Airport Expansion: East Anglia

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

I agree with that, without ignoring the points that other colleagues have made. It cannot just be seen in terms of north and south—there are other considerations—but my hon. Friend is absolutely right. He and I, in neighbouring constituencies, probably suffer the weight of the complaints from quite a lot of rail passengers.

There is also the A120 which, I was told 38 years ago, was to be a critical route across to the M11 for traffic coming from the east-coast ports. The section between Braintree and Marks Tey is still not in place, which is an absolute scandal. We then have the other minor scandal of junction 8 on the M11 motorway. My hon. Friend’s predecessor, Bowen Wells, and I appeared bravely at the public inquiry into the motorway services area. After it was decided that the airport access should be from junction 8, it was then decided that we should have the motorway services area access at another quadrant of it. The result was chaos, and yet, Bowen Wells and I were told in the inquiry—of course, we really knew nothing and were not experts—that they had got it absolutely measured. It has been a disaster. There is consideration even now that perhaps the only way of overcoming the inherent difficulties of that junction will be to shift the motorway services area. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that that might have to happen. There are also the demands from my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for a junction 7A to ease the pressures from people getting to the airport.

I want to feed these points into the bigger picture of airport provision. Stansted undoubtedly has the spare capacity to soak up a lot of the pressures that are going to arise until the decision on the Davies commission has been made and, perhaps more importantly, implemented. Without a decent railway, however, Stansted will struggle to address that demand. The bigger airlines expect a high standard of connectivity and quality rolling stock to go with it, and as local MPs, our concern has to be, as much as anything else, for our long-suffering commuters, who are having to pay more to travel in not very good conditions. There is problem after problem, and they extend across the region to the Great Eastern line—not least already this week.

Even Davies concedes that the quickest increase in runway capacity can be achieved at Gatwick. It has multiple rail access. That is currently being upgraded, which is fine for them, but it is galling that there still has been no upgrading on the West Anglia line. Stansted has absolutely nothing to compare in rail access with either Gatwick or Heathrow, yet to fulfil the role of that airport in our region, four-tracking of the West Anglia line is the minimum needed now. Four-tracking between Tottenham Hale and Broxbourne is needed, not in 2025 or 2030, but now, just to sustain the existing level of demand, let alone what is in prospect from north to south of the line. Four-tracking is also the vital precursor to the Crossrail 2 project, which would naturally follow on from that.

The Anglian region needs to be plugged in better to Greater London, not just to Liverpool Street, but to Stratford and to places that Crossrail 2 will reach. I say to the Government that, if only to buy time on their airport strategy, they need to sort out the West Anglia line.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

If I may, I will continue. If the Government want to underpin the growth potential of the Anglian region, they need to sort out the West Anglia line. If they want the increasing population in our constituencies to travel conveniently to work, they need to sort out that line. It is in no one’s interest to let improvement work slip into what Network Rail calls control period 6 or even control period 7. There has been a 30-year struggle to get this improvement, and if nothing is done soon, the potential of the Anglian region will be severely handicapped.

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[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) on securing this important debate. I want to speak only briefly, to reiterate the important comments that my right hon. Friend made towards the end of his remarks, that we should view the decisions we take about Stansted airport within a wider economic context, and take a wider strategic overview of the economy in the east of England. He, more than anyone, will know that the airport at Stansted is the largest single-site employer in the east of England, with 11,500 people and more than 200 individual companies working there. He will also know that the Airport Operators Association concluded in its report in November 2014 that as a whole the airline industry in the United Kingdom contributed £52 billion to our country’s gross domestic product, was responsible for employing 960,000 people, and directly contributed £8.68 billion of tax.

My right hon. Friend put the national and local debate about Stansted airport into its correct historical perspective, and it seems to me that all the issues to do with airport expansion essentially revolve around the position of an airport within the economy. The environmental issues are noise, ground access, congestion and pollution, and those things come to the fore when we consider Heathrow versus Gatwick and the so-called Boris island. The decisions of the Davies commission, and the expediting of a final solution to the issue next year or at the end of this year are, obviously, eagerly awaited. It is an issue that has dragged on for at least 10—probably nearer 15—years. It is accepted now that Heathrow is at capacity and Gatwick is not far off it, and across the whole of the wider south-east, including the eastern region, we will be at capacity by 2030.

