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Aviation Safety (Amendment) Regulations 2023

I rise again in this crowded Chamber to discuss a transport issue. This sort of debate should be divided into two. Let us first look at the instrument itself, rather than the problems with getting it here. Civil aviation in general is really quite safe. The very sad interruption to that general trend was of course with the Boeing 737 MAX, but, otherwise, the trends have been quite positive. This is based on a mechanism: the Chicago convention and the ICAO processes. I knew this was quite old, but I looked it up and saw that the convention was signed by 52 nations before the end of the Second World War, on 7 December 1944. It became legal, if that is the right term—I do not do conventions often—or rather it came into force, on 4 April 1947.

It is a sort of treaty obligation, but it is a bit looser in being a convention. In practice, the industry, over the years, has understood the value of behaving together. So most significant aviation nations in Europe, one way or another, through the European system, sought to achieve harmonisation with the ICAO regulations of the time. It seems to me, reading through the material, that the essence is one of delay. I think that was the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. The test, to some extent, has to be: what is the significance of the delay, particularly with respect to safety?

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As I read the instrument—in fact, I would not claim to be so industrious as having read the instrument; it is more realistic to say as far as I have read the

repeated Explanatory Memorandums—there are four measures in this: two principally on safety management systems and a few minor modifications, and two on pilot licensing, glider or sailplane licensing and balloon licensing.

Safety management systems are a good thing. It is not trivial to adopt a safety management system approach; it is a culture system in many ways. It is about working in anticipation and getting the right management processes in the right place, et cetera. The time to get them right is quite significant, so the delays are necessary. For the new regulations, you are looking at: what is the safety position of the current situation compared with the legacy regulations? How much safer or more efficient will new regulations be?

Sometimes when people are arguing for change and improvement they forget the risks of transition. Here, we are working in an environment where the legacy systems are pretty good. There is a significant risk, should the transition be accelerated beyond that which the CAA, on the one hand, and the industry, on the other, can cope with. Similarly, the pilot reforms also make sense, but, once again, changing from the legacy systems to a rationalised approach should also improve safety.

Transition involves risk, so extending to optimise it also makes sense. Therefore, starting from where we are now, the SI is a good thing. However, the part of the noble Baroness’s argument that I sympathise with is that, had this work started sooner and had it been handled more effectively, the net safety would have been higher. I think that this is the essence of the concern about the regulation.

The other area that concerns me about the essence of the process as a negative resolution is the extent to which the Explanatory Memorandum is able to let lay people—namely, people who do not have expertise in this area—sensibly participate. That is rather nicely summed up by the Minister herself in her correspondence with the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee:

“We are clear that we must set out the appropriate level of detail on the policy changes in the EM, and accept that in this case we fell short. I recognise too that the EM was not as accessible to a lay reader as it should have been”.

It got worse, because a new EM was produced, but somewhere along the way it became not evident that there was a new EM. The Printed Paper Office had not heard of it before this morning. There will be all sorts of explanations for that, but I recommend to the Minister that she takes an aviation approach to this, and a very old aviation rule is: “If it can go wrong, it will go wrong”—and it did, because got a revised Explanatory Memorandum.

Was it good enough? It could be better. First, it should have painted a broader picture for the lay reader. It was not clear whether it was taking a dangerous situation and solving that danger, or whether it was an incremental movement, bringing regulations into line with international practice and into a safer environment. I believe that it was the latter, but that did not come out in the EM; the fact did not come out that transition, in a complex environment which is working reasonably well, is a real danger and that you have to give it the right amount of time.

The Explanatory Memorandum should have explained the difference between the legacy systems. You almost get the impression that there were no systems there for balloons and sailplanes, whereas there is a long history of regulation, which is quasi-voluntary, in the sense that it is organised by the bodies that run those two areas of aviation. Nevertheless, it has been developed with the CAA and is reasonably good. It should have been better brought out that there were risks with transition and that they would have been fewer if done at an orderly pace.

Finally, the document itself had no subparagraph references in paragraph 7. Those of us who live and die by the SI know that paragraph 7 of an Explanatory Memorandum is where the real story is told. The real story may have been told in paragraph 7 of the new Explanatory Memorandum, except that we have no subparagraph numbers. Because it had no subparagraph numbers, the cross-referencing within it was, to some extent, very difficult to follow. I am sure that there will be an explanation for that, but to go back to my point about “If it can go wrong, it will go wrong”, it did go wrong. It is necessary, when bringing things such as EMs up to date, that one checks from the beginning to the end whether any changes have arrived where they need to be, which is my in-tray and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson.

What to do about this? The quality of EMs—across the board, to some extent, but certainly from the transport department—in recent years has given us concerns. Perhaps it is unfair to call it quality; it is the shape of them and the fact that they do not spend enough time explaining where we are, where we are trying to get to, and why—as opposed to saying, “Well, we will change this paragraph to that paragraph”. There should be more understanding of transition and —if I am right that the last two dates in the document are wrong—there need to be processes that make sure that there is good proofreading. I invite the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, the Minister and officials to have a conversation about this. For this process to have any value at all, it all depends on the quality and breadth of the Explanatory Memorandum. We could help to get across to officials what we would see as being more valuable so as to have a more informed debate on these issues.