Drones: Consultation Response

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

That is a serious point that we and the security services have been working on. We have been in conversation with airports about it for some considerable time, and two things are happening on that front. First, this country has moved to introduce a drone registration scheme, which will start later this year. Secondly, and more significantly, the European Aviation Safety Agency is moving towards a requirement, which I expect to be introduced within two to three years, for all drones to contain technology that allows them to be tracked and potentially to be stopped in critical areas.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, but I wonder whether it closes the gate after the horse has bolted. BALPA has been warning about the rise in irresponsible use of drones close to aircraft and airports for years. An incident of this sort was surely foreseeable, and I am unsure whether the Secretary of State was saying that he was satisfied that the airport had proper and adequate plans to respond to such a risk. However, changes to regulations will mean nothing if we are unable to stop, catch and prosecute offenders. If such a crime is perpetrated in the future, what assurances can he give the House that it could not lead to further such disruption to services?

[Chris Grayling]

On the hon. Lady’s point about BALPA, we legislated last summer to make certain activities around airports illegal. That included the height at which a drone can be flown and the restricted area around an airport within which a drone could not be flown. She asked what would happen in a future incident. Right now, we have protocols in place to allow us to deploy the same equipment as was used at Gatwick if there were to be a repeat attack. The airline industry and the airport industry are working intensively to try to assemble mechanisms that could prevent such an attack from happening again. The reality is that there is not, and has not been, an off-the-shelf solution. That is now being worked on—the technology is being assembled and systems are being integrated—but there is no simple, off-the-peg solution available right now, beyond the capability that we have in place to protect UK airports.

Train Operating Companies: Yorkshire

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) on securing this important and timely debate. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson). Nobody here needs reminding how terrible a year this has been for rail passengers in Yorkshire and across the north. Since the introduction of the timetable changes in May, we have seen what the Transport Committee rightly called a

“period of intensely inconvenient, costly and, on occasions… potentially dangerous disruption.”

Northern Rail, which serves Bradford on the Leeds-Bradford, Airedale and Wharfedale lines, has provided especially poor service. Since the new timetable was introduced, an average of 2.5% of trains have been cancelled, and 4.6% have operated in our region with fewer carriages than planned. On a typical day, about 100 to 200 passengers are left behind at stations in Yorkshire. They are stranded and are late for work and critical appointments that they need to get to. Unfortunately, despite the criticism that the train operating companies and the Department for Transport have come under since May, we have still not had a significant improvement in service levels. In fact, The Yorkshire Post found that rail punctuality is even worse now than it was in the immediate aftermath of the timetabling change. In November, only 62% of TransPennine Express services and 67% of Northern services arrived on time. Eight months on from the initial problems, it is shocking that the industry appears not to have got a grip on this issue. Passengers in Bradford and across Yorkshire have experienced almost a year of delays, cancellations and disrupted service. Despite that, fares continue to rise above inflation. It is simply not good enough; we deserve better.

As the Office of Rail and Road reported, the responsibility for the fiasco must be shared between the train operating companies, Network Rail and the Department for Transport. Each failed to prepare for the changes, and there was a clear lack of leadership at all levels.

It is also worth looking at the longer term causes of the crisis. There has been a persistent and longstanding underfunding of transport infrastructure in the north. As well as addressing the immediate problems with the performance of train operating companies, the Government must commit to revising the way that rail investment decisions are made. As a start, they should commit to working with Transport for the North to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail as a priority. Bradford, like other towns and cities across the north, urgently needs that high-speed rail link to meet growing demand and fulfil our economic potential. It is only by investing in rail infrastructure, planning for future timetable changes and ensuring that passenger interests are at the heart of our rail system that we will prevent a repeat of the unacceptable service we have seen in recent months.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend referred to the work of the Transport Committee, which looked at timetabling and rail infrastructure investment. Does she share my concern that, according to the figures for the national infrastructure and construction pipeline, planned spending on transport per capita in Yorkshire is set to be the lowest of all the regions? It was not only lower in the past, but will be lower in the future—in 2017-18 and 2020-21?

[Judith Cummins]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern, and we all share her outrage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Jones]

I am always available for colleagues and am happy to arrange meetings. I know that engineering work is going on around the Christmas period this year, and I shall be going to see it. That is affecting the possibility of running Boxing day trains this year; but let us look to the future. I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman.

We shall shortly run out of time for debate, and I want to spend a moment looking ahead. I gently remind colleagues who talk about a lack of investment in the north that although I have some sympathy as to investment, a little caution is required in taking snapshots of figures. The figures for London reflect Crossrail, but analysis of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority figures for planned central Government spending on transport infrastructure in the four-year period we are now in—from 2017 to 2020—shows that the northern regions will have a higher spend than the southern ones.

[Lilian Greenwood]

Will the Minister give way?

[Andrew Jones]

I am going to run out of time in a minute.

[Lilian Greenwood]

On that point, please.

[Andrew Jones]

My goodness—go on then.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I thank the Minister for giving way. The point is important, because he talks about the northern regions, but this debate is about Yorkshire. As I said earlier, Yorkshire and Humber is set to receive the lowest level of spending of any region, according to his figures, at £726 per head compared with £1,026 in London and £1,139 in the south-east. It is much less than the spending in the north-west and west midlands, which will alter the figures. Yorkshire and Humber is losing out.

[Andrew Jones]

That was a repetition of the point that the hon. Lady made earlier, so I do not need to address it.

I gently remind hon. Members that we had a zero-growth franchise, which was put in place by the Labour party, and we are playing catch-up on under-investment. Labour Members may say that Labour invested steadily when it was in government, but the evidence is the exact opposite. We had a zero-growth franchise and are catching up from it. Let me consider what that catch-up might look like.

Although 2018 is clearly a year that passengers in the north would wish to forget, we should not overlook the fact that train services in the region will be changing fundamentally. A significant amount of investment will bring passenger benefits. On the infrastructure side, the electrification between Manchester and Preston, which I mentioned earlier, was finally energised last week and the first test trains are now operational. [Interruption.] It will benefit services across the north. That is my point. Electric passenger services will be phased in during the spring. Across the region platform lengthening is under way. Of course I recognise that performance is not good enough, and that is why we have made a change in the control period 6 budgets and priorities. Under CP6 there will be a budget of £48 billion. That covers the period from 2019 to 2024. The priority was moving away from enhancements to catching up on core reliability—the maintenance of the network.

[Andrew Jones]

If I get time I shall come on to the trans-Pennine upgrades, but the core purpose of the CP6 investment, which is a record from any Government in British history, is to increase reliability and punctuality.

The key thing that passengers will notice is new trains. New rolling stock will come in on Northern, TransPennine Express and London North Eastern Railway networks in the coming months, including the removal of Pacers by the end of 2019. By this time next year the vast majority of the 500 brand new carriages committed by Northern and TPE will have been delivered, and the remainder will have been completely refurbished. TPE will have introduced its new Nova trains on the north trans-Pennine route and all the Pacers will be gone from Northern. There will be more services to add to those already delivered, especially at weekends; there will also be later last trains in the evenings and earlier first trains on Sundays. Elsewhere, LNER will begin introducing its new Azuma trains next year.

The trans-Pennine upgrade is a huge Government initiative—a £2.9 billion upgrade covering York to Leeds and Manchester. It is one third of the expected rail upgrade investment in the next control period, so it is a significant point. By the way, freight has been mentioned, and it is of course still under our consideration for northern trans-Pennine.

[Lilian Greenwood]

Will the Minister give way?

[Andrew Jones]

No, because I am running out of time. I have 50 seconds left.

We have a trans-Pennine upgrade that is bigger than anything ever considered or delivered by Labour. We are delivering it for the north in a way that has never been considered before.

Northern Powerhouse Rail, which some have called Crossrail for the north, is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The scheme is being developed for the north by the north—by Transport for the North—and the Government have given a budget to help it to do that. Crossrail in London was mentioned as if money were piling into it. The money that has gone into Crossrail was, of course, a loan. Transport for London needed that loan to help it deliver the project. It was not a grant.

Of course, it is fair to say that rail services across Yorkshire and the north as a whole have not been good enough. That is entirely understood, but I want to leave colleagues in no doubt that we recognise the importance of the Yorkshire rail network and that steps are being taken to improve it. More than that, I hope that in a year’s time passengers will be able to experience the change as investment comes on stream, and the benefits to match our vision for a 21st century railway in Yorkshire.

Govia: Moorgate to Welwyn Garden City Railway

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Grant Shapps (Welwyn Hatfield) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of Govia on the Moorgate to Welwyn Garden City railway line.

