Clarity needed over public funds for airport says senior Tory AM

Ministers need to be clear whether Cardiff Airport will always need public funds, a Conservative AM has said.

Nick Ramsay spoke after a senior civil servant indicated that, under the way the loss-making airport is set-up, it would always require public support.

Members of the public want to know when the airport can "stand on its own two feet", Mr Ramsay said.

Andrew Slade told AMs the airport would need to be "very different" to revert to a commercial model.

Since it purchased the airport in 2013 for £52m, the Welsh Government agreed to loan £38.2m in cash, to be repaid with interest over the next 20-25 years.

The Welsh Government has said that further investment will be required.

Mr Slade, the Welsh Government's director general for economy, skills and natural resources, gave evidence to the Public Accounts Committee on Monday.

"If we want the airport to do the things we want it to do, and we want it to be the international gateway for Wales and that strategic part of our infrastructure, I don't think as it is currently set up... that you could walk away from it in terms of public support of one form or another, or investment," he said.

That was unless somebody showed him a different economic model, he said.

"Because I think in order for it to be or revert to be a wholly commercial endeavour its business model would need to be very different," he said.

"It would need to be subject perhaps to fewer of the policy interventions that we make".

The chair of the committee, Nick Ramsay, told BBC Wales: "In many ways this looks a bit like a blank cheque. There doesn't seem to be an end point to it".

He said the Welsh Government "need to decide what the purpose of Cardiff Airport is and what their long term strategy is for it".

"Is it aspiring to be a commercially successful airport, like some larger airport hubs across the world, and like Heathrow and Bristol, or is it trying to deliver a specific purpose and to make sure that Wales has an airport?

"I think at the moment, that isn't clear.

"If the latter of those is the case then I think the Welsh Government needs to come clean that actually there always going to be an amount of funding required to keep Cardiff Airport sustainable."

Written evidence to the committee from officials said it was clear "that further investment will be required to fulfil both our and the airport's long term ambitions of growth and expansion, but we recognise that there is a limit to how this can be achieved solely via the public purse".

"We remain open to exploring long term future investment and ownership models," it added.

Last year it was revealed that the airport's pre-tax losses up to the end of March 2018 were £6.6m, up on the two years before.

The airport has pointed to a different measure of profitability, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) which went into the black in 2018 for the first time in eight years.

AMs heard that the government was in discussions with the airport on further loans, and that the Welsh Government is the only place it can borrow money.

The story comes as Thomas Cook collapsed on Monday, with 24,000 customers and 120 flights at Cardiff affected between now and the end of November.

Mr Slade downplayed the impact of the firm's collapse: "I don't think we would regard the direct impact on the airport to be so significant that it would in any way shape or form cause the airport operation to fall over."