Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
5 MAY 2004
SIR ROY
MCNULTY,
MR JOHN
ARSCOTT, AND
MR ALEX
PLANT
Q120 Chairman: So you are not part of
the negotiating team. Would you have been if it had been a bilateral
between the United Kingdom and the United States?
Mr Plant: Had it been a bilateral
between the UK and the US, yes.
Q121 Chairman: So your experience and
your evidence would have been part of the negotiation?
Mr Plant: That is correct.
Q122 Chairman: But you are endeavouring
to train people who are neither experienced nor have any practicable
experience of that kind of negotiation?
Mr Plant: Well, we have, as I
said, seconded one of our CAA staff.
Q123 Chairman: Someone you do not like,
presumably?
Mr Plant: He is a very nice chap
indeed.
Q124 Chairman: I did not say he was not.
Mr Plant: I like him very much,
and he is a member of the negotiating team. One of three.
Q125 Chairman: He actually sits at the
table?
Mr Plant: Yes.
Q126 Mr Donohoe: Will that continue as
it enlarges itself?
Mr Plant: He is on a four year
secondment and, as I understand it, the plan is to keep him on
the US negotiations as his main task.
Q127 Chairman: But he is not representing
you, of course? He is not wearing a CAA hat.
Mr Plant: No. He is a detached
national expert.
Q128 Chairman: He is a nebulous international
expert.
Mr Plant: I'm not sure he is nebulous,
but that is not the point. The point is that he brings with him
a good knowledge of international aviation negotiations.
Chairman: He will not last long!
Q129 Miss McIntosh: Just for information,
was it the Maastricht Treaty which amended the original provisions
of your own treaty with regard to Common Transport Policy?
Sir Roy McNulty: I do not know
the answer to that.
Q130 Chairman: This is the result of
a court case in the European Court of Justice, is it not?
Mr Plant: That is correct.
Chairman: It is an extension which the
Commission has taken upon itself and it is precisely this sort
of European creep that we are investigating. It is not in the
Maastricht—
Miss McIntosh: I think you will find
it was the Maastricht Treaty. It was 1992—
Chairman: This particular thing was not
written in. They have interpreted it.
Q131 Miss McIntosh: Can I ask you about
the European Aviation Safety Agency? Could you tell the Committee
what the benefits will be in terms of implementation over its
predecessor, the JAA?
Sir Roy McNulty: Our expectation
is that it will provide much more uniform implementation of safety
rules across Europe. For many years through the Joint Aviation
Authorities we have had common aviation standards within the main
part of Europe, but the problem was that it was a voluntary arrangement,
and there is no doubt that the standards of implementation of
those commonly agreed rules has varied enormously. With the setting
up of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), with the legal
muscle of the European Commission behind it, I think we will find
that implementation will become much more uniform and we will
be much closer to the level playing field which I think is the
aim that United Kingdom aviation has in this area.
Q132 Miss McIntosh: If an aircraft is
given an internationally accepted certification standard, will
you insist in future that special conditions are added on to meet
a specific British civil aviation airworthiness requirement?
Sir Roy McNulty: I think that
possibility remains open. When the European Aviation Safety Agency
(EASA) was set up we sent them quite a long list of several hundred
additional special requirements that we felt were valid and should
be considered by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), and
those special requirements have remained in place. The European
Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) have now begun to review those and
the initial indication is that, where we have a good technical
case, they will accept that these special requirements should
be added and should be applied across Europe.
Q133 Miss McIntosh: So where is the single
market? There is a particular situation which I think we are all
familiar with of Ryanair flying into a particular United Kingdom
airport but registering its aircraft in Ireland. Will that situation,
to your view, be dealt with?
Sir Roy McNulty: I think the single
market will evolve at a common level of standards, and the situation
I described earlier is one where we are seeking agreement from
the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) that some particular
things that were peculiar to the United Kingdom will be applied
everywhere. So the standards will be the same through the surveillance
process that the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has, and
by audited inspection of the way things are done in each country.
I think that is the second part of making sure that similar standards
are applied similarly everywhere, but it will take maybe ten years
to cover the whole spectrum of aviation safety. They are starting
primarily with aircraft certification; eventually areas like personnel
licensing, airports and air traffic control will be covered, but
that is probably 8-10 years hence.
Q134 Miss McIntosh: In terms of manpower
does the European Aviation Safety Agency involve the same number
of officials that was involved in the JAA, or increasing?
Sir Roy McNulty: No. In the European
Aviation Safety Agency itself there are currently 50 people and
the published plan at the moment is to go to about 200 people.
The best estimate of the number of people engaged in safety regulation
throughout Europe is about 6,000, so all that the European Aviation
Safety Agency plans to do at the moment is to set the standards
and to provide an audit of the implementation of those standards,
but the day-to-day implementation and surveillance throughout
all those countries will be done by the national aviation authorities
as at present.
Q135 Miss McIntosh: Would you specify
which bits you believe are best dealt with by the national authorities?
Sir Roy McNulty: I think the surveillance
day-to-day on the ground, and making sure that the rules that
have been agreed are applied properly in each company that is
operating, be it an airport or airline or whatever; and that the
personnel licensing is done to the agreed standards. I think that
is the split. The rules are set centrally; the application of
those rules is largely monitored nationally, subject to audit
by the European Aviation Safety Agency.
Q136 Mrs Ellman: How are air traffic
management systems likely to change in the future?
Sir Roy McNulty: That is very
hard to say today. What the Single European Sky provides for is
a policy direction towards interoperability, but could I invite
John Arscott to speak on this?
Mr Arscott: The interoperability
mandate given to Eurocontrol to produce a draft EU regulation
is the basis upon which there should be greater commonality in
equipment standards and interoperability across the whole of Europe.
It is early days; we are involved in the setting up of the implementation
rules, and clearly National Air Traffic Services (NATS) are involved
with us. We are hopeful that we will get some sensible standards
which will improve the interoperability, which currently is really
quite limited.
Q137 Mrs Ellman: What about regulation
of the new system?
Mr Arscott: As you know, Eurocontrol
has been at this for about 30 odd years with only modest success,
and therefore what Eurocontrol has not been able to do is enforce
the rules that, by consensus, they have got from the Member States.
What the European Union and the Commission brings to this are
those powers of enforcement so we are hopeful that, providing
the rules are sensible and we seek to influence those to the greatest
extent possible, they should be implementable and enforceable
a great deal more quickly than has been the situation with Eurocontrol,
so we are hoping that standards common across Europe will apply.
Coming to your question about regulation, that, as Sir Roy was
saying, is the difference between the rules being set and the
national supervisory authorities, in this case the CAA, enforcing
them to a common standard across the whole of Europe, and we would
like to see other states having as effective enforcement mechanisms
as the CAA does.
Q138 Mrs Ellman: You have written about
the need for a central European body of some kind. What do you
have in mind? You have said that future of air traffic management
might be different and it is possible that "national competence
in this area may need to be ceded to a central European body of
some kind." What would that mean?
Mr Arscott: I think we are only
envisaging that at the rule setting level, if I understand the
point correctly.
Q139 Chairman: It says, "Some form
of centralised body, either within the EC or as an independent
regulatory agency set up by the EC, may be needed to carry out
economic regulation of air navigation service providers".
Sir Roy McNulty: I think that
is pointing at the fact that one of the concepts within the Single
European Sky is the concept of functional blocks of airspace,
the idea being that airspace can be organised and managed not
solely aligned with national boundaries. You could have larger,
more composite areas managed by somebody. If you do that, then
you cannot depend solely on national regulatory authorities, either
economic, safety or otherwise; you have to have some common way
of regulating entities like that.
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