I want to concentrate on the economic issues. You will know, Mr Pritchard, that the area loosely described as the London-Cambridge economic corridor—I make an oblique reference to Cambridgeshire’s second city, Cambridge, as opposed to Peterborough—is not just about London and Cambridge. It was the Labour Government who identified a London-Cambridge-Peterborough growth corridor, an integral part of which, for sustainable economic growth and employment, was Stansted airport. That is important. On a serious note, the success of Cambridge in particular means the success of Cambridgeshire and the wider eastern region, so we need that level of connectivity, not just on the railways but as a matter of worldwide airport connectivity and a local—if I can use that word—airport that can serve Cambridge and the wider economic area including Suffolk, north Essex and east and north Hertfordshire, as well as London, which is a world city.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

I totally accept the point about the Cambridgeshire corridor. Does my hon. Friend agree that surface access to airports is very important—particularly the upgrading of road routes such as the A120, and similar routes to give access to Stansted and the Cambridgeshire area? That is important for the potential expansion in airports and airport use.

[Mr Jackson]

Absolutely. One of my bugbears, which I brought up in Transport questions not that long ago, and which I have been raising for years, is the fact that we tend to be slightly London-centric and think about the Stansted Express and the connectivity between east London and Stansted. The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) touched on that issue in talking about London City airport. However, we should remember that there is also a need for enhanced connectivity between the midlands and the north of England, via a key subregional transport hub such as Peterborough, bringing jobs, opportunities and tourists and other people to Stansted from the north and the midlands. It is just as important in the context of the wider infrastructure picture, which is that the east of England suffers from relatively poor road and rail infrastructure. We might think of the Liverpool Street to Norwich line and road access to places such as Suffolk—particularly Waveney, Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth and the very large county of Norfolk.

I have for years pressed for a little strategic thinking about the CrossCountry service from the midlands to Stansted. My constituents want to be kind to the environment. They do not want to get into a car at the crack of dawn to drive down the A14, on to the M11, to reach Stansted. They would much prefer to get a CrossCountry train that began its journey in Birmingham, and to get to Stansted in good time for their flight—perhaps with time for an early breakfast and some shopping there. They could support the local economy of Uttlesford and Essex. However, they cannot do that because the train does not run at the appropriate time. That is something pretty straightforward and simple that goes to the heart of the issue of connectivity.

[Peter Aldous]

The east Anglian region has for a long time been the poor relation with respect to airport connectivity. Does my hon. Friend agree that we can up our game? In the Chamber today there are Members representing constituencies with Stansted, London City, Luton and Cambridge airports—and there is also Norwich. We need a strategy for connecting to those airports and making the best use of the facilities and resources that we already have.

[Mr Jackson]

My hon. Friend makes an important and astute point that speaks to a lack of joined-up thinking on transport infrastructure. We get it right on the smaller, strategic projects. One only has to think of the guided bus that links St Ives in Mid Cambridgeshire to Cambridge. I used that bus to go into Cambridge over Christmas. It is a fantastic facility and, as I understand it, it is now scrubbing its face financially. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) is campaigning for a better link between Wisbech and Cambridge, and I thank the Minister because we are having an upgrade of the east coast main line. Some £43 million has been spent on Peterborough railway station, for which we are inordinately grateful. However, do we actually join up all those individual projects across a big area? I suspect that we do not. Airport capacity and connectivity is another issue that we need to look at.

I want to talk briefly about air passenger duty. The elephant in the room is the massive generational decision that will be taken about airport capacity, which will centre on evidence for or against Heathrow. It seems that successive Governments have missed a trick by not availing themselves of the opportunity to use air passenger duty as a way of driving, or at least influencing, demand for the creation of new long-haul services at places such as Stansted, Luton and so on. The Minister will say that that lies within the bailiwick of the Treasury and I accept that, but the debate about air passenger duty needs to continue and we need to look at it again.

To conclude, my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden made an excellent case for the importance of Stansted. My contention is that we need to look at the expansion of Stansted as our regional airport. We need to move away from a London-centric, overly prescriptive focus on what is good for Greater London, which I admit is a world city of 8 million people. This needs to be about rebalancing the economy, and that does not just mean the north-west, Yorkshire and Humberside and the east midlands. It also means creating jobs, new opportunities and transport infrastructure in the east of England. Stansted can be at the heart of that but it must be in a co-ordinated, long-term, sustainable and comprehensive infrastructure plan.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) on securing this debate. I enjoyed his recap of the history of Stansted; I do not think I grimaced even once. He talked eloquently about the importance of airports not only for the Anglian region but for maintaining the UK’s air connectivity and for jobs and economic regeneration across the country. I therefore welcome the opportunity to respond to the debate on behalf of the Government.

