| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
7 Feb 2003 : Column 609—continued
Mr. Swayne: Will my hon. Friend comment on the case that will not now come to court—that of Courtney Love? The offence to which I have already referred is on the statute book. If cases are not prosecuted and no action is taken, an incentive is created. The proper remedy is to take the action, rather than put new offences on to the statute book.
Miss McIntosh: If time permits, I hope to turn to a number of cases reported in the press. My hon. Friend raises a crucial point. I am sure that the House will agree—I certainly hope that the Under-Secretary will do so—that there should be one rule for all passengers, regardless of whether they are celebrities. Hon. Members fall into the category of celebrities and I believe that we should be exemplary in our behaviour on aircraft, regardless of whether we are nervous flyers. The law should not recognise whether the passenger in question happens to be well known and should be applied irrespective of such considerations—a point to which I shall return in a moment.
Secondly, in the case of Regina v. David James McCallum, which was judged on 5 October 2001, a sentence of 12 months' imprisonment for affray was deemed not manifestly excessive where the appellant had sustained abusive conduct on an airplane for a considerable period. Thirdly, in the case of Regina v. Heather Susan Tagg, it was judged on 30 April 2001 that there were clearly vires in section 60(3)(h) of the Civil Aviation Act 1982 to prohibit drunkenness in an aircraft—as in article 57 of the Air Navigation (No. 2) Order 1995, Statutory Instrument No. 1995/1970— because drunkenness on an aircraft was one sort of conduct capable of bearing on the safety of the aircraft and the people therein. In my view, those sentences could have been tougher in view of the gravity of the offence.
I promised briefly to mention for the satisfaction of my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West some rather disgusting examples of air rage. Mr. Finneran, a banker, was recently fined $50,000 by United Airlines after he assaulted an attendant and then, regrettably, defecated on a first-class food cart on a flight from Buenos Aires to New York. I hope that that is not something that the House would condone. I shall not refer to the next case in my notes, as it is rather vulgar. On another occasion, a passenger named Mr. Misiak put his hands around the throat of a flight attendant and threatened her because she had spilt a drink on him.
Another passenger, a Miss Pennix, grabbed a flight attendant's finger and bent it backwards. Miss Pennix explained to the authorities that she had not liked the way in which the flight attendant had told her to put her tray and seat in an upright position before landing. As a result of cases such as those, airline crews have begun to take drastic measures, which sometimes have disastrous consequences.
Mr. Swayne : A $50,000 fine seems to be in proportion for a first offence such as the one that my hon. Friend cited. However, she has not told us what the penalties were for the other offences. Were the penalties appropriate? In this Bill, we are considering a five-year sentence.
Miss McIntosh: I am handicapped by the fact that the newspaper report did not give that information, but a maximum five-year sentence would have resolved the situations in the court cases that I referred to. The maximum penalty that was handed down in those cases was two years. I believe that five years is much more appropriate.
Courtney Love, the widow of Kurt Cobain, is not the only celebrity to have displayed air rage. She was said to have become verbally abusive towards cabin staff and to have gone berserk. In a case that we have already heard about, a Boeing 737, which was flying 148 fans back from Santiago in Spain to Glasgow after a football tie, was diverted to Cardiff after the pilot sent out a mayday. I could use up my remaining time by going through endless reports in the press. However, the case has been made for a more severe penalty.
Alcohol has been shown to be a contributory cause in 45 per cent. of all incidents of air rage. In 40 per cent. of those cases, the passengers were drinking their own alcohol; and in 42 per cent. of cases, the passengers had
been drinking alcohol before boarding. Regrettably, there are omissions from the Bill. I believe that it will have to be either amended or, more appropriately, considered as part of the Railways and Transport Safety Bill.
Mr. Swayne: Although I would a support a ban on passengers consuming their own alcohol, I hope that my hon. Friend is not tempting the Minister to prevent law-abiding people from consuming alcohol on aeroplanes.
