Keir Mather

Keir Mather

Labour — Selby

Speaking in the House of Commons on 10 September 2026

Debate

Air Traffic Control Disruption

Contribution

I thank my hon. Friend and predecessor in this role for all his work in holding the CAA and NATS to account and managing some of the difficult conversations following previous disruptions. He raises the valid point that those recommendations were passed on by the CAA and have been implemented in full, and yet we have seen this disruption. Part of this is about us working with the CAA to encourage NATS to go further, faster on some of the technological innovations and transformations he describes. He is right to say that, despite the negativity of the situation, this is a useful opportunity to ask ourselves questions about where we can encourage NATS to go further and push the boundaries in terms of regulatory innovation in the areas he spoke about, such as eVTOL—electric vertical take-off and landing—and drones, and to learn the lessons from this incident and think about how we can build a greater depth of resilience across our UK aviation sector.

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