Economy: Growth

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I echo the congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, on securing this wide-ranging debate, and welcome the excellent maiden speeches, which are a good indication for the future of this House.

I want to focus my very limited time on the importance of aerospace and aviation policy. I have a straight request to the Government: please get an aviation policy. I do not accept what the Secretary of State said in his letter published in the Times yesterday, in response to wide-ranging comments in the Times from many businessmen and from the City of London that if we do not attempt to protect our premier hub airport we will diminish in importance.

I should say at this stage that I no longer have an interest to declare, because I am no longer campaign director of Future Heathrow. Believe me, everyone in this country has an interest in preserving a premier hub airport for Britain. We are the only country in continental Europe and among the emerging nations of Brazil, India, China and others which has not either already expanded or is expanding its airports, particularly hub airports. Hub airports are the way the global economy interconnects. It is the way that the European economy is connected. It is the way that investment decisions are made about where you can meet.

In the limited time available, let me give one or two simple facts to the House. A few years back, Heathrow could fly you to 240 destinations worldwide. Now it is 180, and the airport is full. Frankfurt can fly you to 307. Frankfurt sits in the middle of the largest, richest market in the world and can fly you to 307 destinations. What is its pitch in China, India, Brazil and everywhere else? Come to Frankfurt for your investment decisions and we can fly you on to wherever else you need to go. This Minister, more than any other, will know that Frankfurt has a burgeoning financial sector. London does not have to have the only and premier financial sector in Europe, and we will not do if we continue to hand the business over to Frankfurt. When the chief executive of Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam heard about the British Government’s recent decision not to have any expansion of airports anywhere in the south-east, the response was the same as before: “Good news for Schiphol; bad news for London”. Schiphol will fly you to 21 British regional cities; Heathrow will fly you to seven.

This is not an argument about the environment. I yield to no one in my concern about climate change—I wrote my first article about it back in 1981—but I do not believe and never have believed that you can solve the problem of climate change by hairshirt policies such as telling people, as the Government recently did, that they want to decrease the demand for flying. We have to be cleverer about it. I have been telling the aviation industry for a considerable time that it needs to sharpen up its act in conveying the message. Frankfurt has reduced its CO₂ emissions below its level in 2004, although it has doubled its expansion. If the Germans can do it, we can.

When Dubai’s hub, rather immodestly called the world hub, comes on stream, it will also bypass Heathrow for many from the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Many big companies located around Heathrow have already moved. Where have they moved to? To Amsterdam, to Frankfurt—less so to Paris—but increasingly to Madrid. BA's tie-up with the Spanish airline means that many of the flights now coming in from Brazil and the rest of South America go not to Heathrow but to Madrid. I say to the Government: if you do not get an aviation policy, this country will marginalise itself in the global and European economy. We will pay an awfully high price for that and will not do anything to improve the climate.