National Policy Statement: Airports

Debate between Justine Greening and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Transport Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), who made a very powerful speech.

I do not think that the proposal before the House will be seen as Parliament’s finest hour. It is very easy to dismiss the contributions of MPs perhaps who have communities overflown by Heathrow planes, but nearly 3 million Londoners will be affected if this expansion goes ahead. However, this is actually a vote that will affect all our communities in one way or another.

I think that the story of Heathrow is a story of broken promises, broken politics and broken economics. Those of us with communities around Heathrow know about Heathrow’s broken promises better than anyone else. There has been no action, despite promises, on night flights. The first flight over my community’s homes today was at 4.29 this morning. Under this proposal, we will actually end up with more early morning flights, not fewer. There has been no action on sticking even to existing rules on respite. I have been at public meetings at which the current Heathrow management has said that the previous promises made by previous managers should never have been made. Regional MPs who are banking on promises from Heathrow should bear that in mind when they sign up to this proposal today.

Of course, the ultimate broken promise was when the fifth terminal got planning permission. There was an express condition for local people of having no third runway, but look at where we are today. The bottom line is that any assurances in the development consent order are literally not worth the paper they are written on. Dare I say it, but with the greatest respect, Ministers will be long gone by the time those Members who are promised that their regional airports will get extra connections find out that those connections have not materialised. Such a “facts of life” explanation to them from a future Minister will be that their county council has to pay perhaps £10 million a year for their route to Heathrow. The problem, however, will be that no airline will want to provide it, because that is not a big enough subsidy, and doing so would be uneconomic. There have been broken promises in the past, and there are more to come for other MPs from Heathrow Airport Ltd.

What about broken politics? As we have heard, MPs are not being shown any kind of proper planning for a third runway. There will be 28 million extra passengers a year, but there is a promise from Heathrow that not a single extra car journey will happen. How is that going to be achieved? We do not have a plan for that. West London is illegally breaching air pollution limits, and there are similar problems in my own community. Expanding Heathrow makes that significantly worse. There is no plan at all.

No flight paths have been published today for communities to see. There is no plan on tackling carbon emissions. There is no plan on how to ring-fence domestic routes, as promised. Members might be interested to hear that the regional air connectivity fund set off with 11 new routes in 2016, but just two are still operating, and those are doing so at reduced frequency because they were not economic. There is no plan on how to have a freight hub in such a congested area. There is no assessment of how the resultant congestion charge that will become necessary will affect the west London economy.

Of most concern to people in this House is the fact that there has been no formal safety review—yet—even though the crash risk goes up by 60% in the most densely populated bit of the country, including my own community. When the Health and Safety Laboratory did its estimate of that crash risk, it asked DFT officials whether they wanted the population numbers impacted by the crash risk to be modelled, and they were told no, that was not necessary. Safety has been far from the top priority of the Department for Transport.

The process to create what little planning there is has been totally flawed. Consultations are never—I repeat, never—listened to. The Airports Commission got its numbers wrong. MPs have been given erroneous impressions of the impact on regional airports. The Government have had to reissue the draft NPS because its numbers were incorrect. Parliamentary questions have not been properly answered in the very short time MPs have had to ask them since the statement was first made. People simply get ignored in this process. They have to be either a big business or a big union before their voice counts, and that is totally unacceptable.

After all that, the DFT disagrees with its own analysis. It picks the project that it shows has a lower level of total benefits to passengers and the wider economy than Gatwick. It picks the project that is likely to need the biggest taxpayer subsidy. It picks the project that is the most risky by far. It picks the project that cannibalises the transport budget for the rest of the country. It picks the project that harms the growth of regional airports. That is why this is a story of broken economics. Even Heathrow knows that this is risky, which is why it has a poison-pill cost-recovery clause in the pre-legal contract, effectively outsourcing the economic risk to taxpayers.

Heathrow knows that there is a massive risk of the project going belly up. When that happens, it will be in a strong position to turn round and ask taxpayers to pay. When it turns out that the problem of air pollution is insurmountable, we will be asked to pay for the runway that it cannot use.

[Zac Goldsmith]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent, forensic speech. It has been said in the debate that without cross-party support we cannot hope to deliver an infrastructure project of this magnitude. Three of the four main parties in the House are not in favour of the scheme. Does she not think that that adds to the undeliverability of the project?

[Justine Greening]

Absolutely. This requires cross-party support, which is simply not there. Heathrow’s problem is that it is a hub airport in the wrong place, which means that it is expensive. Passenger charges are 40% more expensive than at rival European airports. That is why Leeds Bradford routes have been cut. It is not because there is not space—it already has space—but because those routes are simply uneconomic.

