Member

I begin with Amendment 65B. I am a member of the APPG for Air Ambulances. They provide an absolute lifeline. Every single day, crews attend road traffic collisions, cardiac arrests, serious falls and medical emergencies in some of our most remote and inaccessible communities, and across the country as a whole. They reach patients and bring specialist pre-hospital care to the roadside with great speed. They are quite literally the difference between life and death, yet these services operate in a regulatory environment that has not kept pace with the demands placed upon them. The airspace modernisation agenda, which the Bill advances, is welcome in many respects, but modernisation brings disruption. That disruption must not come at the cost of the operational resilience of our air ambulances. If new flight paths, procedures or airspace designations create barriers to the rapid deployment of these critical services—they are all charities, as we have heard—patients will pay the price. I hope the Minister will give this matter the serious attention that it deserves.