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Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, for his intervention. The joy of being in Opposition is that you can move amendments and get matters discussed, and that is half the purpose of the job of the Opposition. Whether anyone agrees with the amendments, they are there to be shot down if necessary, or at least to extend the debate on certain matters.
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The amendment asked that the Government should take account of the target of reducing external noise and report on it from time to time. Maybe I was a bit long-winded by going through all the possibilities for new aircraft and the process and the technological improvements that there are likely to be. The amendment was asking the Government to take note of the targets and perhaps from time to time to tell Parliament how likely they thought those were to be achieved. We will discuss this more today. There is greater concern about the amount of aircraft noise, and I do not think that it behoves any of us to try to deny that. Increasingly more people are living under flight paths, and larger aircraft are in use. Whether the international and European bodies will it or not, perhaps Parliament should from time to time take note of the effect on people who live under the aircraft flying into its airports. That is really what the amendment was about. Since I do not think that I am winning, I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Bradshaw moved Amendment No. 5:
"( ) Charges, in relation to noise, shall be proportional to the noise emitted."
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 2 [Regulation by Secretary of State of noise and vibration from aircraft]:
Lord Hanningfield moved Amendment No. 6:
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I must return once again to the highly controversial issue of night flights. The issue was debated at some length in Grand Committee, and despite the Minister's assurances I remain unconvinced of the necessity or the wisdom of the change in the present system proposed by Clause 2(2). As noble Lords are aware, aircraft night noise is currently controlled by the combined operation of a movements limit and a noise quota system. Amending Section 78(3)(b) of the Civil Aviation Act 1982 in this way would empower the Secretary of State to discontinue the association of limits on the number of night movements at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and elsewhere.
I must declare an interest as leader of Essex County Council and that Stansted airport is situated in that county. The removal of the movements limit and the reliance on the quota count system will have a devastating consequence for the millions of people who live under major airports' flight paths. The quota system is highly technical and is often incomprehensible to the people it is meant to protect. There is no official index for night noise in the UK. The noise limit is calculated by using Leq, or level equivalent, which is officially recognised during the day between 7 am and 11 pm. That fails to take account of the fact that noise has vastly different implications at night.
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Level equivalent is a measure of noise energy and is worked out by averaging the noise level over a 16-hour day and expressing that as a continuous level. Its shortcomings are illustrated by the fact that a single Concorde on departure has the equivalent noise energy of 120 Boeing 757s. Thus, a Boeing 757 departing every two minutes for four hours produces the same level equivalent as two minutes of Concorde, followed by three hours and 58 minutes of silence.
Under the quota system, all aircraft are rated according to their noise on take-off and approach, and then banded into quota count categories that are three decibels apart on an exponential scale. A limit is then placed on the total number of points in a six-month season. I am explaining this in a technical way, because it is an important element of this issue. The fundamental conceptual flaw behind the way of regulating aircraft noise is the assumption that the degree of disturbance and/or annoyance caused by noise depends only on the level of the overall noise dose in terms of sound energy emitted.
This method is perverse, because it fails to take any account at all of the importance of how many and how frequently flights are permitted. The same total noise exposure can be achieved with a few noisy aircraft or a larger number of less noisy ones. Furthermore, whether those aircraft are bunched together or spaced at long intervals during the night period does not make any difference to the noise dose. By removing the night movements limit, the implication is that as aircraft become less noisy, more flights can be accommodated within the same noise quota. Under the quota count system, one Boeing 747, rated as QC2, could be replaced with four Boeing 777s, rated as QC0.5.
Less noise does not necessarily mean less disturbance. I repeat, less noise does not mean less disturbance. Consequently, the system is wholly inadequate for assessing the disruption of sleep caused by the impact of a relatively small number of noise events during the night. Cumulatively, those noise events may not break the noise quota, yet they may result in a person being disturbed on multiple occasions during the night.
It is imperative that we retain the movements limit on night flights. It is not only effective, but is easily understood, transparent and open to validation. Importantly it provides protection for those people who live in close proximity to airports, but not necessarily under flight paths. It protects them from the associated problems of ground noise, which the quota system alone cannot properly address.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, why, when previous Conservative Governments were in power, did they not do precisely what the noble Lord is advocating?
Lord Hanningfield: My Lords, I can absolutely assure the noble Lord that a future Conservative government will. I want to respond a little to the noble
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Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, in relation to something that the Minister said. Of course we believe in less regulation, but in things like noise and pollution emissions there has to be regulation. If we are to have the better environment that we all want, I am afraid that there has to be regulation to achieve that—and we have to have some different ideas and polices. Certainly, the Conservative Party under its current leader is determined to put some of those issues forward. I am putting forward some of them from the Front Bench today.
In maintaining the movements limit, we do not inhibit any possible advantages to be gained from a noise quota system. Instead, we simply ensure against its significant disadvantages. As I have argued before, the two mechanisms must be seen as complementing each other. Together they provide the most effective protection for communities living near airports or under flight paths. I beg to move.
4.45 pm
Lord Bradshaw: My Lords, I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, has just said. The lives of people who live around major airports, particularly the London airports, are nightly made a misery by the present limits. Any attempt by the Government to change those limits by fiddling the system—I can only describe it as that—so that the overall noise limit is averaged out and there can be more take-offs and landings during the night hours, will add to the misery of millions of people. I reiterate the noble Lord's point: it is the occasion of being woken up repeatedly that leads to a bad night's sleep, disturbed behaviour by children and, obviously, less efficient working by the people who are woken up. Also, if you have a lot more flights, you will have a lot more traffic and the noise will spread further and further.
What are these night flights for? Very few of them, I suggest, are connected with business. They are almost all for leisure travellers. Perhaps the needs of leisure travellers, or pressure from the industry, should be put beneath the quality of life with which I hope the Government are concerned. I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, said. We shall wait to see the outcome of the vote on this amendment before we say anything more.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, I, too, support the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, touched gently on health matters. It is known that stress can cause immune-system damage. I wonder whether, if we increase noise in a cavalier way, we will also increase the debts of the already stressed National Health Service and of the Department for Work and Pensions, as people will not be able to work because they are suffering from stress-related diseases. And so it goes on. I support the amendment.
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