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Mr. Tom Harris: In Scottish law, there is an offence of being drunk and incapable in a public place and police officers make exactly the subjective judgments to which the right hon. Gentleman refers. I do not know whether the same would apply in English law.

Mr. Forth: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I am sure that he can see the problem as well as I do: a police officer may not be available at the appropriate moment. Under the Bill, someone else on the aircraft will make that judgment and make the arrest. Sufficient doubts have been raised about those provisions to make us all somewhat anxious about their meaning.

I am aware that if we are to give the Bill a fair wind, there is not much more time for this debate, so although there is much more that I could say, I shall exercise uncharacteristic self-restraint and resume my seat. I hope that we shall receive full explanations from the Minister, perhaps after he has heard other hon. Members' contributions. How will the Bill work? Why is it a significant step forward? Why should we allow it to go into Committee?

1.30 pm

Rosemary McKenna (Cumbernauld and Kilsyth): I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this important Bill. I hope that we are able to persuade the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) that the Government must include it in the legislative programme. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) will respond to the points that the right hon. Gentleman raised.

The Bill has been long awaited and deals with a problem that has affected many of us. Some people believe that drunkenness on aircraft is a recent phenomenon. It is not; I had personal experience of such a disturbance in the early 1990s. It was most unpleasant.

I do not imagine that many Members have experienced such situations, so I want to try to give the House a sense of just how terrifying it is to be on an aircraft when an incident takes place. I was returning from Florida with my family, after a wonderful holiday. We were only one hour into a seven-hour flight when a disturbance broke out. The incident was entirely drink-related. Two men, who had clearly been drinking before they went on to the aircraft, began an altercation. Imagine the noise. Their wives tried to calm them down and their terrified children were screaming. Many of the 300-plus people on the aircraft were aware only of the noise, not of what was causing it, but those of us who were nearby were afraid that someone would be injured.

People sitting near that kind of event have nowhere to move. They cannot remove themselves or stop their children experiencing it, and they are upset. There is no safety zone. My hon. Friend the Member for

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Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy) talked about safety zones. Normally, the minute an altercation starts, parents remove their children from the area, but they absolutely cannot do that in an aircraft.

The staff were eventually able to calm down those two individuals, with the assistance of a female passenger, who spoke in the most severe terms to those two chaps. They were absolutely terrified. [Hon. Members: "Was it you?"] No, it was not—I was in great awe of the person who did it, and she clearly had my admiration. Even after things had calmed down, the anxiety remained for the rest of that six-hour flight. We were all absolutely terrified to move and the children were upset. We were unable to relax and enjoy the flight. It really was the most horrendous experience.

In fact, I am absolutely certain that such incidents can have long-term effects on young children. They do not want to go back on to an aircraft if they have had that experience. They are put off flying when they are very young, and young children can be very easily affected by nightmares. It is damaging for them to encounter that kind of incident, particularly when they have had a wonderful experience at Disneyland in Florida.

David Hamilton (Midlothian): I have seen one or two altercations on flights, and they are terrifying for people who are already scared of flying. It is important that people in England, Scotland and Wales all work together, just as the British Transport police work in the rail system. With the massive increase in air transport, that might be a very good way forward. We should all do a bit of joined-up thinking and work together to eradicate such behaviour.

Rosemary McKenna: My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. We can address the issue in many ways. The Bill will be a definite deterrent, and it will give the police powers to deal with individuals who cause that kind of distress. Of course there are many reasons why people behave in that way. I have sat beside someone who was very drunk on an aircraft; there was no disturbance, but it was a most unpleasant experience.

I shall conclude now because we want to ensure that the House agrees to the Bill today. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw on being successful in the ballot for private Members' Bills and on choosing this subject. He is absolutely right to choose this issue. This is an important Bill, and I commend it to the House.

1.39 pm

Miss Anne McIntosh (Vale of York): It is pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Rosemary McKenna) who, regrettably, has had personal experience of this relatively recent phenomenon. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy) on securing this Bill and on introducing it so eloquently.

May I remind the House of my personal interests in aviation? My husband is an airline executive. He is currently with Delta airlines, having spent 34 years in the airline industry. On a personal note, that is a remarkable achievement—[Hon. Members: "Hear,

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hear."] I am delighted that my right hon. and hon. Friends recognise it. As for other personal interests, I have a small, modest interest in BA, BAA and BAE Systems, which is not registrable, but, for the purposes of this debate, it is important to declare.

Air rage has been identified as a phenomenon for some years, and it appears to be growing. It has caught the attention of the Department for Transport, which, for some time, has been monitoring annually the incidence of air rage. That monitoring is performed by the Civil Aviation Authority. I am most grateful to the House of Commons Library for finding me the Department's most recent report on disruptive behaviour on board UK aircraft, and the analysis of incident reports between April 2001 and March 2002. I confirm the view of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), who took some issue with the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy), the promoter of the Bill, about whether this phenomenon is growing or declining. The Department's figures show that, overall, in the last reporting period, which is April 2001 to March 2002, the number of reported incidents of disruptive passenger behaviour fell by 15 per cent. compared with the previous year. As the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw rightly said, however, some of that may be accounted for by the decrease in passenger numbers following 11 September 2001, most notably in transatlantic air traffic—regrettably, as my husband's business is in that sector.

Mr. Swayne: Is my hon. Friend aware of the then Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions consultation document, "The Future of Aviation", of December 2000, which says that air rage

"is not as widespread a problem as media reports would sometimes suggest."

She says that, subsequently, it has declined. Is she telling me that it is even less of a problem that it was in 2000?

Miss McIntosh: The figures speak for themselves, but, clearly, it is a matter for debate. Right hon. and hon. Members may draw different conclusions, but my hon. Friend is right to refer to the most recent consultation document. Although, in part, the 15 per cent. decline in the last reporting period follows a decrease in passenger numbers post 11 September, the decrease in reported incidents since September was much greater than the fall in passenger numbers. The pattern of incidents reported was very similar to the corresponding data in the previous year. Such significant differences are not identified in the notes of the Department. According to the Department, the figures confirm that air rage

"is not a widespread phenomenon, and the probability of any individual passenger being affected by an incident of disruptive behaviour is extremely low."

That shows that the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth was extremely unfortunate in her experience in the early 1990s. I sympathise with her, as all of us would admit to some fear of flying: I admit to being an anxious flyer. As she said, if one is in a confined space, there is no safe zone to which to go.

The Department says, however, that

"there remains a low level of anti-social behaviour, which on occasion escalates into serious incidents which could pose a threat to the safety of the aircraft and/or its occupants."

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The Department is conscious that airline employees working on board aircraft are more at risk of harm than the average passenger by virtue of the fact that they are flying more frequently and, because of the nature of their responsibilities, more exposed to disruptive passengers.

I think that it is important to share the figures with the House, particularly in view of the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) provided figures for smoking and for alcohol-related disruption. In the last reporting year, of the 1,055 incidents reported, the CAA categorised 50 per cent.—528—as significant. A further 52 cases—only 5 per cent.—were judged to be serious.

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