The government will allow airports to begin training staff without security clearance, Shapps told parliament’s transport committee on Wednesday (27 April).
Shapps said screening could take place while new staff undertook training that was not security sensitive. Currently, screening takes place before any training begins.
He said a statutory instrument – legislation that does not require an Act of Parliament – would be laid today.
The government is keen to avoid a repeat of the chaotic scenes at airports seen at Easter as the summer rush begins.
"We will look for ways to assist," said Shapps. "I can’t compromise in any way on aviation security and safety, but I have looked at the rules and found an area where we can assist with the bureaucracy, particularly with regard to new people coming into the industry needing to be security checked.
"We can begin the training without exposing them to the parts of the training that are security-related without having the security check complete as long as it is complete before they start on the security-related stuff," added Shapps, who added demand for air travel had returned “a lot faster than anticipated”.
The transport secretary said he met with British Airways chief executive Sean Doyle on Tuesday (26 April), who had outlined recruitment issues.
“They are primarily OK with pilots, but those on the ground – baggage handling, for example – had been much harder in a very, very tight employment market.”
Shapps told the committee Doyle had told him BA was “proactively slimming down their programme in order to meet the demand”.
He disputed claims by committee member Ben Bradshaw, who said the lack of support for airports during the pandemic had led them to laying off staff that could not now be attracted back.
Shapps said the government had given £8 billion to the aviation sector, and had provided furlough payments “so nobody had to lose staff during that period if they wanted to continue to pay furlough”.
Bradshaw, a Labour MP, also said constant changes to travel rules, such as the traffic light system, had meant the sector could not plan.
Shapps replied: “I agree there were too many changes. In our mitigation, the world was trying to work out how to handle a once-in-a-hundred-year event.”