Airports National Policy Statement

Debate between Justine Greening and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Thursday 7th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Justine Greening]

My understanding, when I looked at the detail previously, was that the runway, because it is inevitably being shoehorned into a small site—even the Government response rules out a fourth runway—cannot actually take the biggest category planes. If that became the mode of transport of the future, they would not be able to use that third runway.

I have real concerns about this project. Heathrow’s plan for a third runway has been knocking around for 20-plus years, which tells us everything we need to know about it. It is a 20th century strategy that has never been reassessed, even though, as the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) pointed out, we are now in the 21st century. The Dreamliner point-to-point will be the aviation transport model of the future, combined with, dare I say it, the entry of low-cost carriers into that market, which will want to fly out of low-cost airports, not the most expensive airport in the world—airports that are close to people at a regional level, to provide connectivity on their doorstep, not an airport that is hundreds of miles from where people live, for example where I grew up just outside Sheffield in south Yorkshire. Why should people in those communities have to travel all the way to London to take advantage of the connections that in the 21st century our country ought to be able to have from other airports?

[Zac Goldsmith]

My right hon. Friend is making a typically brilliant, forensic speech. It only heaps on the frustrations for those of us who know that the argument is so clear. She and I have together held many public meetings on the issue, and we are often asked, as are colleagues in other parties, why it is that, given that the economic case between Heathrow and Gatwick is more or less the same and the connectivity benefits are more or less the same, the Government have chosen the option that is most polluting, most disruptive, most unpopular, most expensive, most legally complex and therefore hardest to deliver. The only answer I have ever been able to come up with, because there is no logical answer, is crony capitalism. Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that going with this absurd off-the-shelf solution that has been hanging around for decades and has been consistently discredited—it is more discredited today than it was 10 years ago—is doing huge harm to the credibility of this Government?

[Justine Greening]

Unfortunately, there is a risk that my hon. Friend is right. It is impossible not to note that the former Treasury Minister Lord Deighton was in charge of infrastructure, and then within about a year of leaving the Department he popped up at Heathrow Airport Ltd. Why, despite all the evidence, is it never recognised that this project is utterly flawed?

The Airports Commission’s work had to be updated by the Government because its passenger numbers were completely wrong. I went to see Sir Howard to tell him that when the Airports Commission published its interim report. It failed to address that issue in the final report, and then the DFT had to update the Gatwick passenger numbers. I have been to see DFT Ministers to tell them that, too.

The Airports Commission changed its definition of what constitutes a new destination after its interim report. In the interim report, it said that a new destination is just a new destination. The problem it had with that definition is that it showed that cheaper Gatwick would have loads more destinations when it expanded than very expensive Heathrow—what a surprise. Of course airlines would use Gatwick if it is so much cheaper, and of course they would try to codeshare. They might try the Lusaka route for Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, and then the Dar es Salaam route for the rest of the week, to see which one makes money. That is called good innovation and product development, but unfortunately that did not fit the predetermined decision to expand Heathrow. Therefore, by the end of the final Airports Commission report, the definition of connectivity and new destinations had changed. For a destination to be counted as a new destination, planes have to go there seven days a week, but that does not capture emerging market destinations, which inevitably start off as a service of perhaps a couple of days a week. That disadvantaged Gatwick from the word go, and I believe it was changed to push Heathrow’s weak case to the top of the list.

This polluting, expensive project does not just affect my local community. Members of Parliament representing northern and Scottish seats should be aware of the pressure it will put on transport infrastructure spend across the whole country. TfL says that it will cost an extra £10 billion to £15 billion. London does not want to spend that transport money on Heathrow airport expansion. We want it to lift the rest of the country, but it will be snaffled up for an infrastructure programme on our doorstep that we do not want.

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) mentioned public meetings. I have been in public meetings with Heathrow representatives. At the last one they came to, a couple of years ago, they were asked about promises they had made at previous public meetings and in previous expansion proposals but then broken. They were also asked about why they could not simply get on with banning night flights. They told us that those promises should never have been made. My community was staggered to hear a representative of Heathrow Airport Ltd say that they had been cavalier about their promises. They said, “Well, it was a different set of management then. Why should we be beholden to them? Managers come and go.”

That private sector company—I spent 15 years working in the private sector—understandably wants a growth plan, but let us be absolutely clear that it comes at the expense of everything and everyone else. It comes at the expense of regional airports, which would not have the number of international flights that they would have done. It comes at the expense of our environment and local communities. It comes at the expense of transport infrastructure investment, which would have been there not only for London but for the rest of the country. There are virtually no upsides.

