Aviation Strategy

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mike Thornton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for alluding to my rival. Obviously our position was that a per-plane passenger duty was far more sensible than an individual, per-passenger payment. Unfortunately, international regulations and laws do not allow for that possibility at the moment. It would be good if we could seek to change that and use a far more efficient per-plane tax system that encourages full aeroplanes.

It is not possible to solve this capacity problem within one or even two Parliaments. Consequently, there is a real danger that political differences, whether genuine or contrived, could prevent a proper, long-term strategy. These are complex matters. We therefore welcome the setting up of the independent commission on aviation chaired by Sir Howard Davies, which is considering the UK’s airport capacity needs and how to address them. As the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) said, the commission will publish an interim report expected before the end of this year and a final report in 2015. It seems to me that there is little point in establishing such a commission if we do not wait to pay attention to its findings. I am sure that the whole House recognises the need for a long-term, consistent strategy. Liberal Democrat Members look forward to Sir Howard Davies’ interim report, which is due shortly.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

My understanding is that the Liberal Democrats have ruled out Heathrow expansion completely, whatever happens under the next Government or any Government after that. In that case, why did they sanction the inclusion of Heathrow expansion in the terms of reference for the Howard Davies commission? Surely that means either that they have absolutely no intention of forming any part of the next Government or that they have wasted an enormous amount of time and money, and, I suspect, have been playing a few games at the same time?

[Mike Thornton]

The point is that when one sets up an independent report one has to allow it to report.

[Zac Goldsmith]

So why have you ruled Heathrow out already?

[Mike Thornton]

We will have to wait for the report to see the answer to that. [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend makes the point that I was about to make. He is absolutely right.

We have to be bold, honest and ambitious about what this country needs. Every week delayed is a week in which London and our country lose and our competitors gain. Every week lost is a week in which British industry loses potential business to its international rivals.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I am yet to meet a single person other than those who occupy the Government Front Bench who supports the deadline falling after the next general election. I do not think that anyone on our Back Benches believes that that is a credible deadline, so in real terms this is probably in the hands of the Labour party. If it wants to force the agenda, I suspect that would be very easy to achieve. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman could put some pressure on his own Front Benchers.

[Mr Lammy]

I think the pressure I am able to put on my Front Benchers is about exactly the same as the pressure the hon. Gentleman is able to put on his, he makes a very good point.

I hope that the Davies interim report due at the end of the year will show that real progress has been made in coming to a conclusion. It would be disappointing if the interim report consists merely of a long list of all the options we already know are on the table, many of which have been discussed today. The commission was set up over a year ago. We must begin to get some concrete early results. I would like to see a shortlist of two or three of the best options for increasing Britain’s airport capacity. That would provide a much clearer idea of the way forward and focus the debate on aviation, which is very much needed.

I am especially clear on one thing: one of London’s biggest success stories must not simply be wiped off the map. Heathrow airport is the busiest airport in the world on the basis of passenger numbers. It directly or indirectly employs 230,000 people. The contribution of the western wedge of London and the home counties accounts for 10% of the country’s GDP. The percentage of GDP that is contributed by London, at 21.9%, is the highest that it has been since 1911. We therefore ought to be very careful in talking about the idea that Heathrow could somehow be shut overnight with no problem.

It was right that the last proposal for a third runway at Heathrow was rejected, but that was largely because it took no account of the population in the wider west London area. The recent proposals contain more consideration of how to minimise noise levels and disruption to residents. It is obvious that the expansion of Heathrow is one of the main options that the Davies commission must consider.

This debate must be based on the assumption that airport capacity will be increased in addition to the continued success of Heathrow, not at its expense. Let us be clear: any strategy that results in closing one of Britain’s most successful and important infrastructure locations should be avoided like the plague. We should rule out right now any option that would close Heathrow airport because it would be a disaster for London and for the country.

That includes the idea of a new hub airport in the Thames estuary. It is clear that building a new hub airport in the east of London would require Heathrow to be closed. That would decimate the west London economy and end all the wider benefits that Heathrow brings to the city. If that option ever was on the table, it should be taken off the table right now. Not only is it economically and technically unfeasible; it would mean closing Britain’s best and most successful airport. Thankfully, there is only one person in this country who genuinely seems to believe that the answer to Britain’s airport problem lies in building a new £65-billion airport in the middle of a river. Unfortunately, that person happens to be the Mayor of London.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

I congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill). He is not just a decent man, but hugely competent, and I am sure that he will do brilliantly in his new role.