It is a pleasure to start this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss an issue that, although I suspect it will not fill this second Chamber, is none the less of enormous concern to my constituents and thousands, perhaps even millions, of people along the line from Moorgate to Welwyn Garden City. I should say that, although the title of the debate is the train service from Moorgate to Welwyn Garden City, there is also an impact from other services that run along the same line, specifically and in particular the King’s Cross service toward Cambridge and through my constituency.

Unfortunately, although the problems are in no small part to do with changes that were made, rather infamously, to the timetabling in May this year, that is not the whole story. I see that I first raised my concerns about the quality of this service all the way back in December 2016, when I called for a much improved service from Govia. It is most certainly the case, however, that since the May timetable change services have gone from pretty bad to disastrously awful. I will take a few moments to highlight some of the things that have gone wrong.

It cannot be right, in a timetable change intended to add 6,000 additional carriages to the train network and the services enjoyed by everybody, that in my constituency the service provided went backwards, in terms of not just the number of trains, but the speed of those trains. In a café that I am sure is frequented by many of my constituents, I came across a poster from the 1930s about coming to live in Welwyn Garden City—the second and, I should say, the best garden city in the country—boasting that people can get from Welwyn Garden City to King’s Cross in just 23 minutes. Here we are in 2018, about to go into 2019, and we can no longer make the journey at that kind of speed. It now takes seven minutes longer to get into London from that station, Welwyn Garden City. The speed of service is certainly a problem, but the problem is not just the speed of service.

We also now have fewer trains, particularly off peak, such that some stations—for example Welham Green and Brookmans Park, stations that I use regularly—have gone from having three trains an hour off peak to only two. The service has become less frequent. In other places in my constituency, particularly Welwyn North and particularly at the weekend, that drops back to one train an hour—a completely unacceptable level of service.

The problem is not only slower trains and those missing trains, but a poorer service all round, particularly from the larger stations, Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City, which are suffering. I have been inundated—and I mean inundated—with correspondence from my constituents, who are upset and concerned. At the height of the timetabling problems in the summer, some even had to give up their jobs as a result of this appalling level of service. While I accept that the Minister— who by the way I consider entirely blameless in all this, since he has only been in the job for a few weeks—will get to his feet and reassure me that things are improving, I must say that my patience has already given way and I have been looking for a suitable alternative.

Fortunately, there is an example of an alternative that could be put in place to resolve many of the problems. I have been in continuous discussion with Transport for London, which is keen to take over the service. I know that TfL has been in contact with the Minister’s predecessor, if not the Minister as yet, and certainly with the Secretary of State for discussion, and has written a detailed note in which it points out that if it were to run the service from Moorgate to Welwyn Garden City as a London Overground service, it could offer us better integration into the railway network, faster trains, more trains, cleaner platforms and a service integrated across the entire information system—in other words, when we are looking at information for the reliability of services, we are looking at the entire TfL system in one go.

I think that would make a significant impact on the quality and level of services to my constituency. It is of course the case that to get to my constituency, those services must run through several other stations along the line that are outside my patch, so I have been in active conversation with and writing to Members of Parliament across parties and right down the track from Moorgate to Welwyn Garden City, to seek their opinions. It is probably true to say that the concerns that have been raised in the past have been about where the Transport for London services would run outside London boroughs. That actually occurs in only two constituencies—that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden) and mine. The concern is effectively that TfL would be in charge of services over which our constituents would have no democratic control.

Would it be the case that TfL running that line would somehow remove from my constituents the ability to hold both the franchiser and the franchisee—the organising department, in the case of TfL—to account? Not in my view. We are more than happy to take on the small risk that, because we are not Greater London taxpayers, the Mayor’s office might attempt to totally ignore our views. I simply do not accept that that would be the case, and I bring evidence.

London Overground lines run by TfL and Arriva Rail London already go into my county of Hertfordshire and elsewhere. I have taken the time and trouble to speak to Members for and residents of those areas, and none have said that they somehow feel ignored because they happen to be just outside London. Many report a quite dramatic increase in service quality as a result of the lines switching to TfL. I have some figures that back that up.

The lines that TfL has taken over and changed to London Overground lines have seen an increased frequency of trains, from 400 per day in 2007 to 1,500 per day 10 years later. Ridership has increased by 650%, delays have decreased by 30% and customer satisfaction has increased by 18%. In other words, I am more than convinced that switching the distinct Moorgate to Welwyn Garden City line to London Overground would increase customer satisfaction, improve the quality of our services and make our services far more integrated.

However, there is yet another reason why I believe that the Moorgate to Welwyn Garden City line should be run by London Overground—the heritage of the line itself. As I am sure only railway geeks will be aware, a section of the line actually operated as part of the London Underground until the 1970s. That section was from Moorgate to, I think, Drayton Park, where observers will find that the lights on the Govia Great Northern trains still flicker as they switch from the different electrics that were used on the London Underground. We already have the heritage of being a London Underground line. I argue that it is high time to convert the whole line to a London Overground line, which has only been available since the 2007 innovation.

The case is convincing indeed, but the question is how we get to that situation. I have met the deputy Mayor, the Secretary of State and the former Rail Minister; indeed, I have met every former Rail Minister from before the former Rail Minister. The Secretary of State has already said that this part of the Govia franchise needs splitting out, which, as hon. Members will imagine, I am very keen to see happen. In any case, the franchise is up for renewal in 2021.

I do not think that there is any principled objection to TfL managing that line, which I argue should be along the same basis as the other London Overground lines, with TfL procuring a service from Arriva Rail London. However, in order for that to happen, I need ministerial action almost immediately, and it is for that reason in particular that I secured the debate. As the Minister will know from his limited time in the job, these things do not happen overnight; the procurement process takes a couple of years.

Specifically, TfL now needs research and data that only Govia can provide in order to fully model this replacement service, with a deadline of February 2019. In other words, we have only a couple of months for that information to be passed across. How does that happen, in practical terms? It is straightforward: the Secretary of State needs to request that Govia shares that information.

At the risk of boring the Minister with details of woe and appalling service and the heartbreak of the problems over the summer, I put on the record my thanks to the Department for Transport for responding to my calls for additional compensation for commuters who were unable to travel during that period of enormous disruption. It was always the case, particularly for Southern, that compensation was offered if services completely fell apart, and in this case I think a month’s free travel was offered to season ticket holders.

However, the problem for my constituents was that many travel slightly less frequently. They do not know what time of day they might travel—perhaps after dropping the kids at school—and some days they might work at home. I came to a deal, after being very insistent with the Secretary of State in a meeting very early during the disruption post May, that additional compensation should apply not only to those who had season tickets but to everybody else who used the line on a regular basis. We agreed in the end that commuters who could demonstrate that they travelled on three days or more per week should be compensated.

I have to say that there was a bit of an internal, behind-the-scenes battle involving the Treasury. A couple of times it said it could not do it, which I said was unacceptable. I am pleased and grateful that the Minister’s Department ensured that compensation was offered. Constituents now regularly come up to me and tell me that they have had back £200 or £300 of compensation in addition to the delay repay scheme, which is far too fiddly to use and which I know the Minister has plans for.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a compelling case on behalf of his constituents for looking at the management of the service. Does he agree with the Transport Committee that season ticket holders and others who were so badly affected by the timetable changes on Great Northern should receive a discount on their 2019 season tickets, in order to protect them from the fare increase due in January? That might provide some more immediate relief than the longer term changes that he seeks.

[Grant Shapps]

Yes, I agree. Commuters on our line from Moorgate to Welwyn Garden City have suffered unbelievable disruption. It would be right for the Minister and the Department to look at how they could compensate those commuters, which could perhaps be with a discount on the fare increase that has been mentioned for the new year.

I support that call, although I accept at the same time that, while being given £200 or £300 does not in any way compensate for the appalling disruption, it is at least a recognition of it, since it comes on top of the delay repay scheme. I put on the record that commuters should not be put off if they have already gone online and claimed their £3 back for a late train using the delay repay scheme. I am assured by Govia that they can now also claim compensation, whether they are a season ticket holder or not, using whatever means of proof they can provide. That can be a bank or credit card statement or tickets. I know some people will have bought carnets rather than tickets. Govia is prepared to be very flexible.

