Hansard

I am very grateful to Colin Smyth of the Labour Party for securing the debate. As a representative for what would normally be Scotland’s busiest airport, I know the immense toll that the virus has had on the sector. Edinburgh airport is the gateway for millions of people who visit our country every year, and it supports tourism across the nation, but it has been a shadow of its normal self for months. Thankfully, it remained open for critical repatriation and medical and freight flights. I am immensely grateful to all the hard-working staff for all that they did to keep those flights going.

However, in the long term, it is impossible for Edinburgh airport to balance the books when 80 per cent of airport costs, which cover security to air traffic control, cannot budge. One third of staff have already been made redundant—2,000 out of the 7,000 jobs across the campus are gone. That is devastating for the individuals personally and a blow for my Edinburgh Western constituency, where so many of them live.

Sectors such as aviation will take much longer to bounce back once we get out of the crisis, so we should be smoothing out the cliff edges. We should extend support such as the furlough scheme, as Germany, France and Austria have already done. Taking the scheme into the middle of next year could avert 1.2 million UK redundancies.

The pandemic sparked job losses, but Edinburgh airport is clear that Scottish Government decisions in response to the crisis have further fuelled them. It says that quarantine has “exacerbated” the number of job losses at the airport.

The Scottish Government’s amendment fails to even acknowledge that there are problems, but the list is very long. There was no quarantine system until six months into the global pandemic, and the Spanish quarantine was turned off on a Monday so that it could be switched back on by the following Saturday—air bridges come with a degree of uncertainty and we all know that the decisions are based on watching the rates in other countries, but that was total chaos.

The justice secretary said that 20 per cent of people were being spot-checked in June, when the actual figure at that time was zero. Contact tracers have been unable to find more than 800 people. That number is rising and the Government has not even been measuring how many of those in quarantine become ill. Therefore, we do not know which air bridges are working to stop the spread of the virus. Edinburgh airport described the current system as a

“travel ban in all but name”.

Badly implemented, poorly policed and sapping confidence—those are its words, Presiding Officer. I know that that was not the intention of ministers, so this mess needs sorting out. A robust system would help the sector find its feet and boost consumer confidence and, critically, I am convinced that it could achieve so much more in the protection of public health and the prevention of the further importation of the virus.

In response to questions from Willie Rennie last week, Professor Linda Bauld told a committee that airport testing would be required. Airport testing with follow-up testing at home could have twin benefits. Professor Bauld argued that it could improve quarantine compliance and pointed to one study that suggested that only 25 per cent of people who were advised to self-isolate were doing so comprehensively.

Public health could be better protected if there was knowledge that either tests or testers would turn up during quarantine. Compromising safety is not an option, but quarantine testing could allow people returning from abroad or visiting to get on with their lives sooner. That possibility is so important to the viability of airports such as Edinburgh. The Scottish Government needs to do the work on that. It needs to acquire and share the science, and to look at what France, Estonia and Germany have all been doing.

Professor Bauld also told us last week that the bigger reason why we do not have airport testing is infrastructure. Since then, the testing system has plunged deeper into chaos. The test half of the test and protect system is falling down. If the Scottish and UK Governments cannot get that right, it is not just our aviation industry that will be in big trouble; so too will our schools, the NHS and our care homes.

During the debate, I am very mindful that the pandemic is not the only pressing threat that faces humanity right now. The climate emergency cannot wait, and aviation needs to play its part. That is why we successfully opposed the Scottish National Party’s plan to slash air passenger duty and it is why I cannot fathom the SNP’s support for a third runway at Heathrow, which will bring 600,000 tonnes of new emissions to Scotland by 2040.

Edinburgh, like the rest of Scotland, needs aviation for tourism and its economy, but we need it to be greener too. Grounded flights, people working from home, far fewer tourists buzzing up and down the Royal Mile—that all feels huge, but for the climate it is not. Experts are already telling us that the changes from Covid will barely register as a blip in humanity’s continued contribution to climate change. However, the route map to making aviation sustainable is not to let the economic impact of coronavirus do its worst and shred through livelihoods; it requires systems change, and Governments need to reach for that—including in their discussions with airlines and airports. Edinburgh airport knows that too. It says that it is important that the Government sets a price for its interventions. It is possible to get those transition plans, accelerate decarbonisation, attach green strings and support jobs.

We are still firmly in the clutches of this virus. Lives and livelihoods are under threat. I believe that the changes that we have outlined today and those that are outlined in Colin Smyth’s excellent motion, which we will support at decision time, can protect both of those. Thousands upon thousands of workers in my constituency are crying out for this Parliament and this Government to do something to step in to help with testing and quarantining and to give more support as part of the picture.