I will start by giving some figures on the airports that are being built in China. The Mayor of London has been to that country recently, as has the Chancellor. Between 2005 and 2010, 33 new airports were constructed, taking the total number to 175. By 2015, there will be more than 230 airports in China. If my maths is correct—I am an accountant by training, so I think it is—there will have been 55 new airports over five years, an average of 11 a year. I know that it is a developing nation, that is much larger than us and has the advantage of a different form of government, but if we compare and contrast that with what we have had in this country, it makes us think that we have not got to grips with the need for more airport capacity.

The Transport Committee made the point, as a number of Members have today, that it has been a decade since the last White Paper on the subject, and at that time it was 20 years since the previous one. We are back to the future, because now the Davies commission has said that there is a need for more airport capacity in the south-east, but we still have not concluded where it should be.

As Members have said, there are two problems with the fact that we have not reached a decision and that the pace has been slow. The first is that the lack of certainty is bad for business and investment. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) will agree with that, although we may not agree about the solution. The other problem is that others are getting ahead. A number of Members have made the point that Frankfurt, Schiphol and Charles de Gaulle are all getting ahead in the global race that we want to win. I was at a meeting this week at which somebody who knows the airport industry well made the point that people at Schiphol talk about their airport being Heathrow’s third runway, which says something.

Another sobering fact that I have found in considering the matter is that more flights leave Frankfurt for cities in China in a week than leave Heathrow for the whole world in a weekend. That must tell us something. Figures from the International Air Transport Association show that due to the lack of capacity at Heathrow, between 2005 and 2011 there was a 49% growth in the number of passengers flying from UK regional airports to transfer at overseas hubs such as Schiphol and Charles de Gaulle. That represents a loss of business and jobs to the UK that we should do everything we can to retain.

I note the Transport Committee’s recommendation of a third runway at Heathrow, and I commend it on the urgency of its deliberations. It has come to a conclusion a lot faster than the Davies commission, which will release its interim report at the end of this year. There has been discussion of the costs, which I am sure will continue, but the proposed expansion of Heathrow would have much less of an impact on public expenditure and the Exchequer than a Thames estuary airport.

The other innovative proposal that I have found interesting to learn about is the Heathrow hub, proposed by the Centre for Policy Studies. It talks about doubling capacity from two to four runways and suggests that that can be done at no cost to the public purse.

[Zac Goldsmith]

Is my hon. Friend not slightly alarmed that that study takes no account at all of the extra impact of congestion? Just a third runway would lead to an extra 25 million road passenger journeys a year, and a fourth would presumably have more or less the same effect. Can he explain how our roads would be able to handle 50 million extra road passenger journeys a year to and from Heathrow? Does he share my concern that the costs simply do not exist in the report that he cited?

[Alok Sharma]

Clearly, that is exactly what the Davies commission should come up with. I am not suggesting that the CPS’s proposal is the only one in town, I am just highlighting it as a particularly interesting one.

We have waited a long time for a conclusion, so we might as well see what the Davies commission comes up with, but the one thing I would find disturbing in any final recommendation would be a solution that ultimately led to the closure of Heathrow. That would be bad news for business and jobs. I do not agree with the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who is no longer in his place, about everything, but I do agree with his points about the impact that it would have not just in London but in the western wedge, which covers areas such as the Thames valley and Reading, which I represent. As he said, a report commissioned by a range of local enterprise partnerships covering the Thames valley, Buckinghamshire, west London and Oxfordshire concluded that £1 in every £10 of UK economic output is generated in the western wedge area around Heathrow, and that aviation and related activity at Heathrow supports about 120,000 jobs there. If a new hub airport was to be built to the east of London and Heathrow was to be closed by 2030, because I do not think anybody is suggesting that we are going to end up with two hub airports—

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith]

Richmond Park.

[John McDonnell]

Richmond Park. That posh area of London, anyway.

I agree with the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). All of us with sound common sense should band together on a cross-party basis and insist that the Front Benchers agree that the Davies commission should report in full before the general election, so that we can come to some conclusion. We should be able to go into the next general election with a clear view from each political party about their position on future aviation strategy.