I will mention one other matter before I sit down. I have for a long time called for Oyster cards to be accepted along the distance of the line. I think it is currently accepted only from Moorgate to Hadley Wood, which means that ticketing is a complicated business. A person has to get an overground ticket. Then, at some point when they come off the train—at Finsbury Park or Highbury & Islington—they have to switch to paying by Oyster. The position at the moment is very unsatisfactory, so I am really delighted, on behalf of my constituents, that the Government and the Minister have announced that Oyster will come into play next year—I understand that that will be at some point in the autumn—meaning that the Oyster network will extend right out to Welwyn Garden City, along the length of that line. I would like to push it further—of course everyone will say that—because Welwyn North is also in my constituency and I must make reference to that. However, I will be very pleased to see this innovation. It will help tremendously: it will speed up ticketing times at the station dramatically. The innovation of not just Oyster but contactless payment—the ability to use phones and credit cards—makes travelling a lot easier.

Therefore I really have two specific requests: one simple and one on which I hope that the Minister will equally be able to reassure me, either today or very soon—ideally before Christmas. It will be his Christmas present to my commuters and, I suspect, commuters right the way along the line if he can provide clarification on the first point, and a yes on the second. The clarification is on the date on which the Oyster card will actually be introduced in our area. I very much hope that the Minister has available the date of its introduction next year. If not, I just seek clarification that it will certainly be introduced next year.

If my second point is not resolved as we go into the new year, the Minister will find me, rather annoyingly, on his shoulders about it. I am talking about the provision of data from Govia to TfL so that we can start the process of matching a London Qverground service to the line and not miss the 2021 deadline. I am reliably informed that that must be done by the end of February next year to meet the deadline. I invite the Minister to make my constituents’ Christmas.

Leaving the EU: Aviation Sector

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane]

We are doing that now at my own airport. I will be going to the inaugural flight from Manchester to Mumbai next week. We now have direct connectivity to Beijing and Hong Kong, and shortly we will announce direct connectivity to Shanghai as well. Airports are increasingly going from point to point, and that seems to be the way of the future.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I wanted to come in at that point, because my hon. Friend is talking specifically about those connections between Manchester airport and China. I want to touch on air freight, because Manchester has seen a £300 million increase in air freight exports to China in the last two years. To have that thriving air freight sector requires further work to be done. Does he agree that the UK needs to be doing better, given that we are outside the top 10 on the air trade facilitation index and outside the top 20 for electronic freight processing?

[Mike Kane]

The Manchester Airports Group includes East Midlands airport, which is close to my hon. Friend’s constituency, and Stansted. East Midlands is a huge hub for freight leaving the UK, and has huge expansion potential. I am concerned that the Government are not ready to use the opportunity, as we leave the EU, to prepare the aviation sector for the next, crucial five to 10 years.

The welcome that we give to those who visit us is also part and parcel of creating a truly international Britain after Brexit. It is how we tell the world that we are open for business and how we encourage tourists to come to see us time and time again.

Lots of questions still need answering, and there is a risk that questions are not being answered in good time. I am sure we were all concerned by the recent National Audit Office report on our state of preparedness for a no-deal scenario. Airports across the country have repeatedly reported problems of under-resourcing, queues at the border and a total dissatisfaction with the targets that Border Force works to. The Government have continued to cut funding for Border Force, while passenger numbers have grown, so can we really expect a proper service at our borders? I hope the Minister will tell us what the Government are doing to work with airports and Border Force to put in place a realistic, long-term plan to ensure our borders are adequately resourced into the future.

Finally, as I said, the aviation sector is a huge employer in its own right, and millions more are employed in related industries, such as the visitor economy and the logistics sector, which my hon. Friend just mentioned. Across the country, tens of millions of EU nationals make a valuable contribution to those industries. Although I am hopeful that arrangements will be put in place to ensure that people can remain employed in those sectors, we need to think seriously about what happens post Brexit. We must ensure we have the skills and training to support and grow the aviation sector in the years ahead. We have the opportunity to get this right through the industrial strategy process to ensure that Britain is known around the globe for delivering world-class service and hospitality, as well as for having a slick, efficient transport system.

As I have outlined, aviation is an essential component of an outward-looking Britain. It must continue to play a pivotal role in our economy and our social and cultural future, but the question is, how will we harness that potential? How will we use the sector to drive growth through enhanced trade and investment in tourism? How, on a more basic level, will we ensure that consumers continue to enjoy the choices they enjoy today? If we are serious about creating a balanced and truly international Britain, we must prioritise this sector now, during and after our exit from the European Union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. It is not often that I get called first, so I appreciate the opportunity. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) on securing the debate, and I thank him for the cohesive way in which he put forward his point of view. His speech was constructive, and he looked forward with some positivity to our exit from the EU on 29 March next year.

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on this matter. In my constituency, I have Bombardier, which is involved in the production of planes, and Belfast City airport is not that far away, so domestic connectivity is very important to us. The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) referred to air freight. We have some of the largest air freight connections in the domestic market through Belfast International airport. It is surprising how much air freight goes through the airports of the United Kingdom, and Northern Ireland in particular.

I hope I will be able to bring a bit more positivity to the debate. Of course, the ongoing Brexit negotiations are complex and difficult, but leaving the EU was never going to be quick and simple. If only that were the case. It will not come as a surprise to hon. Members that I think Brexit is a fantastic opportunity, including for our aviation sector, and I hope to expand on that point of view.

Although hon. Members have different points of view about Brexit, we are united by the need to have a thriving aviation sector in the UK after we leave the EU. I believe that it will thrive. The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East put forward that view very eloquently, and I support that.

The UK has the second largest aerospace sector in the world, behind that of the United States, and the largest in Europe. We must not underestimate the importance of our aviation sector to the EU or the importance of the EU’s sector to the UK. We both need each other. I often say in this House that we are better together. In this case, we are parting, but there is no reason why we should not be able to work together.

It is in both our interests to secure the best deal to allow the liberalisation of air transport to continue. The UK is currently a member of the European common aviation area, which allows registered airlines to have a base in one member state and operate on a cabotage basis—to use the terminology that they use—in other member states. It is an arrangement that works well.

The latest European Council negotiating guidelines aim to maintain connectivity between the UK and the EU through an air transport agreement. The Minister will respond to this debate in some detail, and we look forward to his comments. Naturally, at this stage it is unclear what that agreement might be. It might involve an open skies arrangement like the one the UK currently has with the US, or it might involve negotiating a single bilateral agreement with the EU as a whole, if member states give it a mandate to negotiate on their behalf.

Given the value of the industry to the United Kingdom and the EU, I am confident that we will get a good deal for our aviation sector and for future air travel between the UK and the EU. We need each other to succeed in this sector. London remains the world’s best connected and most attractive destination.

Although it is a while off, and there are hurdles to overcome, the third runway at Heathrow should be an even greater draw to London. It will improve our connectivity across Europe and with the rest of the world. My party and I fully support the third runway at Heathrow, and we would like to see it happen sooner rather than later.

In 2016, the chief executive of the Civil Aviation Authority said that the UK is a key player in aviation, and he was not wrong. We have the third best developed aviation network in the world, just behind the US and China. The figures show why the UK is such a vital player in the sector. It is not surprising that some airlines are already applying for licences to operate in the UK in the event of no deal. I suggest that that shows the confidence that people outside the United Kingdom have in the UK’s aviation sector. Although I am confident that we will secure a good deal—it has always been my intention that we will, and hopefully the Prime Minister will be successful in that—it is good that airlines are preparing for any eventuality. It is also welcome that, despite people’s warnings, airlines have every intention of continuing to fly to and from the UK. Life will not end when we leave the EU on 29 March. Indeed, it will get better. That has got to be good.

As well as liberalisation, we should also consider our membership of the European Aviation Safety Agency, which develops common safety and environmental rules at the European level. The Government have explicitly stated that they want to negotiate some sort of ongoing membership of EASA after Brexit, and there is widespread agreement that continued membership would benefit both the UK and the EU.

In a speech in 2016, Andrew Haines highlighted that the UK and France provide two thirds of the rule-making input on European safety regulation, and that together we undertake close to 90% of EASA’s outsourced activities. Again, that indicates EASA’s importance to the United Kingdom. Mr Haines set out four principles for the UK to consider during the Brexit negotiations. The third principle, which relates to competition, could present a real opportunity for the UK post Brexit. It relates to airline ownership rules, which are currently very outdated. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that. If the UK relaxed the ownership arrangements that UK-registered airlines currently have to comply with, that could present an opportunity to attract new equity from non-EU investors, which could improve choice and competitiveness for consumers.

Haines also referred to the EU slot regime, which requires that 50% of new slots are allocated to new competitors at a particular airport. I believe, however, that restricting such a large proportion to new entrants has been a barrier to strong competition, and changing our rules could be one advantage of leaving. That shows a lack of future planning from the EU, which could be to our benefit. The UK will have the opportunity to develop a new and more competitive slot regime—there are enormous possibilities.

