Heathrow

Alan Brown Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her question. We have seen many brilliant examples of crowbarring local and national issues into debates, and I salute her ingenuity in so doing. She rightly makes the point that this proposition has been left unexecuted for far too long, although it has greatly improved as a result. It will bring an almost £75 billion boost to the UK economy, provide better connections to growing world markets and allow better support for regional airports and the regions of the country. She is right that we need to press ahead.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

I am rather naive. When the Secretary of State for Transport came to the Dispatch Box to present the decision on Heathrow expansion, I thought he was moving on from the rail shambles and on to firm ground—a subject he had a firm grip on—but clearly that is not quite the case. We are hearing mixed messages about liabilities and a rather flippant, “We don’t need to worry. It is a normal commercial recovery mechanism that Heathrow has put in.” The Government have to be clear about this if they are to carry the vote of the House and take this forward, and time is limited.

The Secretary of State said that the Government had acted on 24 out of the 25 recommendations of the Transport Committee’s report on the NPS, but that claim seems to be unravelling as we go through the Government’s response. Again, it seems the Government are not on top of this. There has been much debate about the cost of surface access and who pays for that. The Government are going to have to be very clear, because they keep saying there are no liabilities there and it will all be private-funded. They need to start to understand the mechanisms for the payment of surface access upgrades; will that be a private finance initiative through fare recovery? What will it be, and what are the associated contingent liabilities? Quite often, the Government end up giving infrastructure guarantees, so will they be in place for surface access upgrades?

In terms of the 15% of new slots—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am afraid the hon. Gentleman is way over time. If he has a single sentence to add, I am happy to hear it, but after that we do need to proceed.

[Alan Brown]

I will need to understand the protection of the 15% of new slots for the new domestic routes before the vote takes place; that is important.

[Jesse Norman]

The latter point is so far outside the scope of this UQ that I hope the hon. Gentleman will not mind if I address it in the Committee session this afternoon.

On the issues the hon. Gentleman raises that are germane to the question, let me start by thanking the Scottish National party for its support for this project, which it rightly concludes will be of great value to Scotland—and that is agreed across all parties. There are no mixed messages here and there is nothing fluffy about the legal position on which the Government have—as it appears, uniquely—taken advice. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the statement of principles was published in 2016 and has been available for almost two years, so if there is fluffiness it is not on the Government side of this House.

We have taken very seriously the 24 out of 25 Select Committee recommendations that the hon. Gentleman raised. We are grateful to the Select Committee for its detailed and painstaking work and have acted on many of its recommendations; we have left one to be a point of further discussion, and dispute potentially, but we have been overwhelmingly positive in many ways towards the Select Committee response. That should be reflected on the record, and we are grateful for the support it has given to this project.