I cannot see any political party going in to the next election in favour of expansion at Heathrow. Before the last general election, the Prime Minister made it very clear that as part of his greening of the Conservative party it would come out against the third runway at Heathrow. The Lib Dems, to give them their due, have consistently opposed it—the one thing on which they have been consistent throughout. The current leader of the Labour party opposed the expansion of Heathrow and has made that clear publicly. That might be why—together with his position on Syria—my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) is on the Back Benches, I do not know. The politics of this is that there is no consensus in favour of expansion at Heathrow, and so far there is no consensus in favour of a new airport in the estuary. The arguments put forward have been about cost, and I cannot see anyone grasping that nettle.

[John McDonnell]

I think that anything that gets past £40 billion frightens the horses of any future Government—I apologise for allowing the intervention, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will press on.

In recent months, the debate has changed significantly as people have become more aware of the environmental and health consequences of what is already happening at Heathrow. A series of reports from Imperial College London and Harvard have demonstrated that, as a result of air and noise pollution, the area has low birth weights. Children’s growth patterns are affected even as they grow older, and there has been some growth delay as a result. In addition, a huge study over 12 boroughs has demonstrated an increased risk of heart attack and stroke as a result of aviation noise. If anyone comes forward at this stage in favour of further expansion at Heathrow, there will not be protests like last time and the Camp for Climate Action—I was there—or anything on that scale; the protest will be multiplied tenfold. It will be the largest environmental battle that the country has seen, and I will be part of it.

If there is a fudge at the next general election, and then a decision is made to expand Heathrow, people will feel that they have been conned and betrayed. That will motivate them even more into saying that democracy in this country has been undermined, and there will be more direct action as a result. It is important to convince the leaders of the different political parties that they need to bring forward the Davies commission to before the next election, so that we can have a proper debate and be honest with the electorate about its conclusions.

I enjoy a good joke, so I saw the submission by Heathrow Airport Ltd to the Davies commission—I do not know whether Members have seen it. It does not just want one more runway, it wants three; it wants to obliterate not only my constituency, but two others as well. The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) is not in his place, but he is a prime advocate for expansion at Heathrow. Now he has been taken at his word—they want to expand into his constituency. His councillors have met and said, “We’re still in favour of expansion at Heathrow, as long as it is to the north”—a breathtaking act of nimbyism if ever I saw one.

The proposals by Heathrow Airport Ltd—now owned by Ferrovial, the Chinese sovereign state fund, and Qatar—looks at an expansion that will take 20,000 people from their homes and expand air pollution, possibly to about 100,000 people. We are already beyond EU limits; children in my constituency are already going into classrooms and handing over their puffers to their teachers. The proposals would increase such things, perhaps tenfold. It will destroy whole communities, but I do not think people will sit back and allow that to happen. I think they will mobilise.

A new campaign has been launched called Back Heathrow. It has basically come together and said, “We are in favour of ensuring that we maintain the airport.” I contacted it and said, “This is a wonderful initiative.” I fully support that because we want to keep jobs in the area, and we can improve the quality of Heathrow and look at how we expand to meet challenges, for example that of China. Routes between China and Heathrow have been limited because we have been refused access in some areas, but that is now opening up. There is capacity at Heathrow to do that because if we took out the short-haul flights—25% of flights at Heathrow are short-haul or point-to-point—we could accommodate those direct flights to China.

I was in favour of the Back Heathrow campaign, but then I discovered that it backs Heathrow only in favour of the airport’s recommendation to expand, and that it is actually funded by the airport itself. What a surprise.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I had something from Back Heathrow through my door as well. It calls itself, “The voice of the silent majority of west London residents in favour of Heathrow expansion”. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is a very, very silent majority in west London?

[John McDonnell]

The silent majority is in an office by Heathrow airport and solely funded by Heathrow airport. I cannot find a community group or a resident in favour of the expansion. Let us expose that campaign for what it is on the Floor of the House and ensure that people are aware that it is a con of that nature.

We want a sensible debate on aviation strategy. We need to recognise that, realistically, London has seven airports and eight runways serving it. We move more passengers than any capital city in the world. Paris is fifth behind London—nowhere near us. People make the argument of business connectivity, but we come top of every poll on business connectivity. The answer to the need for further capacity at Heathrow is to ensure that it is not bigger, but better, which is exactly what the Conservatives said at the last election. We should manage it better by moving the short-haul and point-to-point flights elsewhere. I do not accept the argument that we cannot have a collective hub. We can have one as long as we ensure connectivity between the airports.

We need that rational debate to take place. I welcome the report as part of the debate—it is rubbish, but it at least stimulates debate. I urge Members not to allow the deal that is going on between the political leaderships to put the debate off until after the election. Let us have the Davies report before the election, and come to conclusions with which we can then go to the electorate.