As negotiations continue, there will be difficulties and we must plan for every eventuality, but it is also important to see the potential opportunities that Brexit could bring to the industry, especially regarding competition, which can drive prices down and keep air fares low. We should also consider the way that the industry has responded to date; according to ADS Group’s 2017 figures, the sector directly employed 120,000 people, with a further 118,000 employed indirectly—enormous employment figures. In 2017, the sector had a turnover of £31.8 billion, which was up 39% in five years. If a sector is growing, and probably outgrowing every other sector, it is the aviation sector of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

While productivity growth in the general economy between 2010 and 2016 was just 3%, it was 19% in the aviation industry. Not only that, but so far, the UK's decision to leave the EU appears to have had no financial impact on the industry, which is perhaps another positive indication of where we are. In fact, according to ADS Group’s 2017 figures, 73% of companies were planning to increase investment—an indication of their confidence in the future. In Northern Ireland, Bombardier secured a deal in May this year with the Latvian carrier airBaltic, for up to 60 Belfast-made jets, which is another indication of how well our aviation sector is doing and how it benefits all regions of the United Kingdom.

Of course, airlines are concerned and, given the uncertainty, that is not surprising. It is important to consider the value of the sector to the UK and to the EU; to realise that Brexit can provide positive change and opportunity for the UK; and to realise that little has changed since the referendum. Moreover, aerospace is an important part of the Government’s industrial strategy: a number of initiatives have been set up to boost research and investment, and to guarantee exports. The Aerospace Growth Partnership and the Aerospace Technology Institute have both been set up in recent years as a collaboration between Government and the industry, to build on past success and look forward to the future success.

[Lilian Greenwood]

Like the hon. Gentleman, I am very concerned about the implications of leaving the European Union for our aerospace sector. The chief executive of Airbus said that there will be “severe negative consequences” to withdrawing from the European Union, and that they will be particularly severe if there is a hard or no-deal Brexit. Does he agree that it is essential that the Government address those issues to protect high-skilled and high-paid engineering jobs in our aerospace industry?

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady, but for the record, I do not share her concerns about leaving the EU in relation to the aviation sector. Maybe I did not make that clear enough, so let me make it quite clear: I believe that we should look forward to a very positive future. That has been demonstrated in my own constituency, where Bombardier have secured a fairly substantial and significant contract, and by aviation authorities and the airlines, which have indicated their confidence in the direction of the country over the last five years. It has been a fact that we are going to leave the EU for a year and a half of that time, and that has not slowed the industry. Government’s central theme of support, focus and strategy for the aviation sector indicates to me that good times are just around the corner. Hopefully, after 29 March 2019, the good times will come back, and those who have doubts about that just have to look at how the aviation sector is growing in anticipation. I put on record that I hope that the Prime Minister secures a deal for the UK, but in the event that she does not, the aviation authorities are well aware of their options in that scenario.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) on this timely debate. It is only a shame that there are not more Members here to listen to the good contributions being made. Let me put on the record that before being elected, I was proud to work in aviation for ABTA for many years, working with large tour operators, airlines and airports. I am also vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on general aviation, which looks after airfields and small airports very proudly.

Brexit is a testing time for all parts of our economy. Whether hon. Members think Brexit is the best thing since sliced bread or a national disaster, we can all agree that the uncertainty created by Brexit is bad for business and bad for our country. For aviation, in particular, uncertainty is eating away at confidence in the investment and business decisions that are vital to its continued success in the UK. In that spirit, I hope my remarks will create some more clarity on Brexit and aviation.

If we are to mitigate the impacts of Brexit—or maximise the opportunities, depending on the side of the debate—we must look at the detail of aviation. How does it work, how are people employed, how are planes maintained—we just heard about that—and flown, and how will business investment continue? That requires an understanding of the detail of international agreements, but that involves a level of detail I have not really seen since I was elected to this place. Parliament is unaccustomed to dealing with that level of detail at scale, so I welcome this debate as a chance to get stuck in.

Sadly, my time with the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on the Transport Committee has just come to an end. When I left, I said I would continue to talk about transport and aviation, and I regard this speech as continuing that promise. It is worth talking about aviation in the UK because it is a global success story. We are really good at it, and we need to maintain that success. We have the largest aviation sector in the EU and the third largest in the world after the United States and China. We have direct connections to more than 370 international destinations, and more than 284 million passengers passed through a UK airport in 2017—a record number. Whether people are flying for business, for leisure or to visit friends and relatives, they all make a contribution to our economy. We must recognise that we get benefit from people not only flying in but flying out.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend made a great contribution to the Transport Committee. He will remember that the Committee was told repeatedly by the Transport Secretary that he is optimistic about a deal with the European Union on air transport. He told Parliament in November 2016 that he was

“absolutely in no doubt that we would secure in good time and effectively the agreements that our aviation sector needs”.—[Official Report, 23 November 2016; Vol. 617, c. 953.]

We are now five months away from the exit, and we still do not know what it means for our access to the European common aviation area or international agreements such as the open skies to the US; how it will affect our nine freedoms to fly and air traffic control, including our participation in the Single European Sky regime; and whether the UK will remain part of the UK-Ireland functional airspace block. Do those questions not need answering now?

M26 Closures

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

Indeed; I am getting to that exact point, and I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman should make it.

When plans are developed for any area, local residents and businesses are expected to have their say, but that has not happened here. No information was given on why the closures were happening, other than for “central reservation works”. This phrase could realistically mean anything, and does not indicate the scale of what is proposed. I checked with a few people, including local county councillor, Harry Rayner—a more assiduous representative of the community it would be hard to find—but I could not find anyone who knew about the central reservation works. Earlier this year, I had heard that the idea of using the M26 to store HGVs was being talked about as a vague possibility, which is why I wrote to the Secretary of State on 4 April to raise my concern about the wider effect that this level of disruption would have on the local strategic road network. I shall quote from the letter that the Minister has no doubt seen, but that others in the House may care to hear:

“I would be grateful if I could meet urgently with your team planning this to talk about the impact closing the M26 for a sustained period would have on the local road network and the villages which rely on it.”

This is hardly a surprising turn of phrase, but as no meeting was forthcoming, I wrote to Highways England about works on the strategic road network in Kent. The M26 was not mentioned in its reply.

As recently as three weeks ago, when I asked Highways England if there were any plans to use the M26 in the case of a no-deal Brexit, I was told that there were not, so I was satisfied that there were no plans to subject communities in the area to even more traffic nightmares. For months, I have told the people I represent that this would not happen, following assurances that I had received. I now feel that we have all been let down. Why was there no consultation? The Department for Transport and Highways England are publicly funded, and they should be held accountable for their decisions. To fail to consult the communities most affected by the scale of the proposal is unacceptable. The very least they can do is to apologise.

I am calling for a fundamental rethink of this idea, which would almost cut communities off and cause chaos across the whole area, particularly as there are alternatives outside Kent; I would like the Minister and his Department to explore these. I very much hope that he will have detail on this by the time of his meeting with me, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks and our councils next week. We need to explore how we keep lorries at their source rather than allowing them to park in Kent—neither their start point nor, indeed, their end destination. There is technology available and emerging that would enable this to happen. The M26 is not a lorry park and does not have to be used in this way.

Since the closures were announced two weeks ago, a lot of people have linked the proposal to the vote to leave the European Union, but Kent has actually been looking for a solution since Operation Stack plagued the county in 2015, well before the referendum, let alone the result. The impact of closing the M26 is severe, regardless of the cause. Take policing, for example. Our excellent police and crime commissioner, Matthew Scott, has said that pretty much every traffic officer in the county would be needed to patrol a closed motorway. This would create a huge hole in Kent police’s resources, with neighbourhoods nervous about losing their officers to cover for their colleagues. It is no wonder that Matthew thinks this is an unworkable idea.

The views of local people and representatives like Matthew matter because their local knowledge can provide real insight and solutions. For example, has anyone thought what happens to HGVs travelling north on the A21, or south from the Dartford crossing on the M25? There are no slip roads on to the M26, so how would they join the queue? Do they rat-run through villages like Shipbourne to get to the junction? Sat-navs—which, as we all know, have caused many issues for lorry drivers and for people living on small roads in past years—will no doubt take lorries through small lanes that are unsuitable. Do they travel the wrong way on the M25, or go along the A25 through six air quality management areas in 18 miles? These 18 miles along the M25 and M26 are the longest stretch of motorway in England without a junction. The A25 runs parallel the whole way—a single carriageway almost everywhere, even through villages such as Borough Green that suffer the most with air quality and congestion. Borough Green cannot cope with more traffic, particularly large HGVs. Its air quality will suffer even more. It is a perfect example of why the problem needs to be stopped at source, rather than parking HGVs in Kent that then cannot proceed on to Europe.