The plan might also come at the expense of Heathrow’s viability. If we cannot meet the air pollution limits, if so many people complain about the noise that the flightpaths have to be reworked, as happened in Sydney, or if the Civil Aviation Authority concludes that the flightpath work makes it hard to fit so many more flights across London’s sky safely, and therefore we cannot have as many as we want, the company will have spent £18 billion on a third runway that it will be unable to use fully. That would be a problem for all of us but, as I have shown in recent days, it will land on taxpayers’ doorsteps.

I hope that the Minister will finally correct the record and say that the clause on cost recovery—the poison pill clause, as I call it—which Heathrow Airport Ltd put in its statement of principles, is not in the other statements of principles. Heathrow Hub tweeted that out very clearly today. It is beyond me why the Department for Transport would ever have allowed that clause to go into the statement of principles.

This is a 20th-century hub strategy in a 21st-century point-to-point world. It is clear that in a modern Britain the whole of the UK needs an airport strategy. There is nothing national about this national policy statement. It is an out-of-date strategy for an out-of-date airport. We need a proper 21st-century, point-to-point, regional airport-based strategy to really put connectivity on the doorstep of millions of people outside London, including in Scotland. That would really be an exciting prospect for connecting our island to the world. Why should businesspeople doing business in Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh have to fly to London and then travel up? It is time we have proper connectivity for people across the country, not just in London. Earlier this year we saw the very first direct flight from Sydney to London. I only hope that Ministers reflect on the fact that this is an old strategy in a new world. It is time to move into the new world and get a new strategy that will be successful in the 21st century.

Draft EU Budget 2011

Debate between Justine Greening and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

With the leave of the House, in the short time available I want to respond to the debate. First, may I express my gratitude to the many Members of this House who have expressed their support for what our Government are trying to do in tackling the remorseless rise in the EU budget? Hon. Members have played an essential role in scrutinising the budget and I thank them for their participation.

In particular, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), whose amendment we support, for his reasoned and impassioned comments on the challenging process to cut the Commission’s 2011 budget proposals. Our stance is that we want a cut—a real-terms cut—and as my hon. Friend’s amendment also points out, although we have challenged the budget at a Council level, we now need to put pressure on the European Parliament, too. His amendment does just that.

For the reasons that my hon. Friend set out, we cannot support amendment (b), tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell). We need to maximise the chance that we have as a Government of achieving our blocking minority, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone so eloquently set out, and amendment (b) would not help me to achieve that objective for the Government. In fact, it would risk preventing me from doing so.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Justine Greening]

I must make some progress, because we have very little time left.

In the wake of the worst financial crisis in living memory, and with the events that subsequently unfolded, we have said today in this House that we believe—rightly—that there is no justification for an increase in the EU’s annual budget of nearly 6%. In fact, as we have heard, countries across Europe are taking steps to ensure fiscal consolidation, and there is a strong case for the EU to follow suit—I know that the House can tell that I am taking that case to Europe directly and making it to those countries. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) pointed out how they are taking difficult decisions, and I made that exact point in French to the French Finance Minister.

At a time when all our European neighbours are looking to rein in public expenditure, the EU should not be looking to carry on with business as usual. It cannot be a case of carrying on regardless. That is why we voted against the Council’s first reading, which went in the right direction but did not go far enough—a view seemingly shared by everybody in this House apart from those on the Opposition Front Bench. They let us down by losing part of the rebate in 2005 and now in 2010 they are letting us down again by failing to support our efforts as a Government and as a coalition of parties on behalf of the British taxpayer to get value for money.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) asked how many MEPs will vote against this provision. I can reassure him that we are already talking to our partners in Europe and in our group—the European Conservatives and Reformists. I have spoken to my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), my good friend, and he assures me that he spoke yesterday to the Whip in charge of that group and all that group will be voting against a rise in the European Parliament when it comes before them. I urge those on the Opposition Front Bench to join us in that and to confirm that their Socialist group will do that. If they want to help the British taxpayer, they can start lobbying their own group in the European Parliament in the way that we have already successfully done.

Finally, we have spoken a lot tonight about concerns over the effectiveness of the EU spend and how well it is accounted for. I share those concerns. In fact, the last Government never used their vote when they took a look at the European audit accounts. We plan to be ready to use our vote if we see accounts that fail to meet the standards that we think they should. If we see accounts that contain points made by the European auditors that we believe the Parliament is not taking on board, we will be ready to use our vote in future to challenge the Commission in a way that the last Government never were.

I want to thank Members again for their valuable contributions. It has been incredibly useful for me to have this debate, particularly on the day before I travel to Brussels to defend our national interests and to get the best possible deal for the taxpayer.