Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in Committee on the Bill. As it is my first intervention in Committee, I declare my technology interests as set out in the register, variously as adviser to the Crown Estate, Endava plc, and Simmons & Simmons LLP, and as non-executive director of Avalanche (BVI) Inc and the Avalanche Foundation. It is also a pleasure to follow my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. The whole Committee and everybody should thank her for everything that she has done on flights in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. I support everything that she had to say on shortcomings and areas that need to be addressed which, as she clearly pointed out, could be addressed right now. I also support the amendment from my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson; it must be agreed. I see precious little point in wasting any of the draftsperson’s ink on a “may” provision. “May” is “whenever”. We have seen from other legislation pertaining to disabled people that “may” is a hope that never comes to fruition, so “may” must be converted to “must”. Similarly, I support the comments of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham—he sounds even better when he is quoting himself from a previous Hansard. It seems extraordinary that the circumstances he sets out have not been addressed. They do not, in any sense, reflect what happens in the rail industry. As a corollary, I ask the Minister: as it works so well in the rail industry, would some systems such as Delay Repay not be a positive addition to the airline sector? Those payments can be rightly collected behind the scenes from the source of the problem, be it NATS or another service provider. Smart contracts could be deployed so that those payments are automatically made when such events occur. However, there is a situation that we are seeing a creeping illustration of across a number of sectors, including in aviation, as my noble friend Lord Young set out. I will highlight what is happening in the financial services sector around fraud. Banks are on the hook for repayment and reimbursement for certain fraud events, such as push payments, whereas telcos or platforms, where the frauds may originate from, are currently not. I would be interested in the Minister’s comment on the sense that there is an increasing tendency for this, where, in reality, the costs and compensation should fall where the breach occurs. It is a very simple and well-established legal principle. I look forward to the Minister’s response to my noble friend’s excellent intervention.