I hope my right hon. Friend will be encouraged that we all have the same interests at heart. I acknowledge his specific points about the continued and future importance of Stansted airport. Indeed, I have visited some of the facilities with him to see them at first hand. I made a point of travelling there by train, so that I could experience that journey myself. When I visit airports, I try to travel in the same way as members of the public in order to experience the whole journey that they would cope with in some cases or enjoy in others.

As my right hon. Friend mentioned, Stansted is one of the largest employers in his constituency, employing 11,500 people on site across 200-plus companies. It provides significant economic benefits not only locally but to the wider Anglian region by supporting the globally competitive high-tech and biomedical industries, not least in the constituency of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who speaks for the Opposition.

This is a timely debate, given the Government’s recent announcement on airport expansion in the south-east. The Airports Commission set out a convincing case for new runway capacity in the south-east by 2030, which the Government have accepted. We also accepted the commission’s final shortlist of three schemes. It is vital that we get the decision right so that it will benefit future generations, which is why we will consider further the environmental impacts and continue to develop the best possible package of measures to mitigate the impact on local people and the environment.

[Mr Jackson]

Mr Pritchard, I was remiss earlier in not saying what a delight it is to serve under your chairmanship. Does my hon. Friend agree that, in terms of sustainability, it is also important to concede that even during the 10 years that we have been in the House, aircraft have become cleaner and quieter? There have been big technological changes in the development of aviation fuel, for instance. The aircraft industry and airlines are much more sustainable than they have ever been.

[Mr Goodwill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that aircraft have become much quieter. Each generation of new aircraft is quieter than the previous one. Of course, the problem with aviation tends to be the very long life of aircraft. Cars might have a 10, 12 or 15-year turnaround, but many 25-year-old aircraft are still flying. Turnaround happens more slowly in the aviation sector, but it is good news that both Boeing and Airbus have thick order books and that companies such as easyJet, which is based in Luton, are buying new aircraft. We heard that, at London City airport, new Embraer aircraft are providing quieter and cleaner journeys.

Of course, air quality around airports is not just about aircraft. In some cases, it is mainly about other sources of pollution, particularly NOx from traffic. I need not remind Members of the problems that we experienced last year with vehicles that did not come up to the emissions standards that might have been expected from the lab tests. That is one factor that we must consider to see how we can improve air quality in areas, particularly London, where air pollution has not decreased as much as we would have expected based on the replacement of old vehicles with new vehicles that perform to Euro 6 standards.

Crucially, the timetable set out by the Airports Commission for delivering additional capacity to the south-east by 2030 will not alter. My right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden will, I am sure, appreciate the importance of airports for businesses and residents in the Anglian region. This debate has shown that it is not just larger airports such as Stansted and Luton that are important to the Anglian region; some of our small airports also play a key role in supporting the economic growth of the regions that they serve. The Government have always made it clear that regional airports make a vital contribution to the growth of regional and local economies as a way to provide convenience and travel choice for air passengers.

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[Mr Goodwill]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. I will be very careful about what I say in the light of the planning inquiry that is scheduled to take place in March. As he mentioned, the Secretaries of State for Transport and for Communities and Local Government will make the final determination on the application, so it would not be appropriate for me to comment. I very much enjoy using that particular airport. Indeed, I timed myself passing through security the last time I used the airport. It took just four minutes, which is just what members of the business community want. They want to arrive very late at the airport but still get on the flight, although I am not sure that the airport management would suggest that as a strategy.

Within the UK, airlines operate in a competitive and commercial environment, and we consider that they are best placed to determine which routes they operate and from which airports. We know that the commercial aviation market brings many benefits to air passengers. However, the Government also recognise that aviation plays an important role in connecting regions, so there may be occasions when aid is necessary to develop air services to airports where local economic conditions prove unattractive to airlines. However, we are conscious of the risk of competition being distorted by Government intervention in the commercial market. That is why we have been careful in balancing the commercial imperative with the need to provide support for new air routes from our smaller airports.

The Chancellor announced in November that 11 new air routes from smaller UK airports would be supported, with about £7 million of start-up aid over the next three financial years. Those routes—two of which are from Norwich airport and one from Southend airport—will begin operating from this spring, and they will provide domestic links between England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as international connectivity to France, Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland.

[Mr Jackson]

The Minister is being generous in giving way. Will he undertake to continue to monitor the fiscal impact of air passenger duty, including on the growth of regional airports and on potential new long-haul routes? APD is an important issue, although it does not lie within his remit.