus to the Treasury of between £30 million and £40 million. We shall forgo that if we go down this road. The capital receipt, at the upper end of the estimates, would perhaps be some £600 million. Let us set that against the Budget surplus and the increased revenues to the Exchequer, which we all welcome.
There is a safety case, but I shall not emphasise it. Perhaps it has been emphasised too much--my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) nods--and there are powerful political, economic and military and defence cases against the proposal. Our airspace is controlled by the public sector--not from East Midlands airport--so there is a tremendous sharing of military intelligence and information with the armed forces and our NATO allies. Imagine what would happen if we sold off 75 per cent. of the shares in our airspace to, for example, a Serbian-owned company. Imagine the reluctance to undertake the military co-operation that served us so well in the Balkans conflict.
The Government have clear objectives--I have always said that they are entirely laudable--but we desperately need the lateral thinking to deliver those objectives without breaching a pre-election pledge and without the dangers of privatisation. They rightly want to take NATS out of the public sector borrowing requirement. They want it to break free from Treasury orthodoxy. We have achieved that with the Post Office; we can deliver it with either of the models in new clauses 35 or 36.
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