Could using the M26 as a lorry park be mitigated? Possibly, but I want to know what avenues the Department has explored. Can lorries be kept at source? Will my hon. Friend the Minister look at utilising lorry-holding facilities before the Dartford crossing so that Kent does not have to bear the whole of this load? If not, how can the Government provide appropriate mitigations for communities like Borough Green and Platt on the A25? That question is perhaps the hardest to answer. It requires significant investment. Take the air quality issue. How can the Minister and colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs provide funds and suitable equipment to properly measure the impact? How can they make sure that Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council can enforce the statutory limits so that they are kept within? What additional powers will be granted? These are all questions that we do not yet know the answers to.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) joins me in the comments that I now make. Currently, when there is a problem on the M26, the impact stretches further afield, much further south and east of the motorway. For example, the A227 is the only realistic route in or out of Wrotham and runs over the M26. Congestion there leaves the village almost cut off, with a single track road to the west the only option. The conurbation of Wrotham—a wonderful and very beautiful village—and its neighbours Borough Green, Platt, Ightham and others understandably feels that it has been getting rough treatment recently. Its infrastructure is declining, when connectivity matters more than ever.

I want to try to make the lives of people living and working in these beautiful villages better, not worse, but traffic congestion and poor air quality remain problematic, and rail services are often unreliable and slow. I do not need to rehash the issues surrounding the Southeastern timetable changes, but added to the delayed start to Thameslink services to the City of London and compounded by the threat of a lorry park, villages could be cut off.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that this seems to imply that the Department for Transport simply is not sufficiently well prepared for what might come about on 29 March next year? Is he aware that the Comptroller and Auditor General expressed concerns about the Department’s preparedness last week to the Brexit Committee, when he said that the Department

“has convinced itself that it is less risky than it actually is”?

Is it not time that the Department got on top of this issue, to avoid the very problems for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents that he has set out so eloquently?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I thank the hon. Lady, the Chair of the Transport Committee, and I should also pay tribute to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier). They have both taken up this question with great diligence. If she will forgive me, I am going to focus on the issue particularly relating to Kent, which is not only about Brexit. In fact, this issue is not specifically Brexit-related. It is, as we know, related to Stack, which happened before the referendum and would no doubt have arisen anyway should there have been any issues with crossing the channel. I will focus on the M26 rather than on wider issues, which she not only suggests but has done very capably through her Committee work.

It is worth considering the other implications. There is a planned 3,000-home new development in the area as part of the draft Tonbridge and Malling local plan, which is out for consultation at the moment and to which I urge those who wish to comment to respond as soon as possible. Should that be approved, it will put additional strain on local road and rail networks. Do an extra 3,000 families need hundreds of additional vehicles thundering down country lanes every day? I do not think so, and I would be surprised if others did.

Clarity, consistency and communication matter, especially for businesses. Take, for example, ALS Airport Travel in West Malling. Every day, its drivers make countless journeys from the Malling area to Gatwick. The combination of closing the M26 and the existing smart motorway work on the M20 will have a hugely detrimental impact on the business.

We have no faith in Highways England to manage two neighbouring works concurrently. It cannot even get the M20 scheme right at the moment. Lower speed limits, narrow lanes and full road closures are already forcing traffic on to local roads. Accidents are on the rise. We see the effect every day. Highways England’s woeful lack of communication across any scheme sees closure dates change frequently and residents unsure of what it will deliver for them. It has happened already with the scoping works on the M26 last week. The motorway opened two days before it was planned to, which is great, but Highways England failed to tell anyone that it had happened. The Department and Highways England really must start talking to the people who are most affected by these plans.

Closing the M26 to hold lorries will impact public transport, too. In a rural area, where many people travel long distances to school, even the slightest delay in the morning affects the network for the rest of the day. Has the Department spoken, for example, to local bus operators about that? How will it ensure that children get to school on time? More pressingly, should the education of students in west Kent be impacted day in, day out, because the area is at a standstill due to HGVs preferring not to stop in the county and blocking our major roads?

One possibility that I would like to see implemented if this proposal proceeds is to relax the rules of the traffic commissioner to allow bus operators and Kent County Council to modify and change bus routes quickly. Some people, including me, have argued that 70 days’ notice is too long already, but the Government have an obligation to ensure that public transport still works and to put into place changes that mean children can get to school on time and as stress-free as possible.

This is just as important for any other motorist, so can the HGV parking ban on Kent County Council roads, piloted in Ashford, be extended county-wide, and can the penalty be increased, with permission to clamp on the first offence as well? Without that, our roads will not have a chance of being free and available for local traffic to use. Sadly, clamping matters in this circumstance. Can roadworks on local roads be limited, too? I would like powers to be granted to Kent County Council to enable it to charge more than currently permitted under the lane rental scheme to limit works causing delays on the roads. This would require departmental approval and, I understand, a statutory instrument, but it is precisely the sort of change that needs to happen.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I could talk more about the further mitigations possible under part 4 of schedule 7 to the Traffic Management Act 2004, but I trust you and the Minister already understand my concern. There is an argument that, wherever disruption might occur, these ideas should be implemented. This summer, a sinkhole developed on the A26 in Maidstone, closing the road for months, and the whole of mid and west Kent suffered as a result. The highway network in our corner of Kent is not resilient, and this needs to be considered as well.

At yesterday’s Public Accounts Committee sitting, the permanent secretary of the Department admitted that the works on the M26 would cost £30 million to £35 million and include hard shoulder improvements as well as the central reservation works. Can the local community also benefit from these improvements? Why not pursue a simpler solution and stop HGVs entering Kent in the first place? Why should it be the responsibility of the garden of England to turn into the parking lot of England? Most HGVs do not start their journeys in our county, so why not keep them at source, as they do in France?

I want to touch on a social issue that I know concerns my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks. The M26 is largely rural and it is far from any services. If lorries are parked here, how will drivers be fed and provided with water and sanitation facilities, and where will they sleep at night? Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council and Sevenoaks District Council have clear statutory responsibilities under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, so why have they not been informed either? Both councils do a brilliant job across all services, and they are excellently run, with extremely capable leaders and officers. I am pleased that the Minister will meet us on Tuesday, and it is clear than any proposal on the M26 would require abnormally high levels of Government support for our local councils.

I want to help the Minister and his Department to find a solution to this problem. I welcome the wonderful benefits that the freight industry brings, but there must be a better solution than turning major roads in the county into a lorry park. I look forward to his response and to working with him and local councils in finding such solutions. Before I sit down, I must extend the apologies of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks and my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford, who express their support, but sadly could not be in the Chamber this afternoon.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I am slightly puzzled, because the harmonisation of laws would imply backing away from devolution. The reality is that in a devolved settlement, as we have with Scotland, there will always be some differences. Nevertheless, we and the Scottish Government must always work together in the interests of the whole United Kingdom and of producers throughout the whole United Kingdom.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Air transport is obviously vital for Scottish food producers, as it is for businesses and people throughout the UK. In October 2016, the Secretary of State told the Transport Committee that future aviation arrangements would form part of the Brexit negotiations

“in the next few months”

and would be handled by the Department for Exiting the European Union. A year later, with no evidence of progress, the Secretary of State assured the Committee that there was no danger of planes being grounded by a no-deal Brexit. A year on, it is clear from the Government’s own technical notices that that is a real possibility. Who in the Government is handling this matter? What progress has been made? What confidence can people have when booking flights? How can we reach any conclusion other than that this matter has been badly mishandled?

[Chris Grayling]

I am sorry, but the hon. Lady has got this completely wrong. The Government have said or done nothing to imply that planes will be grounded and there will be no flights after we leave the European Union. I give the House the categorical assurance that flights are going to continue. Interestingly, those in the aviation industry who have been most vociferous about the risk of planes being grounded are now selling tickets for next summer and expanding the number of routes from the United Kingdom to the European Union next summer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

Transport for the North has determined that passengers on the most severely affected routes, principally on Northern services, will get four weeks’ cash compensation, as my hon. Friend rightly said, and those on the less severely affected routes, which happen to be in Yorkshire, will receive one week’s cash compensation. That is a matter for Transport for the North.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

The National Audit Office revealed that the Minister’s Department has allowed Govia Thameslink Railway to buy out its liabilities for poor performance through to September 2018. The Public Accounts Committee has concluded that the threat to strip GTR of its franchise is not a credible one. What can he do to protect passengers from a continuation of the current appalling performance if the 15 July interim timetable fails to bring stability?

