Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for attending the debate and for their input. I listened intently to the highly experienced noble Baroness, Lady Foster. She raised a valuable point about the minute parts that might cause a serious failure. I recall the example used, albeit not as a practitioner. The answer to that is that type certificate holders will have a design process in place to establish the potential failure impact of every part, and that design process has to be established by the CAA as adequate. Any potential failure must be shown to have a negligible effect on the functioning of the aircraft. The screw that the noble Baroness referred to, part of the assembly of a windscreen, would be considered within the design process so that it would not be excluded from form 1 if the design process for the more major component was safety critical. You could not exclude the screws and still have the windscreen assembly—that is the practical answer to that question. The noble Baroness asked who the CAA will delegate to. I cannot give her the names of the third parties, but the CAA has set out stringent requirements for third parties to be qualified entities. Qualified entities will be subject to an audit regime to ensure continuing compliance with the CAA’s requirements. They will clearly need sufficient subject matter expertise and regulation capacity, and the CAA will accredit and monitor their performance to ensure continuing safety. The CAA has to set out in detail how it intends to assess the competence of qualified entities for drone flightworthiness, assessment and training. It has experience of doing that in respect of how it dealt with the pilots of fixed-wing and rotary aircraft, so we are entitled to conclude that those processes are robust. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, referred to the delegation of powers. The criteria are more or less what I have just said, but if there is any omission from the explanation that I should have given as a consequence of his question, I will write forthwith. As for the testing of adequate resources for the Civil Aviation Authority, I believe that it is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that the resources are adequate and that it has adequate resources to pay the agencies to which this work should be delegated. Again, for the avoidance of doubt, I will write to the noble Lord and confirm that that is the case in respect of this element of these regulations. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, rightly asked whether the department, and I as the Minister proposing these regulations, take responsibility for them and for the proposal to delegate. The answer to that is, of course, yes. The department should not propose such regulations without feeling confident that it is competent to propose them and that what it is proposing is the right thing to do. I believe that I have answered all the points raised. I conclude by saying again that the safety of aviation and of the travelling public is a priority for the Government. My department is committed to ensuring that aviation remains safe. The draft regulations form part of an important legislative programme which implements proportionate best practice in aviation safety regulation. I commend the regulations to the Committee.