Aviation Strategy

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Nick Raynsford

Thursday 24th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

I am delighted to welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill) to his post. I am pleased to be able to participate in the debate.

I agree with the Select Committee on two of the three main themes in its report. First, it is completely right to recognise the need for increased runway capacity and increased scope for aviation in the national interest—a point made forcefully by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman). Secondly, I agree with the vital importance of a hub and the inadequacy of the other options, which do not provide a hub solution.

I am afraid, however, that the Committee has made a mistake in opting for Heathrow as the location of Britain’s future hub. I fear that it has not learned the lessons of history. The right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) gave us a certain amount of that history, and I shall now amplify it a bit more. I suspect that I am almost as old as he is, and I recall the Roskill committee. Like him, I was attracted to the concept of an estuary airport at the time, and I was disappointed when the project initiated by the Heath Government was cancelled by the incoming Labour Government in 1974 as an austerity measure. There are echoes of recent history there, too. Cublington was the wrong solution—I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the idea of an inland airport was wrong—but the crucial point is that Heathrow is in the wrong location. It might have been right in 1947, when we were looking for a new airport immediately after the war, but by the 1970s it was clear that, because of its location in an area of dense population, it was not the right location for the long term.

The subsequent history of all the inquiries into airport expansion included the Layfield inquiry into terminal 4 and the Vandermeer inquiry into terminal 5, as well as the sad history of the third runway proposal in the 2000s. Every one of those projects was bitterly opposed, which produced dishonest responses from the airport operators, in saying that that was as far as they would go. I remember BAA stating emphatically at the time of the terminal 5 inquiry that that was it, and that if approval were granted, it would not seek any further expansion. Public confidence and trust in the airport operators was totally destroyed, and people were further infuriated, when it came back seeking further expansion only a few years later. That history has undermined public confidence in the veracity of the people responsible for planning our airports.

We need to get this right. We need to have a strategy, rather than just continuing to make do and mend, and adding a bit more in an unsatisfactory and inappropriate location at Heathrow. It is inappropriate because around 700,000 people are seriously affected by the noise it creates. My constituency is a huge distance from Heathrow, yet I get more complaints about the noise from aircraft approaching Heathrow than I do about the aircraft using City airport, which is just across the river from me. My constituency is far outside the 55 dB contour—let alone the 57db one—yet there are still people there who are deeply affected by aircraft noise.

[Mr Jenkin]

The aircraft noise that we get in North Essex comes from early morning flights coming into Heathrow, and on a quiet morning it can be disturbing. We would get no disturbance from a Thames estuary airport.

[Mr Raynsford]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; I am with him on that.

It is notable that 25% of all the people in the European Union who are seriously affected by airport noise are to be found around Heathrow. The airport cannot operate 24 hours a day, and any attempts to relax the restrictions on night flights are strongly contested. That, too, has an impact on the efficacy of the airport and makes it impossible to operate as a proper international hub that can receive aircraft at all times of the day and night. Furthermore, the approach path to Heathrow over central London is potentially hazardous. The incident involving an aircraft coming down short of the runway two or three years ago was a timely reminder of the serious risks associated with having an airport in a densely populated area.

There is also the issue of air quality. I remind the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside, of what her Committee’s report says on that issue. She quotes the Environment Agency, which gave evidence about Heathrow to the effect that

“concentrations of nitrogen dioxide were expected to continue to exceed the EU air quality limit for the foreseeable future.”

Because of the heavy volume of vehicle and industry, there are already serious problems with air contamination in the surrounding area, so the airport is simply adding to them.

If we are going to have extra capacity and a hub to allow expansion to, say, 150 million passengers a year, it is in my view inconceivable that this can be done at Heathrow. It should obviously be done in an appropriate location. I believe that the estuary is the right location: it has the capacity for a four-runway hub airport; it would allow 24-hour operation; and it would dramatically reduce the number of people affected.