[Joseph Johnson]

Rail operating companies will be held responsible for that portion of performance for which they are responsible and accountable, and that is now under way. The Secretary of State has set in train a hard review of GTR, and at the end of that hard review, all appropriate options will be on the table and available to the Secretary of State and to the whole Government.

National Policy Statement: Airports

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Fast, reliable and affordable transport has the power to make a real difference to people’s lives. That is why I am a passionate believer in the transformative power of improving transport. If Britain is to have any chance of succeeding in a post-Brexit world, improved connectivity, both outside our islands and around them, is key. Among the most pressing of the challenges facing our transport system is the need for additional airport capacity in the south-east of England. Failure to address that challenge will mean less choice, more disruption and higher air fares for UK passengers. Along with the other members of the Transport Committee, I agree that building an additional runway at Heathrow is, in principle, the right answer to our aviation capacity challenge, provided there are safeguards and mitigations to protect passengers and affected communities.

The Secretary of State has already set out the economic benefits that could be achieved with expansion. The case is compelling, but have the Government been as candid with MPs and the public as this decision deserves, acknowledging not just the benefits but the costs and risks? Ensuring that the NPS properly reflects the weight of evidence in the supporting documents was the first objective of the Transport Committee’s report. Our Committee’s detailed analysis of the Department for Transport’s forecasts revealed that future passenger growth, and the destination and route offering at the UK level, are broadly similar over the longer term to those of the other schemes. That is not reflected in the final NPS.

At the current costs anticipated for the north-west runway scheme, there is a very real possibility that domestic routes from Heathrow will not be commercially viable. Ministers have told us that they intend to use public service obligations to guarantee regional connections, yet their own 2013 guidance on the use of PSOs states:

“Government considers it unlikely that PSOs would be appropriate for new routes from the regions to London.”

What has changed since 2013 to make a policy that was ruled out then viable today? Even if PSOs could be used, it is not clear what level of subsidy would be needed and whether those subsidies would be provided in perpetuity.

[Justine Greening]

That is an important point, and it has not yet been raised—PSOs will require subsidies. For example, in Cornwall, Cornish taxpayers are subsidising the PSO, but those flights are to Gatwick. If Heathrow has a PSO, it will be way more expensive for taxpayers, and they are unaware of that.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I hope the Minister addresses the issues around PSOs in his closing remarks.

The analysis supporting the decision is extensive; what is lacking is a fair and transparent representation of the information in the NPS to the House. For example, the Committee’s scrutiny revealed that the Department’s methods of presentation hid compelling noise modelling showing that more than 300,000 people are estimated to be newly affected by significant noise annoyance due to an expanded Heathrow. The total number of people in the noise annoyance footprint is estimated to be more than 1.15 million. Our investigations also indicated that those estimates are likely to be toward the lower end of the scale of potential impacts.

[Chris Grayling]

I hear what the hon. Lady says, but will she confirm that I made that clear in my statement to the House on the publication of the draft NPS? I also indicated that we expected that that would be a temporary process while technology changed, and that those figures assumed no mitigation measures, whereas we intend significant mitigation measures, including, for example, the night flight ban.

[Lilian Greenwood]

The Secretary of State has clarified that issue. I simply want to ensure that Members have the full range of information in front of them before they vote this evening.

There are many instances where the assumptions underpinning the analysis misrepresented what was likely to occur in practice. For example, the Department has assumed that all the capacity will be filled within two years of an opening date in 2026, yet Heathrow’s own business plan expects phased expansion over five to 10 years. Earlier this month, the Secretary of State told the House:

“We have accepted the recommendations…and will follow faithfully the Select Committee’s wishes to make sure that its recommendations are properly addressed at each stage of the process.”—[Official Report, 5 June 2018; Vol. 642, c. 174.]

These are fine words but, disappointingly, they are not matched with actions, and the NPS has not been updated.

The second objective of our Committee’s scrutiny was to ensure that the NPS provided suitable safeguards for passengers and affected communities. We know that the Government have been struggling to deal with air quality in London for years. The Committee made two recommendations on changing the wording of the NPS to provide air quality safeguards. The Government did not accept these recommendations. On noise, we wanted to ensure that there were clear safeguards for communities, including guaranteed respite. The Government did not accept most of our recommendations to safeguard communities from noise impacts. On surface access, we recommended a condition of approval to ensure that the scheme would not result in more airport-related traffic on London’s roads. The Government did not accept that recommendation.

[Chris Grayling]

Will the hon. Lady confirm that if there is a point of disagreement between us, it is simply that we accepted the Committee’s recommendations but also said that the appropriate moment to insert them would be at the development consent order stage, rather than the NPS stage? Will she confirm that we have very clearly said that we will insert those at the DCO stage?

[Lilian Greenwood]

I confirm that that is the Secretary of State’s view, and I will come on to my concerns about that approach in due course.

On protections for communities, we recommended that compensation be independently assessed and reviewed once the full impacts were known. The Government did not accept this recommendation. On protection for passengers, we recommended a condition of approval in the NPS that passenger charges be held flat in real terms unless not doing so was in their interests. The Government did not accept this recommendation.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lilian Greenwood]

No. I am conscious of time.

The Committee did not make a specific recommendation on carbon emissions, but the NPS scheme must be compatible with our climate change obligations. As others have already said, this remains very uncertain. The Government have told us that our recommendations will be dealt with during the development consent order process, in consultation with communities and other stakeholders, but our recommendations were made on the basis that there were not enough safeguards in the DCO process to ensure that high-level policy objectives on noise, air quality, surface access, regional connectivity and costs could be achieved.

The third objective of the Committee’s recommendations was to limit the risk of legal challenge, yet not providing fundamentally important information on possible environmental, health and community impacts seems to be a point on which a judicial review may be focused. Baroness Sugg told us recently that making the meaningful changes to the NPS we sought would add a six to nine-month delay to the process. Given the potential scale of the impacts of this scheme and the decades it has taken to get to this point, a few extra months may seem an appropriate price to pay, especially given the Government’s self-imposed delays since the Airports Commission reported in July 2015.

This is a vital decision about our national infrastructure. Additional runway capacity must be delivered. I do not doubt the Government’s intent, but rather their ability to deliver. Some of my Select Committee colleagues will accept the Government’s assurances, but I intend to be guided by the evidence. I have no doubt that the Government intended their air quality plans to ensure compliance with legal standards, but three times the courts rejected them. I am certain that the Department for Transport intended to electrify 850 miles of railway and to introduce new rail timetables successfully but, as we know, the reality has sometimes fallen short of the ambition. This NPS leaves too many risks: the risk of a successful legal challenge; the risk of harming communities; the risk of rising charges; and the risk of a failure to deliver new domestic connections. If a substantial proportion of the Committee’s recommendations had been incorporated, I would have felt able to vote for the motion. I wish that I could do so but, without them, I am afraid that I cannot.

--- Later in debate ---

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

Of course I rise to defend my constituents, and I think everyone in this House would expect me to do so. Given the idea of Windsor castle being triple glazed and of 7 million visitors to Windsor being overwhelmed by the noise of aircraft, I can do nothing but object to the proposal. It would require the demolition of hundreds of houses. The noise levels experienced across the entire Windsor constituency and in Bracknell Forest, Woking and everywhere else in the area are already dreadful and would get much worse. We know about the pollution levels and I am pretty sure that everyone present will have experienced the congestion on the M4. It is a very bad idea to expand Heathrow.

People would expect me, as the MP for Windsor, to say these things, and they would expect me to be a nimby but, frankly, with my background in business and my having studied economics, my major objection to the third runway at Heathrow is to do with the national interest and national economics.

I have to ask a few questions. First, why do we believe we will have more flights to the regions? I have been an MP for 13 years, and I know how easy it is just to read the briefings and go with the flow, but the Government’s own data and analysis say that every single region of the United Kingdom will have fewer connections than they would have had if Heathrow were not expanded.

[Lilian Greenwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Adam Afriyie]

I will not give way because of the time available.

Every single region, particularly the south-east, will have fewer flights. The second area where it is easy to have some fairly lazy thinking is the hub-and-spoke concept. The facts have clearly changed, and it is now about point-to-point travel. Nobody wants to get on an aircraft and then change to get somewhere else. Everybody wants to fly direct. The aircraft that are being purchased today by every single airline are point-to-point aircraft. Ninety-seven per cent. of all aircraft ordered are for point-to-point travel.

