Aviation: UK Civil Aviation

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

I congratulate my noble friend Lady Gibson on introducing this debate. She is a very fine advocate for what we must all agree is a very important industry. That is about as far as she and I are going to agree in the course of this debate. Before I come to my rather more disobliging points, I recognise that a lot of what she says about the challenges facing the aviation industry and the necessity for government to be clear about its policies is absolutely right.

I have no expertise in aviation whatever, but I have some experience of the ups and downs of aviation policy, having serially harassed my own Government on the subject of airport capacity for a number of years, chiefly on environmental grounds, which my noble friend touched on, about which there is a great deal to say—but not by me in the little time that we have available this evening. I want to make just one point, or to ask one question of the Minister.

Despite welcome assurances from the Government early in their life that there would be no further runways at Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted—and I declare an interest as a long-term supporter of the Stop Stansted Expansion campaign—runway capacity is still a major live issue, as my noble friend said, and an important matter for the civil aviation industry. The credibility that is suddenly now being accorded to the proposal for a new airport in the Thames Estuary is interesting for a number of reasons. Although there are many attractions to a solution to our capacity problems that envisages most approaches and take-offs being over water, I am tempted to say to supporters of that scheme, “Good luck with that one, but if you think that the human population of Heathrow was a problem, try the birdlife of Kent”.

My reason for being intrigued by the timing of this latest proposition to build a whole new airport comes from my experience that Governments of all persuasions have, I am afraid, a tendency to speak with forked tongue on the matter of airport expansion. I mean no offence to present incumbents when I say that. I am not a natural conspiracy theorist, but I can see the possibility, once the estuary plan has once again bitten the dust, as I fear it will—or sunk under the waves—of whoever is then in power shrugging a collective governmental shoulder and saying, “Oh well, then, we’ll have to go back to Stansted, or Heathrow, or Gatwick, or maybe all three”. The problem is that if I can see this, so can the airport operators—notably BAA, which has spent a great deal of time and money in its so far unsuccessful efforts to get new runways at Heathrow and Stansted. In doing so, it has effectively blighted whole communities by buying up land and properties, most of which it retains, despite, in the case of Stansted, being under instruction from the Competition Commission to sell the airport.

My question to the Minister is this: when the Government say no more runways at Heathrow and Stansted, what do they mean: no more for 30 years, for 10 years, until the end of this Parliament, or just until we change our minds? I am sure the Minister would accept that uncertainty about this question still hangs over communities in these areas, which are grateful for the reprieve they have had but nervous that it may only be temporary. I would be very grateful if the Minister could put them out of their misery.