Heathrow Airport Expansion

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for outlining what residents across south-west London are saying together. This is an outdated plan, it needs to be updated and it does not account for what we now know about the need to reduce air pollution and the damage it is doing to our children’s lungs and our health.

Putney has suffered—and continues to suffer—from some of the worst levels of air pollution in the UK, so my constituents will be devastated if Heathrow gets the green light to expand. The Government themselves accept that it would have a significant negative effect on air quality, but have provided no evidence to show how Heathrow can both expand and comply with legal limits on air quality simultaneously. It just does not seem to add up. I therefore ask the Minister: what safeguards on air quality can he offer to Putney residents today?

The constant noise, often from very early in the morning, is a serious health issue for Putney residents. The current level is already too much, and I know people who have moved away from the area because of it. We cannot take any more. According to the European Environment Agency, noise pollution is the second largest environmental threat to health, causing 12,000 premature deaths a year. It is not just an inconvenience. It is not just Putney residents who are suffering, either. The No 3rd Runway Coalition has calculated that an expanded Heathrow could see more than 650,000 people fall within the Department for Transport’s “significantly affected” noise pollution category. That is very serious.

The Government’s night-time noise abatement objective for noise-designated airports is simply not good enough. It could provide some answers, but the objective downplays the serious negative health impacts caused by aircraft noise at night. The negative health impacts should have been made the central tenet of the objective, to reduce the harm caused, but there is no definition of the objective

“to limit and where possible reduce…noise”.

The objective is far too vague; it should have much clearer commitment to noise-reduction targets, with measurable outcomes, so that successive interventions by airports and airlines can be determined, and enforcement action against noise can be taken. Otherwise, Heathrow can do what it likes. I urge the Minister to put himself in the shoes of my constituents and offer more than just vague promises that will not be kept.

Finally, on transport, an expanded Heathrow will see an increase in daily trips of 175,000 people, as I said before, and an additional 43,000 car park spaces. The biggest car park in the world is now about 20,000 spaces; this will be 43,000 spaces. Who is going to meet the extra demand of the cost of this extra transport, congestion and pollution? The cost is estimated to be £5 billion to £15 billion; to date, Heathrow has committed to contributing only £1 billion. I ask the Minister: who is going to pay for the additional transport needs? Will it be taxpayers, such as my constituents, who will be the ones losing sleep, losing out by breathing more polluted air as a result of the expansion, and losing out because of the transport costs?

I shall end with an unequivocal message for the incoming new chief executive of Heathrow. There is no version of an expanded Heathrow that is compatible with climate targets. There is no version of an expanded Heathrow that does not reduce the quality of the lives of the 650,000 people in my constituency and beyond who live under the flightpath. There is no version of an expanded Heathrow that does not make the air that our children breathe even more polluted. I implore them to put the quality of life and the planet first, and the pockets of shareholders second. The new chief executive can expect any future plans to be met with the fiercest opposition from me and colleagues present.

I look forward to the rest of the debate and the Minister’s response. When he responds, I would like answers to the following questions. Will he commit to reviewing and amending the airport’s national policy statement, to ensure that it is compatible with the UK’s climate targets? Will he commit to publishing an overall strategy setting out how greenhouse gas emissions from aviation are to be managed and reduced over the coming decades? I urge the Minister: listen to the Government’s own climate targets, listen to the experts, listen to residents and listen to MPs. It is high time that the prospect of an expanded Heathrow took flight.

[Julie Elliott (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to bob so that we have an indication of who wants to speak. I suggest an informal four-minute limit. We should get everybody in if we stick to that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson]

The problem with airspace modern-isation, and the feedback I get from some of my community groups, is that the process is not transparent at all. We have no idea whether there will be benefits or a worsening of noise impacts on the local communities around Heathrow airport. That, combined with a third runway, spells a lot of trouble for our local communities.

Since the last general election, we have gone from one Prime Minister who threatened to lay down in front of the bulldozers at Heathrow—but who was tellingly missing for a critical vote in the House of Commons on Heathrow expansion—to another who actively supported expansion, although luckily her tenure was short lived. Our current Prime Minister has taken a leaf out of their book, talking tough on climate change and net zero while instructing his Chancellor to slash air passenger duty on domestic flights. I hope the Minister will clarify the Prime Minister’s position on the third runway project. In particular, as the hon. Member for Putney said, we need a review of the airports national policy statement; it is five years old, and the analysis is completely out of date, especially given the pandemic. We need a commitment to a national aviation strategy that addresses the sector as a whole, not just Heathrow.

To conclude, I speak on behalf of thousands of residents across Twickenham and south-west London, as well as London Liberal Democrat MPs, Richmond Council and members of the Greater London Assembly, when I say that we wholeheartedly and vehemently oppose a third runway at Heathrow airport. We will mobilise against any further plans. It is bad for the environment, bad for local communities, bad for our net zero targets and even potentially bad for our economy. It is time that the Government woke up, smelt the kerosene and opposed Heathrow expansion.

[Julie Elliott (in the Chair)]

That was more than six minutes. I did say four, informally; the limit will have to come down if people carry on like that. I call Jim Shannon.