Aircraft can get from London to Sydney direct. Why are we showing our age? Why are we showing this lazy thinking, that we need a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem? I know it is difficult, because Heathrow has a huge amount of propaganda. Heathrow has a lot to gain. It paid £1 billion in dividends to shareholders while making only a £500 million profit. Of course it is in Heathrow’s interest to try to get this decision in its favour and to try to slow the process so it can continue to drive up landing fees.

Lastly, it upsets me as a Conservative to sit on these Benches and see us all nodding our heads and saying that we should go ahead and create the most expensive airport in the world at which to land. Why on earth would we commit to such a project?

Airports National Policy Statement

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Third Report of the Transport Committee, Airports National Policy Statement, HC 548.

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I begin by thanking the other members of the Select Committee on Transport for their work in quite a long and involved inquiry. I am very pleased to see my hon. Friends the Members for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) and for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) here today.

If deciding to build an additional runway at Heathrow airport was easy, it would have been done long before now. It is not, which is why successive Governments, over decades, have dodged and deferred the decision. One reason why the issue is so difficult is that it will affect the lives of many thousands of people—those living in the communities close to the airport, those who work at the airport, and passengers and businesses that rely on the connections that it provides. Our report and much of the debate about the decision focus on the big picture, the economic growth that a new runway will facilitate, the billions of pounds of investment required to build it, the jobs and apprenticeships created and the number of households affected by new noise or air pollution. It is right that we recognise the importance of the decision for the whole of the UK. For Britain to succeed, improved connectivity, both outside our islands and around them, is key.

However, we should also recognise that this is about individuals, be they the family whose house would be demolished to make way for the new runway, the passenger who wants an affordable flight to visit their family abroad or the small business owner who needs to get their goods to markets around the globe. Our decision will change their lives. We must be mindful of the consequences and, where there are adverse impacts, as we know there will be, we must do all we can to mitigate or compensate for them.

Let me explain the process and the Select Committee’s approach to our role in it. The airports national policy statement is Parliament’s opportunity to vote on the Government’s policy to provide additional runway capacity in south-east England through the construction of a north-west runway at Heathrow airport. If approved, the final airports NPS provides the framework and criteria against which a development consent application will be judged.

The airports NPS is different from other transport-related national policy statements considered by our predecessors. It not only identifies a specific site but details a specific scheme. It applies only to a north-west runway at Heathrow airport; it is not applicable to any other scheme to build an additional runway. If for any reason that scheme fails, through legal or financial difficulties, no other scheme—not even an alternative design on the site at Heathrow airport—can easily fill the void under this NPS.

Under the Planning Act 2008, our Committee was designated to carry out parliamentary scrutiny of the Government’s proposal. We did not try to put ourselves in the Government’s shoes and consider whether we would have chosen the same option; rather, we scrutinised the decision that they had made. It could be said that we marked their homework. In conducting our inquiry, we had four overarching objectives: to ensure that the Government had adequately explained their case for runway expansion and for choosing the north-west runway scheme at Heathrow; to ensure that the evidence supporting the NPS was robust and was accurately reflected in the final document; to ensure that the conditions of approval in the NPS provided enough safeguards for affected communities and passengers; and to ensure that any risks of a successful legal challenge were minimised.

The Government outlined their case for additional runway capacity in south-east England in chapter 2 of the NPS, and we broadly agreed with the Government’s position. Heathrow airport is already full, and other London airports are operating at capacity during peak times. All major airports in south-east England are expected to be full by the mid-2030s, with four out of five full by the mid-2020s. Doing nothing has consequences. If we fail to tackle the demand for extra runway capacity, that will result in less choice, more disruption and higher airfares for passengers. The UK’s competitiveness may already have been damaged as other European hub airports have expanded their global networks. Capacity constraints do not impact just on passengers; trade opportunities through air freight may be forgone, and inward investment may be diverted to other European countries with better connectivity.

The Government outlined their case for additional runway capacity at Heathrow through a north-west runway in chapter 3 of the NPS. Maintaining the UK’s hub status in Europe is the Government’s overriding objective in developing their preference. Heathrow is the UK’s only hub airport and it is one of Europe’s leading hubs. Some 78 million passengers travelled through Heathrow last year. It is unrivalled in the UK for density of airlines, connections and transfer passengers. That makes it possible to sustain routes that would simply not be viable as point-to-point links. The clear preference of the airlines is to expand at Heathrow, although not at any cost. The connectivity benefits would be greater and realised sooner from the north-west runway scheme than from the other schemes considered—the one involving Gatwick airport and the one for an extended northern runway at Heathrow—although it should be noted that the extent and timing of the benefits of the north-west runway scheme are contingent on its being delivered on time, on budget and to the capacity assumed.

Air freight is also critical to the UK economy. Freight capacity is the other major comparative advantage that the north-west runway scheme offers, compared with the alternatives. Heathrow is already the UK’s busiest port by value, handling £360 million-worth of goods each day and accounting for 30% of the UK’s non-EU exports.

Those are the arguments that have persuaded many businesses and many of our constituents across the country that Heathrow expansion is needed, and that have led our Committee both to conclude that the Government are right to pursue development at Heathrow and to accept the arguments that they have made in favour of their preferred scheme.

We recommended that the planning process moved to the next stage by approving the airports NPS, provided—this is important—that the concerns identified in our report were addressed by the Government in the final NPS that they laid before Parliament. Our conclusion could be described as “Yes, but”. My contribution today will spend more time on the “but” than the “yes”, primarily because I am conscious that few colleagues will have escaped Heathrow’s very effective campaign setting out the benefits of expansion. Anyone who walked through the tube station here at Westminster will have seen posters showing some of the arguments.

[Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making an important point. Of course, all those Heathrow teams will be getting massive bonuses personally if they are able to persuade this place to vote for the NPS.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I cannot comment on the pay and benefits for staff who work at Heathrow. Undoubtedly, both Heathrow and Gatwick airport have sought to influence the decision made by hon. Members here today. The Select Committee’s role is important in ensuring that people have independent and objective information that enables them to make a decision.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a good case, and I look forward to hearing the “buts”. It is correct that for a brief moment Gatwick was in the frame, but for many years before that, Gatwick was simply a satellite of Heathrow and controlled and silenced by it. Now that the Government have been so partial and so partisan, again the only name in the frame is Heathrow, so my hon. Friend is making exactly the right point, which is that Heathrow is the dominant voice, but does she agree that it is perhaps much more so than she has said so far?

[Lilian Greenwood]

I think Heathrow is the dominant voice, but in part that is because it is our only hub airport. Many of the arguments that the Government have put forward are predicated on the importance of that hub status, although I will address some of the other points, which I am sure my hon. Friend will want to hear.

Right hon. and hon. Members will have seen the Department for Transport’s latest summary, which rehearses some of these arguments with some very nice graphics, so I need not say more about it than that. Our inquiry sought to get into the detail of the scheme and how valid concerns about the Government’s approach might be addressed in a final NPS before Parliament was asked to approve it. I confess that when we sought this debate, we did not anticipate that the Government would have already laid their final version of the airports NPS, which happened two days ago. I commend them for their speedy actions. I welcome the Secretary of State’s remarks in the Chamber on Tuesday in which he thanked the Committee for the scrutiny we completed. I also recognised the shadow Secretary of State’s acknowledgement that we “left no stone unturned” in our report.

Conducting detailed scrutiny is absolutely critical, and I am immensely proud of the detailed work that our Committee completed within the time available. The Heathrow plans have been more than 20 years in the making. The implications of Parliament’s decision will last even longer. It is important that we get this right.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend and her colleagues on the Transport Committee for their work. Given the depth and rigour that her Committee went into on the detailed elements of the case, does she agree that the Secretary of State has come up with a remarkably brief response in a very short time and could not possibly have had the time to answer all the detailed questions that her Committee’s report quite rightly put?

