Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his consideration of these draft regulations. I will respond to the two substantive points he made. He is absolutely right that this needs to be communicated properly, because the use of drones—both for recreational purposes and, increasingly, for commercial purposes—is becoming very important in the United Kingdom. I draw the noble Lord’s attention to some further details on the consultation in 2023 and 2024, which received 3,500 responses. The respondents included recreational and commercial UAS operators, manufacturers, service providers and aviation sector organisations. We believe that that is a considerable response that shows the interest in the effective and lawful use of drones. The consultation tested support for a broad package of proposals, and the feedback to the consultation formed the basis for the final policy recommendations. The noble Lord is absolutely right that it is important that drone users are very much aware of the rules and regulations for their use. I said what activity had been carried out by the Government, but, in support of that, I add that the Civil Aviation Authority also updated the drone code and flyer ID test on 22 September this year. The reason was that that was ahead of the peak renewals period for pilots needing to retake the online test. That seems to be a good thing to do because someone taking the online test should be aware of the up-to-date regulations and the penalties for failing to comply with them. On the alignment with the European Union, I modestly disagree with the noble Lord opposite, because the regulation does diverge from the European Union, but only where it is important to do so—either to improve our national security or to use our limited airspace better. The divergence is there to benefit the UK overall and to support our ambition to lead globally on UAS regulation, while still enabling our British aviation industry to trade internationally with other nations. With that, I commend these regulations to the Grand Committee.