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Sustainable aviation policy review

The government’s review of Aviation Policy was announced by the Secretary of State for Transport (SoS), Philip Hammond, in his speech at the AOA conference last October. The review will comprise two stages, followed by publication in 2013.

  • Stage 1; a consultation, expected at the end of March 2011, which will consider a series of strategic questions, inviting consultees to answer and back them with evidence; there will also be an opportunity to comment on the scope of aviation policy, then six months for response, after which time the Department for Transport (DfT) will spend six months analysing the input it has received.
  • Stage 2; further consultation on a draft policy framework, expected Q1 2012.
  • Final framework; published by March 2013.

The AOA has liaised with the DfT policy team on the review and has submitted a list of scoping questions both directly to the DfT and via the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), as a member of its International Networks working group.

Intelligence to date suggests Philip Hammond is mainly interested in the economic aspects of aviation. The need to deal with climate change should be taken as a given, but we should not assume this means it has slipped down the government’s agenda. However, the SoS is interested in the question of whether climate change should be dealt with unilaterally or multilaterally with regard to targets. The answer to this question will have a bearing on the whether this government adopts the previous government’s unilateral target of reducing UK aviation emissions to 2005 levels by 2050. It is now expected that a holding statement will be issued on this in the summer, with a definitive judgement being bound up with the Aviation Policy review.

Further, while DfT might commission some studies of its own, the scope for this is limited due to budget constraints. Officials will want to know what the most important function of a policy framework is for each of the aviation stakeholders (eg. to guide planning decisions, to set‐down clearly what government policy is, and so on); and there is likely to be more focus on freight. The 2003 White Paper only devoted one paragraph to it.

There will also be a decision in 2012 on whether aviation should be included in domestic carbon budgets. Some resource is likely to be devoted to looking at the, now aging, government guidance on the relevant weightings of government emissions policy in areas where trade‐offs have to be made; principally carbon emissions versus nitrous oxide (NOx) emissions and local air quality. The government does not consider security should be part of the review’s scope (though AOA has asked for it to be considered).