A group of West London Labour MPs today met with representatives from the pilots’ union, BALPA, and have joined their calls on a complete moratorium on job losses in the airline industry following recent announcements from BA.

Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston), Virendra Sharma (Ealing Southall), Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth), John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington), and Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) issued a joint statement:

“British Airways employs 43,000 people, including many in West London. The scale of the proposed job losses is both premature and unconscionable, and we are also extremely concerned that BA may be using the Covid crisis to attack employees’ terms and conditions.

“The Chancellor said he would consider giving support to airlines where all other options had been exhausted. If BA is suggesting this scale of redundancies we are clearly well past that point, and the Government must now intervene.

“BALPA has called on the Government to insist that the industry stops all proposed job cuts until a proper, government-led, high-level and strategic view is taken about where the UK aviation industry is going. We completely agree with that approach. Aviation is too important to the UK economy, and to our constituencies, to be left in the hands of CEOs who are apparently out to exploit this crisis for their own ends.”