Civil Aviation Bill

Kwasi Kwarteng Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman appreciates that aviation is vital not only to this country, but to the community he represents, and certainly to the community I represent. I therefore want to understand the drift of his comments. Is he saying that BAA should cease to operate and that Heathrow should shut down? What exactly is he proposing?

[John McDonnell]

I wish I hadn’t bothered now! We must not go back to that level of debate. The hon. Gentleman is one of the most intelligent new Members of the House, and I have even started to read his books. We must not get dragged down into such trite debates. We will meet separately and work together to develop a strategy to enhance the economic benefits of Heathrow for both our communities, as I did with his predecessor. The debate is not about whether to close Heathrow; it is about how to strike the right balance between enhancing the employment benefits and protecting the environment, and that is all that these amendments do. They simply say to the Secretary of State and the CAA, “You need to take into account the environmental implications and the effects on local communities.”

What has happened in Sipson has not been taken into account. BAA is still buying properties and letting them out on a short-term basis. The community is therefore continuously blighted. There is no compensation for the local businesses—the butcher, the hairdresser, the local post office and pub. Their loyal clientele is now gone, and some of those businesses are closing down while the others can no longer earn a living.

We have met BAA and I have met Colin Marshall. I pushed the boat out and took him for a coffee in central Hayes. I sought to see whether at least some support could be devised for those local businesses to tide them over while they build up the loyal base again as best they can. The answer was no. Only two weeks ago, the board rejected that request. What is happening now? It is offering a small element to try to tart up the front of the shops—that is all.

That is the sort of blight that has occurred as a result of the activities of BAA—well not BAA, but Ferrovial, the Spanish company founded by a fascist under Franco that has now exploited my community to maximise its profits and ship them abroad to prop up the construction corporation, which is now having financial trouble. So I welcome the opportunity that these amendments would provide to place that duty on the CAA and the Secretary of State to ensure that the impact on local communities is taken into account. If these duties were in place now, BAA would have to introduce a compensation scheme for those local businesses in Sipson; it would have to stop blighting the overall area; it would have to introduce a scheme to compensate my constituents for the noise pollution they are experiencing; and it would have to drive down its operations that are producing such air pollution in my area.

I finish by saying that some of my local schools around Heathrow have a box into which children put their pumps when they go into class in the morning. They do so because they suffer from such a range of respiratory conditions, particularly asthma. In Hillingdon, we now specifically train our teachers on how to deal with asthma attacks in class; this is as a result of the air pollution, particularly that from the airport itself. The amendments are some of the most significant in terms of attempting to affect the environmental impact of aviation in this country that we have seen for many a year, and they should be treated seriously. New clause 6 should be treated seriously, because the noise affects not only people’s enjoyment, but their health, as has been shown in recent research. I am pleased that new clause 6 is being put to the test in the House tonight. Even if the Government cannot accept the other amendments, I would welcome it if they would think again, as we go into this consultation on aviation overall, to see how we can build in better environmental protections for the local communities against the expansion and operations of aviation overall.