Miss McIntosh: Citizens may be law-abiding before the consumption of alcohol.
I hope to demonstrate why the Bill is lacking. As the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw, the promoter of the Bill, said, on football day excursions people may end up waiting hours before returning home. Many of them—perhaps because they are of a nervous disposition—drink excessive amounts of alcohol. The Bill does not deal with that.
The Bill is flawed in that it does not deal with the 42 per cent. of passengers involved in such offences who have been drinking alcohol before boarding, or with the 40 per cent. who drink their own alcohol on board the plane. The Bill is also deficient in that it does not explain who would be the authority with the power of arrest. Could the authority be a fellow passenger? Will the Under-Secretary put my mind at rest by assuring me that it does not mean that a passenger will be able to arrest a member of the crew? We wish to give the Bill a fair wind, but we hope that the Under-Secretary will answer our questions.
2.24 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. David Jamieson): The hon. Lady has certainly left me a lot of time in which to respond. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy) on winning a place in the ballot and on the exemplary way in which he opened the debate. I commend him for his long-standing campaign on air rage.
The Government take seriously the problem of disruptive passenger behaviour on aircraft. It rightly became a matter of increased public concern after a serious incident in 1998 when a stewardess was attacked and injured on board a United Kingdom aircraft. The Government took action in two ways. First, we set up a working group on disruptive passengers, which the Department chaired. It included representatives from the Civil Aviation Authority, the Home Office, the police, airlines and unions. Its remit was to advise Ministers on measures to minimise the frequency and potential impact of disruptive behaviour on board aircraft.
Secondly, on the group's advice, we introduced a standardised reporting scheme for disruptive behaviour on board United Kingdom aircraft. At the time, little hard evidence was available and it was agreed that statistics were necessary to establish the nature and scale of the problem.
I am pleased that the statistics that have been gathered to date confirm that air rage is not as widespread as media reports sometimes suggest. However, some antisocial behaviour escalates into
serious incidents and thus poses a safety threat to the aircraft and its occupants. In the past reporting year, more than 1,000 incidents were reported on United Kingdom aircraft, of which 52 were classed as serious. Several hon. Members said that the number of incidents was small, but 52 incidents multiplied by the number of people on an aircraft suggest that a large number of people had been put at risk. However, the figure equates to one serious incident for every 2 million passengers. Any incident of antisocial behaviour on board an aircraft, however serious, can be an unpleasant and frightening experience for those affected, as several hon. Members made clear in the debate.United Kingdom legislation to deal with offences on board aircraft is among the most comprehensive in the world. Several specific offences relate to behaviour on aircraft: endangering the safety of an aircraft; being drunk in an aircraft; smoking when that is prohibited; disobeying a lawful command by the commander of an aircraft; and acting in a disruptive manner.
Normal criminal law applies on board United Kingdom aircraft and powers also exist for acting against offenders on board non-UK airlines whose next destination is the UK, provided that the act is an offence under both UK law and the law of the state where the aircraft is registered.
However, it is essential that offences can be properly enforced and that penalties are appropriate. In the case of the offence of endangering the safety of an aircraft, there is consensus that the maximum two-year sentence is not proportionate to the gravity of the offence. In at least one case, a judge commented that if he had been able to pass a longer sentence, he would have done so.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw said, the police have been worried that their powers are not always sufficient with regard to some of the offences. I confirm that that sometimes prevents them from taking effective action. Clause 1 deals with that. The police have asked for their powers to be strengthened to allow other offences to become arrestable by statute but without increasing the penalty.
As my hon. Friend made clear, all those who work in the airline industry support the changes and our working group on disruptive passengers also welcomed them. The Government want the offences to be prosecuted effectively and to ensure that offenders are punished appropriately, thereby sending a strong message that such behaviour is unacceptable. The Bill will help to achieve those aims. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for promoting the Bill and happy to record the Government's support for it.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |