Even though the facts that led to my request for this debate are personal, I am bringing it to the attention of the House as their implications deserve wider attention. Let me begin by outlining those facts.

On Sunday 3 August, I went through security at Gatwick airport at around 3.30 am. I was going on holiday to Corsica. One suitcase was checked in and I carried one bag on to the plane. The bag I carried with me went through security checks; it was the first shift of the day and it was not very busy when I went through. When I arrived in Corsica, two things happened, which I want to talk about in turn, as the two are separate as well as related.

First, my suitcase did not arrive in Corsica. Secondly, when I got to the hotel and unpacked my hand luggage, I discovered that in the side pocket of a shopping bag that I had brought with me for use as a beach bag there was a fruit knife. It had been left in the bag some time ago, and I had not spotted it when I was packing. The knife is a small kitchen knife, its total length is 7 in, with a 3 in blade. Let me make it quite clear that I do not habitually walk around carrying knives and I certainly had no idea that this particular knife was in my bag, so I was not conducting a test case to check the security.

However, first thing on Monday morning, I asked my office manager in Birmingham to get in touch with Gatwick airport to tell it that it had a problem, because the knife surely should have been spotted as the hand luggage was screened. My instincts were that someone had made a mistake and Gatwick security should be made aware of it so that they could put it right. I would have been content to leave it at that but it took a number of phone calls to establish the appropriate person to contact. In the end, my office e-mailed July Spellward and Fiona Carleton at BAA outlining the events. There was no response other than being told that Fiona Carleton, the aviation security manager, would be out of the office until 11 August. So the security manager at Gatwick airport is out of the office for the second week in August!

On 11 August, my office contacted Gatwick again for a response. We received a response from Wendy Leigh, personal assistant to Andy Flower, who informed us that Andy Flower was away on annual leave but that she would forward our e-mail to the customer service department for it to respond direct, which it did not do.

When I returned to Gatwick on 17 August two things happened. First, the suitcase that I had lost on the way out and of which I had heard nothing for two weeks mysteriously reappeared and was on the luggage belt. It had returned with me and I just picked it up. Secondly, I went to the BAA information desk where I told my story and asked whether there was anybody I could speak to. I was given the card of July Spellward. At this point I discovered that she is the traveller insight manager. I left my mobile number, as I wanted to pass on some insights, and was assured that she would call me first thing on Monday morning, which she did not—nor did she do so at any other time.

However, on Monday 18 August the commercial director, Mike Luddy, contacted me in a letter to discuss the problems that I had encountered—of course, I thought that BAA had the problems, but he clearly thought that I had them. On 18 August he said—he was very precise about this:

“I can advise that 317 passengers were processed through North Terminal security between 0315 and 0345 on 3rd August. Three cameras were in operation at the time and if you could provide us with the time you passed through security and perhaps a photograph of yourself to help us with identification, then we may be in a position to take this matter further forward as appropriate”.

So two weeks later, BAA has something from security and is asking for a photograph to look into the matter further. I responded that I found those answers unsatisfactory and put a number of questions to Mr. Luddy. I also had a phone call from Scott Colvin, head of group public affairs, on Thursday 21 August who began by telling me that a letter resolving the open questions had been sent, but later apologised when he realised that the letter he had in mind had nothing to do with my problem.

I confess that at this point I ran out of patience and contacted The Mail on Sunday. Curiously, once a journalist got involved and started to ask questions, what had started out as a question of public relations suddenly became a matter of national security, which Mr. Luddy told me prevented him from discussing security standards and individual incidents any further.

To illustrate why I have absolutely no confidence in anything that BAA told me, I shall quote two statements from the same day. On 22 August, Mr. Luddy told me that

“as we are unable to identify the individual involved we have now taken the decision to take all fourteen members of staff off line for re-training.”

However, I also have an e-mail from him dated the same day in which he says:

“Yes, we have identified the individual and she has not worked a shift at the airport since but as a precaution we have taken the entire crew off shift for re-training”.

In addition, he says that

“the team have not been on duty since the date you travelled”.

In other words, the entire team has not been on duty from 3 August to 22 August.

On 29 August, Mike Luddy sent an e-mail that in order to “close this issue” he was telling me that the crew had been retrained and were now back at work, and that new procedures were in place to deal with complaints. I told him that I did not regard it as closed and said that once the House returned from its summer recess I would try to get an Adjournment debate on the subject. I am indeed grateful to have the debate. I am also grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Laura Moffatt), whose constituency covers Gatwick airport, is in the Chamber because I want to reassure her that I am confident that the many people who work hard at Gatwick airport, often for long hours and not good pay, are doing their very best. What is happening is that they are being let down by incompetent management.

I am deeply grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I make no apology either for the incident or for the subsequent events, but I think it right that she gives proper recognition to those people’s work. I have spent a lot of time with them, and I know that their work is very difficult. I was very glad to hear her recognise that.

It being Ten o’clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. —[Chris Mole.]

Just as I had entered the phase of thinking that perhaps this was just my problem and I should let it rest, I was surprised—or, more to the point, not surprised—to read in the 19 October edition of The Sunday Times that

“replica bombs were smuggled past security staff in hand luggage during a safety inspection at Britain’s second busiest airport. Staff at Gatwick airport failed to identify artificial explosives carried by undercover transport inspectors from Brussels even though one device was allegedly identified as suspicious by X-ray scanners.”

An interesting interpretation of that incident by The Sunday Times was that although the staff who check objects through security know that a quality control device sometimes brings up images to check that they spot them, they are under so much pressure to get people through security quickly that they do not have time to concentrate on what they see on the screen.

As for the incident that I have described, for all I know BAA’s management has improved the way in which it deals with complaints, but I am not confident that it has improved the way in which it deals with security.

I also want to mention the matter of the missing suitcase. We are always told that it is imperative that there should be no piece of luggage on an aeroplane that is not identifiable, and that therefore there should never be any unaccompanied luggage. That leads me to the assumption that, in the interests of security, staff ought to know where suitcases are; but that clearly did not apply to my suitcase. It went AWOL, then reappeared, and when I asked BAA staff where they thought it was, I received no answer.

The curious aspect of the matter is that air travel is the most prescriptive mode of travel that I can think of. Air travellers must buy named tickets that cannot be transferred. They are told exactly what they can and cannot take on the plane. They are asked to turn up hours in advance. They are not allowed to take any liquids through security, which means that they must leave their can of Coke at one end and purchase a rather expensive can at the other end. People put up with all that because the deal is that it is to do with safety, so the least that we should be able to expect is that those with a duty to impose safety measures take safety seriously.

The same applies to the issue of suitcases. The problem seems to be not just security, but the fact that BAA deals with one thing while—in this instance—EasyJet deals with another, while a third company tracks the luggage. None of them seem to care much what happens. They assume that tourists need only take out travel insurance. In no other walk of life would it be regarded as acceptable to assume that people insure themselves against the breach of part of a contractual obligation, but in this case it seems to be considered routine that people will lose their luggage. I was without luggage for two weeks, but the maximum that BAA is prepared to provide is three days’ compensation at £25 per day against receipts—in other words, a maximum of £75—because it is assumed that people have insurance.

I should like the Minister to do three things. First, I should be very grateful if he could obtain what I failed to obtain: a genuine datelined account of what was done with the security crew. At what point were they taken off duty, and at what point were they retrained? Secondly, I ask the Minister to obtain the European Commission report—which I tried to obtain through the website, but which proved not to be available—and, if possible, to share it with me. Thirdly, I ask him to examine the issue of lost luggage. It seems to be dealt with in such a haphazard way that I do not feel confident that security is taken as seriously as it should be.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) on securing this debate. I am sincerely sorry to learn that her experience of security at Gatwick airport was far from happy. It is also disappointing that she had to go to so much trouble to follow the matter up, and sometimes even had difficulty in finding the right person to deal with.

Responsibility for each security measure is allocated by law to appropriate parts of the complex aviation industry, and it clearly is a complex system. However, I can assure my hon. Friend that the Department for Transport, as the security regulator for the industry, monitors performance through its inspectors and takes appropriate action where required. I will turn to the specific questions my hon. Friend asked shortly, but I would like to begin with some more general remarks to set the scene.

We are in a period of sustained severe threat to the UK from terrorist attack. Aviation remains an aspirational terrorist target. A lot of good work is done by the aviation industry to deliver security requirements. At Gatwick, the airport deploys the very latest equipment available for the screening of cabin bags and the passengers themselves. The staff working at airports have a difficult task, and I am sure Members will join me in paying tribute to the hard work they do. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Laura Moffatt) raised this matter, and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston, who has had the problems, has generously accepted that staff generally do an excellent job in difficult circumstances. We all appreciate their efforts. I hope that my hon. Friend will understand that I cannot comment now on specific operational matters at particular locations, but what I will do is set out the general context of the UK’s aviation security programme with reference to Gatwick airport, and respond to her points later.

As I have said, the Department for Transport sets the standards for aviation security, but it is up to the airport’s own management to decide precisely how it will ensure that these standards are met. Locations differ, and this means that different practical approaches to security need to be taken.

The other essential aspect of aviation security that I should touch on is what we call the layered approach to security. Public attention on aviation security is often focused on the aspects of security that are most obvious to travellers, such as X-raying of hand luggage and walking through a metal detector, and, of course, these are important aspects of the security picture. Importantly, however, these are only small parts of the security picture. Other aspects such as physical security measures, staff screening, policing, intelligence, travel document security and staff training all contribute to the layered security arrangements at Gatwick and other airports.

The Department for Transport always investigates any alleged breach of security so that any weaknesses can be addressed. However, we also have to consider the balance between the public’s right to be informed of the risks—and the mitigating measures—and the need to ensure that terrorists are not fully aware of the preventive measures in place.

This brings me back to the layered approach to security. None of the parts of the security set-up at any location can, by themselves, deliver 100 per cent. security. As my hon. Friend mentioned, the knife she accidentally took on board an aircraft in her hand luggage when she went on holiday in August was not detected. The fact is that BAA plc made a mistake, and I am not here to make excuses for it—and, to be perfectly frank, after listening to the litany of problems my hon. Friend had, I would not know where to start.

As my hon. Friend says, BAA has written to her on a number of occasions, and, as well as taking steps to retrain the security officers concerned, it has a new procedure in place to respond to complaints of the kind that she made. As I am sure my hon. Friend would expect, this is not the end of the matter. Airport security is not simply about dealing with particular incidents of the kind she mentioned; it is a continuous process of maintaining and improving high standards in a difficult working environment. While we are reliant on the airports themselves to ensure that the necessary measures are implemented on a day-to-day basis, we undertake a regular programme of compliance-monitoring visits, including announced and unannounced inspections, and we provide appropriate advice and guidance to the industry. The inspection of Gatwick airport that was carried out by the European Commission in October, to which my hon. Friend referred, is one part of the programme of work that the Department for Transport and the European Commission have in place for Gatwick and other airports.

My hon. Friend asked two specific questions about Gatwick. The first was whether I would ask BAA to provide a timeline of when precisely the crew was taken off duty, what kind of retraining they received and when they returned to work. I will certainly do that, and I will let her have a copy of the response I receive from BAA.

My hon. Friend also asked about reports of the European Commission inspections of UK airports. I assure her that my Department acts on information arising from our joint working with European inspectors. The information that emerges from any inspection is always constructive and is the subject of a great deal of activity by Department for Transport officials and UK airports, as well as by the European Commission. For the reasons that I have stated, I cannot provide further details, but, as I am sure my hon. Friend would expect, where security is concerned we act as soon as is needed.

Finally, my hon. Friend asked about luggage handling. It is annoying for passengers when luggage is lost or delayed, and it is in the aviation industry’s own interests to make sure that that happens less often. Indeed, it happened to me this summer, so I know how frustrating it is. I must say that the airline with which I was flying found the baggage within 24 hours and couriered it back within another 24 hours, so my experience was more reassuring than her own. On the security issues surrounding delayed luggage, I can assure my hon. Friend that as well as there being 100 per cent. hold baggage screening for all bags at UK airports, there are additional, more intensive security measures above and beyond that to deal with luggage that travels separately from its owner, for whatever reason.

In conclusion, I think we all accept that heightened aviation security measures will be with us for some time. I am sure that we also all agree that they do not make the travelling experience any more pleasant, and that it is worrying when things do not go as they should—my hon. Friend experienced that. I thank her for bringing this matter to our attention, congratulate her again on securing this debate and assure her that the commitments I have made this evening, both in general and to her in particular, will be fulfilled.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at eleven minutes past Ten o’clock.