Revised Draft Airports National Policy Statement

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, obviously the draft airports NPS will be the basis for the Government’s decision on the development consent application for a north-west runway at Heathrow Airport. I confess that I live under the flight path, so I suffer daily—I was woken this morning at 5.30, which has been very frustrating after the late hours that we have been here. I have long opposed expansion at Heathrow, well before ever becoming engaged in politics, on national as well as local issues.

It is often taken as given that there is a strong economic case for expansion at Heathrow, but that is exceedingly questionable. I am sure the Minister will be aware that the Davies commission agreed that it was clearly stated that the case for a third runway at Heathrow depended on a hub model of aviation prevailing over point-to-point. However, the shift in the industry is clearly towards point-to-point because, frankly, passengers hate changing planes. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, that his Chinese tenant is the exact example. People put up with this problematic hubbing, having to change planes and wait for hours in terminals for a second flight, until there is the opportunity to fly direct.

We are in an era where flying direct is becoming dominant. That is one reason for the rise of airports all across the various continents, and for a very fundamental change in the pattern of aviation that passengers themselves are demanding. What we have is a hub airport at Heathrow that is primarily and almost solely functioning on an outdated concept. The passenger forecast for the third runway is that there will be 41 million additional passengers a year, but that 22 million of them will simply be changing planes at Heathrow. I pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones: those 22 million contribute absolutely nothing to our national economy. A large part of the investment and the cost that we are carrying is to support literally half the passengers, who bring no specific benefit.

The economic case is also based on an assumption of a direct correlation between GDP growth and an increase in passenger numbers, particularly at Heathrow. That is very simplistic. We got a glimpse into how simplistic it was during the work of the Davies commission when it released the technical documents. I give credit to Justine Greening MP, who, at that time, through a number of FOIs, was able to get more information on the cost-benefit analysis, and it was clear that there really was nothing. Many people think that somehow there had been work with businesses in London to work out what the future demand would be; there was none. They thought that there had been a look at historical correlations; there were none. It is simply meant to be a given that as GDP goes up, there is a corresponding increase in demand for flights out of Heathrow. I say this with a warning, because the rail industry has had to cope with the fact that what it assumed was an unbreakable link between GDP growth and passenger demand for rail has now been clearly broken. For example, in London, the Tube has seen its passenger numbers this year down by almost 4 million. So the economic case is extremely simplistic and very unreliable.

None of the analyses ever included the negative impact on businesses from noise, poor air quality and, above all, traffic congestion, so the work has been inadequate. But, interestingly, even in that inadequate work, the latest piece of work done by the Government shows that a second runway at Gatwick is a better generator of long-term economic benefit than a third runway at Heathrow—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton.

A number of key airlines, including BA—Willie Walsh’s name was quoted just now by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley—have turned against the project because of the charges which they know they will have to pay and then have to pass on in ticket prices. No-one I talk to believes the cost of £17 million, which is often thrown around as the right number for this project. That number completely fails to include any realistic costing of the plans to move and then reinstate the M25 or, alternatively, to tunnel it. Until we get some reasonable costings, it is going to be very difficult to assess this, but £17 million is way too low, and any contractor will tell you that. To break even—even on that understated price—Heathrow will need to require the new runway to operate at 38% capacity from day one. The only way to achieve that kind of increase in flights at Heathrow is to lure flights—especially high-value flights by US airlines—away from Gatwick, Stansted and Birmingham, and possibly even farther afield, which would seriously compromise the viability of those other airports. This issue has never been properly examined and it bodes very ill for regional development.

Heathrow will incur a huge debt load as a result of building the third runway, and the pressure to service that debt means that Heathrow will inevitably focus its new capacity on long-haul popular destinations, where planes can be filled very quickly. That means New York and other near-US destinations, not flights to new developing markets in Africa and Asia. Even the NPS forecasts that the airport will reduce its network of domestic flights to serve, at best, only five domestic airports, compared with the eight that it serves today.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talked extensively and so well on climate change. To meet the carbon targets in the Climate Change Act 2008, the third runway would require off-setting cuts across our regional airports. Passenger numbers would need to be cut by 36% in the south-west, by 11% in Scotland, by 14% in the north-west and by 55% in the West Midlands. Without that, carbon emissions from aviation would constitute 25% of our carbon emissions allowance by 2050. Again, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, described that far more effectively than I can.

Of course, there are local issues. Getting passengers to and from the airport is a nightmare, both because of the impact on air quality and because of road and rail congestion. NOx emissions and particulates are severe around Heathrow even today, and legal limits are regularly breached. All the local access roads are heavily congested, so dispersal is not even possible. Even the London mayor’s plans for ultra-low emission zones does not solve the problem. In fact, this basically destroys the effectiveness of any of those plans, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, described. She talked about the health impacts of poor air quality, something we are becoming more and more aware of. So there are serious consequences to the air quality impact of a third runway.

