Decarbonising Aviation

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Westminster Hall

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I say to the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) that that was incredibly informative and really constructive. It was worth coming, if only for the entertainment. That was very good.

As the MP with Heathrow in his constituency, I obviously have a special interest. We have been through a brutal period over the past 18 months. It has been grim in terms of loss of jobs and the impact on the community. There are whole families who are dependent on work at the airport, and the situation has affected the local economy and the way of life and wellbeing of so many people.

My last conversation with the Chancellor before I stood down as shadow Chancellor was about the need to have an aviation strategy to deal with covid, and to build on that for the long term to tackle climate change. I said, although I was not listened to, that the best thing would be to get the industry together—employers, companies, unions and local communities. I said it was better to listen to the unions, because they are more independent of the fight that will go on between individual companies. The unions were already looking at how we could come through the covid crisis and be honest with people about the future. We cannot return to the way it was; we cannot return to a policy of continuous expansion. That cannot happen if we are really going to tackle climate change.

I have five points to make, and I am sorry if I bore people by repeating them in debate after debate. First, there is the principle of doing no further harm. The third runway will set us back and, as we go into COP, undermine people’s confidence that we are serious about tackling climate change. Let me give some background to the Prime Minister saying that he would lie down in front of the bulldozers. At his first election as the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, I asked at my count, which was before his, “Will he make the same commitment as his predecessor, John Randall”—who people may remember is now in the House of Lords—“who said he would lie down in front of the bulldozers with me?” Of course, Boris could not help himself. As soon as the count was over, he got up and said, “I’ll be with you, John.” Bizarrely, when the vote came up in the House of Commons, he was on a one-day visit to Afghanistan. I suppose that was pure coincidence.

Before COP takes place, we need a clear statement opposing the third runway expansion at Heathrow. It is the iconic battleground in this country—and, in fact, in Europe overall—for tackling climate change. I welcomed Climate Camp into my constituency and it turned the third runway campaign from an nimbyist issue into a global one through the publicity and campaigning that took place. Climate Camp was 1,000 people turning up overnight, camping for a week and demonstrating and so on. It transformed the whole debate, but it will be insignificant in comparison with the protests that will take place if the Government try to force through a third runway, so we need a clear statement.

Secondly, we need to minimise the existing harms. That means managing demand, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) said. The best way to manage demand is, to be frank, through taxation, including VAT and fuel duty, and through frequent flier policies. We should also be assessing whether, in the world of Zoom and Teams, the level of business travel using aviation is absolutely necessary. It behoves us all to question all our transport undertakings, but the Government need to publish guidelines to discourage unnecessary business travel.

Thirdly, as the hon. Member for Angus said, we need a scale of investment in research and development that we have just not seen under this Government or previous Governments, whose policies have been more about predict and provide to meet escalating demand. We now need a scale of investment in research and development in alternative fuels, including batteries enabling short-haul flights, which undoubtedly will be developed. I understand where the hon. Gentleman is coming from—he knows much more than me—but I think that with such investment, we have in our universities and research institutes the engineering creativity to be world leaders on that front. I am old enough to remember the incredible work that was done on engines including the RB211 up in Barnoldswick, where I worked at the time.

As we develop new methods, the Government then need to step in, as they did with cars, with some form of aviation scrappage scheme. Sometimes I resent handing over money to some of those companies because, as we have seen during the covid crisis, they have used it not necessarily to support the sector or the local economy, but to maximise their profits. A well-constructed scrappage scheme was undertaken—sometimes it is difficult to mention the name—by Peter Mandelson, and it was incredibly successful in transforming the environmental effect of the car industry. That is needed.

Finally, I will make a local plea: we need a just transition. If we are serious about a just transition, it means supporting the aviation communities that surround airports—in my constituency, that means Heathrow, but there are others. What they need now is support to develop alternative economies for the future.

One of the things that I suggested to the Chancellor before I stood down from the Front Bench is that, for my constituents in particular, but also for outer London, west London and all the other aviation communities, we need an individual taskforce bringing together the Government, local authorities, local communities, trade unions and the companies themselves to start planning the alternative skills training that is needed, the alternative investment, and other forms of logistics, including aviation and other employment opportunities. In that way, we can build confidence in the idea that we can decarbonise the aviation sector. At the moment, I do not think people have that confidence.

I make this plea: we are running out of time, and I do not want to keep doing this every year. This debate is like a hardy perennial. I do not want us to keep turning up and having this debate without seeing an awful lot of progress.