National Policy Statement: Airports

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

Just outside the boundaries of my constituency lies a charming little village called Cublington. I mention that because 50 years ago, in 1968, the Roskill commission started its inquiry on airport expansion in the south-east. Its conclusion was that a new airport at Cublington should be recommended. Fifty years on, we are still dithering, and the time for a decision is now.

I have been a member of the Transport Committee for the majority of my time in this House. I have been part of two inquiries into airport expansion. The first, which was in 2013, was not scheme-specific, but looked at the general pros and cons of all the options for London and the south-east: Boris island, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and the others. Since then, I have been part of the current Select Committee’s inquiry on the scheme-specific proposal for Heathrow.

I started my journey with an open mind—I did not have a preference for any airport. Indeed, I was not even convinced that we needed airport expansion in the first place. I looked favourably on suggestions that a proper high-speed rail network would free up enough domestic capacity at our international airports to create space for the long-hauls. However, having looked at all the evidence in detail, I am convinced that we do need the expansion of a hub airport over point-to-point capacity—both are important, but we need the hub option—and that the location for that should be Heathrow. Gatwick has many advantages, but it is on the wrong side of London for most of the rest of the country. It is also one of the primary freight hubs, and we need that freight capacity in the holds of passenger aircraft to make many routes viable. It is essential for our long-term international trading interests that we have this expanded capacity.

I was agnostic about whether we should choose the third runway or the Heathrow hub option. Neither of the options is perfect; each has its advantages and disadvantages. We also have to contend with the uncertainty of forecasting many decades into the future.

It is important to point out that the current Select Committee’s inquiry looked only at the current Heathrow option; it did not conduct a comparative analysis of Gatwick or the Heathrow hub option. That was not in our remit, but had we done that, I am sure we would have found shortcomings in the other schemes as well.

We also did not look at the comparative costs of not proceeding—the huge economic cost to this country of not building new airport capacity at this point, when Schiphol, Frankfurt, Charles de Gaulle, Istanbul and Dubai would mop up our markets. What is the opportunity cost environmentally of not proceeding at this point, given the emissions from aircraft both circling in the air and on the ground now?

I am satisfied that the Government are listening to the Select Committee’s recommendations, if not in the NPS then at some other point in the process. I am also satisfied that technology will help to address many of the justifiable concerns that people have. Aircraft technology will deliver quieter and less polluting planes. Electric vehicles will remove many of the surface access concerns, and there are solutions so that moving aircraft from the stand to the runway involves less emissions. All in all, we cannot afford to delay this decision.