The Government have promised that a third runway will lead to no more cars on the road—they do not say that about freight; we will have freight on the road but no more cars. Frankly, that is impossible. Every scheme to provide more rail access from London to Heathrow falls to pieces either because it requires tunnelling on a major scale at a huge cost or because it triggers the level-crossing problem. I will explain the level-crossing problem. In my former constituency of Richmond Park, the position of the River Thames, Richmond Park and the railway lines means that several thousand people can get in or out of the area only by using one of four roads that have level crossings. The rail lines are so busy that the level crossings are often down for 50 minutes out of the hour. A train service to Heathrow, which all agree—if passengers were willing to use it —would have to be a fast train running every 15 minutes with no more than one stop, would in effect close those level crossings completely, trapping the local population.

Transport for London has estimated that providing surface transport to support a third runway would cost £18 million, of which Heathrow has said it would pay £1 million, with the rest to fall on the taxpayer. That includes not a penny for resolving the level crossing problem. No engineer has found any solution to that, so we are talking about the impossible.

Last but not least, noise is a fundamental issue. I was astonished to hear praise for a six-and-a-half hour night flight ban. That ends at 5.30 am, and the traffic between 6 am and 7 am is what drives the community most insane. Also, the airlines constantly fly exceptions, created by some circumstance of weather or another, that always breach their current limits, and that will undoubtedly continue. It is an ongoing problem.

The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, talked about much quieter planes, but the problem is flights coming over in a constant stream so that there is never any relief from the level of noise, so even making planes quieter does not necessarily deal with that problem. There is an additional problem: Heathrow with a third runway will be running planes on two parallel runways. As the noble Lord knows, noise fans, so in the area between those two runways, the fan effect of two planes flying at the same time will be extraordinary. The operation of those two runways at the same time means that areas once affected only by take-off will now have take-off and landing.

[Lord Naseby]

I am not sure where the noble Baroness gets her information from. If one got the information for, let us say, two fighter jets taking off together, one would see that the increase in incremental noise is very small. Surely, since those are fair noisier than the aircraft that I was talking about, her facts are totally wrong.

[Baroness Kramer]

I will ask the Richmond Society to forward to the noble Lord the detailed modelling that has been done to show the impact of double noise on a significant section of the population. He may find that rather interesting.

Opposition to Heathrow comes from the overwhelming majority of residents in south-west London living under the flight path, four local councils and MPs of all political colours that represent that area. My party, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens have consistently opposed expansion. When any of us hear of the mitigations, we apply that against our own experience. I lived in the area when Heathrow applied for the fourth terminal and we were assured there would be nothing more. Then came the fifth terminal, and we were assured again that anyone was foolish to suggest there would be a third runway. Then came a third runway and we were told, of course, there would be no sixth terminal. Now we hear of a sixth terminal to go with the third runway. This pattern continues regularly. In the same way, the mitigations—noise is a good example —never live up to their billing. Sitting outside—most people have the right to sit in their garden—is not helped by noise insulation inside a house; that works only provided all the windows and doors are closed, with the consequence that quality of life is severely affected.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. She quite rightly talked about more and more terminals. Does she have a view on the view expressed by the noble Lords, Lord Spicer and Lord Naseby, that we should be talking about probably four runways, if not five, to keep up with Dubai and Amsterdam?

[Baroness Kramer]

I think the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, was perhaps more honest than most. A lot of the PR that comes from Heathrow and much of the aviation industry suggests that every new increment will always be the last and it never is, because there is always a rationale and always money to be made from continually trying to expand capacity, particularly when the underlying strategy is to strip flights out of other airports in the UK. That ownership is no longer held in common has added great fire to that underpinning strategy.

I hope that the Government will reconsider again the whole notion of a third runway at Heathrow; there are other and better options. I understand that it is in some ways a sop to business because business tends just to assume that a third runway would be good without looking into the detail. This seemed a way to pacify businesses infuriated by Brexit.

[Lord Spicer]

The noble Baroness is making a very interesting speech, but how will we get in and out of the country—we are an island—as the population becomes larger and we do not expand our airports?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, there are many regional airports—I personally look at Birmingham as the most obvious way to expand and it is part of our regional strategy. There are many alternatives to the third runway at Heathrow that were not considered by the Davies commission. There are mechanisms. Rail will be taking a different part of the strain domestically in future, so we are part of a changing pattern.

I do not want to keep the House longer.

[Lord Spicer]

You are passing the problem to Birmingham.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer]

Birmingham is eager to have a third runway, and there is a logic for it being there.

Heathrow has reached its limit. Frankly, it is time that the Government recognised that and looked for a better strategy.