Lord Clinton-Davis
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Airports: Heathrow
Lord Clinton-Davis Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Earl Attlee
My noble friend raises an important point. In the event of bad weather, a committee, HADACAB, determines whether it is desirable to reduce the number of flights so that Heathrow, or any other airport, is not running at maximum capacity and time is provided for the runway to be cleared.
Lord Clinton-Davis
Is not the truth of the situation that the Government have made up their mind, despite evidence to the contrary, that Heathrow has to be ruled out? Is there any alternative? What do the Government propose? Is not time of the essence?
Earl Attlee
The noble Lord will know that this is an extremely difficult issue. For every suggestion that the noble Lord could make about what we should do about this problem, I could tell your Lordships what the difficulty is. We have set an extremely difficult exam question for the Airports Commission, and we will just have to wait and see what it advises.