[Lilian Greenwood]

The Secretary of State responded within approximately two months to our report. We are looking at the detail of the final report and what has made its way into the final NPS.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

For many of us who are still to decide which side of the argument to take, the devil will be in the detail. Does my hon. Friend agree that those who are impacted the most should be the ones compensated the most in terms of the mitigation? I allude in particular to my Slough constituency, where the third runway will be built. The mitigation, in terms not only of air and noise but of training and skills colleges, and other logistics and jobs facilities, should be sited more in Slough than in other constituencies.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is a great advocate for his constituency and rightly so. It is important that, if the proposal goes ahead, the impact on local communities is carefully considered. I am also mindful, however, that this scheme is intended to benefit the whole of the UK. It is vital that, if it goes ahead, the whole of the UK is seen to benefit, including from the opportunities for jobs and apprenticeships that it would bring.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I also pay serious tribute to the hon. Lady for having conducted the first proper scrutiny by her Select Committee into the Heathrow case. As we saw, as that scrutiny was applied, the Heathrow case evaporated. A number of people on the Committee who began in favour of Heathrow expansion are now implacably opposed to it, because of the scrutiny that she applied as Chair of that Committee. I am grateful to her for doing that. Was there a single independent voice to give evidence—other than Heathrow —who believed that it is possible to reconcile Heathrow expansion with air quality limits, which we are legally obliged to adhere to?

[Lilian Greenwood]

The hon. Gentleman is requiring me to remember all the evidence we heard over many months from many voices. Air quality is undoubtedly one of the key challenges that the Government face in bringing forward these proposals. That is why it formed one of the most important areas in our report; we wanted to have some certainty that the UK could indeed meet its air quality targets at the same time as addressing the need for people to travel by air.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Lilian Greenwood]

I will have to continue at some point, but yes.

[Daniel Zeichner]

The element of risk in this whole process is an important point. The Committee identified many risks. In the event of a delay or the project not going forward, would it not make sense for the Government to consider using alternative provision where there is capacity at other airports, such as Gatwick and Stansted? There is a real risk with this project and we cannot end up in a situation in which nothing happens.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend made a fantastic contribution to the work of the Committee in developing this report. He is right. There are two issues in relation to his point. First, the NPS is scheme-specific, so if for any reason it does not go ahead, that limits the Government’s options. Having said that, even if it does go ahead in the best possible scenario, it would not be open until 2026. That is why one of our recommendations —I will come to this later—is about the better use we make of all our regional airports and what needs to be put in place.

We welcome the overall tone of the Government’s response to our report, which was published on Tuesday. It is clear that they have, in principle, taken on board much of our report and clearly acknowledged what we were trying to achieve. The Committee still needs to do more detailed analysis of the Government’s response—we want to be sure that the substance matches the rhetoric. I do not believe that accepting our recommendations in principle is enough. Hon. Members need to decide whether we can just rely on the planning process to provide these necessary safeguards and guarantees, to protect communities and passengers. The parliamentary approval stage of the planning process is designed specifically to set the criteria for approval. It should then be up to Heathrow to meet those requirements.

I want to take this opportunity to explain why the Committee made our recommendations. First, we wanted to ensure that the supporting evidence was robust and accurately reflected in the NPS. We wanted to ensure that MPs are well informed. It is impossible to know with absolute certainty what the exact impacts of this scheme will be but, given the political gravity of the issue, we wanted to ensure that MPs were fully informed of the potential scale of costs and benefits.

Although we accepted the Government’s high-level arguments in favour of their preferred scheme, our investigations revealed that the north-west runway’s advantage over the other schemes considered was not perhaps as wide as was set out. In some cases, the comparative advantage to not expanding at all was small. The strategic case for the north-west runway rests primarily on it delivering more routes to a greater number of destinations, and at greater frequencies, than the other schemes. Our detailed analysis of the Department for Transport’s forecasts revealed that the future passenger growth, destination and route offering at the UK level is broadly similar over the longer term, compared with the other schemes. Most of the passenger growth generated from the north-west runway scheme will be accounted for by outbound leisure passengers and transfer passengers, who offer fewer direct economic benefits to the UK economy. The Government’s own forecasts show that business passenger growth is negligible compared with no expansion.

The anticipated growth in connections to Heathrow is a key reason why the north-west runway scheme has garnered considerable support from regions away from London and the south-east, but there is a concern that the Government do not have the policy levers to guarantee that a proportion of the new slots created will be allocated to domestic routes into Heathrow. Given the costs currently anticipated for the north-west runway scheme, there is a possibility that domestic routes from Heathrow would not be commercially viable. It should also be acknowledged that an expanded Heathrow would abstract growth from non-London regions, with over 160,000 fewer direct international flights each year compared with a no-expansion scenario. This is a nationally significant infrastructure project. It must work for the whole nation and not just for London.

[Justine Greening]

Is the hon. Lady’s point that allowing Heathrow to expand will mean fewer flights for airports outside of the south-east?

[Lilian Greenwood]

Our analysis shows that there would be fewer direct international flights from other airports if Heathrow expansion goes ahead, because there is a clear demand from airlines for slots at Heathrow—a demand that cannot be met because it is currently operating at capacity.

The benefits and costs in the economic case for the north-west runway are finely balanced, and we uncovered some shortcomings in the way the Department for Transport had completed its analysis. Although there are wider economic benefits that are not captured as part of the case, there are also environmental and social costs that are not monetised.

More significantly, the case rests on the scheme being delivered by 2026, and at capacity by 2028. We heard evidence of factors that might prevent delivery of the scheme. We also heard that the Department’s assumption that capacity would be filled within two years of opening was implausible and inconsistent with Heathrow’s own plans. In the Minister’s reply, I would be grateful if he confirmed whether the Government updated the airport’s NPS to reflect the relatively small difference in strategic and economic benefits of the schemes considered, and whether they have fully corrected the shortcomings we identified in how they completed their appraisal.

According to the Government’s analysis, the financial and delivery risks of the north-west runway are the highest of the schemes considered. One of the main delivery risks that our inquiry identified was airspace change. The airspace change required to facilitate the north-west runway is significant, and although it may be deliverable from a technical or safety point of view, the reality is that such change has proved extremely difficult to implement because of its impact on populations beneath routes.

The Civil Aviation Authority is of the view that more substantive reform is required if the change needed to accompany the north-west runway can be delivered in full. We therefore recommended that the Government outline their intended policy approach to delivering airspace change for their preferred scheme as a priority. Is the Minister confident that the airspace change required for the scheme can be delivered in full? What specific reforms do the Government intend to implement to ensure that occurs?

The environmental and community impacts of the north-west runway are by far the greatest of the schemes considered. Our Committee was concerned that the numbers presented by the Government in the draft NPS and the supporting documents did not present the full picture of those possible impacts. Arguably, the future noise impacts present the greatest area of uncertainty for the scheme. Although modern planes are undoubtedly quieter, noise is a key concern for communities, and high exposure to noise can have a serious impact on people’s health.

The Department’s approach to presenting noise exposure nets out the winners and losers from noise changes, but the reality is that community acceptability is more often shaped by the losers who experience new or increased noise. The evidence shows that more than 300,000 people could be newly affected by significant noise annoyance from an expanded Heathrow.

The analysis presented also uses a higher threshold for noise annoyance than is consistent with the Department’s guidance. Using the lower threshold takes the total number of people in the noise annoyance footprint to more than 1.15 million. Our investigation found that the Department’s estimates are likely to be towards the lower end of the scale of potential impacts, and called for greater clarity in presentation.

Noise has real effects on people’s daily lives. It is essential that MPs are fully informed about the scale of the impacts from the scheme when reaching their decisions. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain why the Department has not included those numbers in the latest iteration of its sustainability appraisal.

During our inquiry, a great deal of attention focused on the surface access needs of the airport now and in the future. We commend the Government for expressing policy support for the southern and western rail access, as per recommendation seven in our report. Those schemes are important to achieve modal shift for the two-runway airport and are critical if the north-west runway scheme is to be delivered without having a perverse knock-on effect on other parts of the surface access network.

However, the eventual impact of a north-west runway on road congestion and rail capacity is still highly uncertain, because no comprehensive surface access assessment was published alongside the draft NPS to understand what it would be. We welcome the Government’s publication of figures on the impact that an expanded Heathrow would have in terms of the number of cars on the road, although they have still not published a full assessment. Those figures show that by 2030, if unmitigated, there will be a 33% increase in the number of vehicles on the road with a new runway. Can the Minister explain what surface access schemes are included when modelling those figures, and whether the Department has assessed the surface access schemes that are required to ensure that there will be no more cars on the road, as pledged by Heathrow airport?

[Mr Dhesi]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Does she agree that the Minister needs to acknowledge that the western rail link to Heathrow is not incumbent on whether we have a third runway? That scheme needs to happen forthwith regardless. More than 20% of the UK population will be within one interchange of our busiest airport. The Government committed to the scheme six years ago, but it has still not seen the light of day. It is imperative, and I hope that she and the Minister will confirm that.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend has been a real campaigner for western rail access, and he was well represented on the Committee by other hon. Members who share that view, including my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport.

Our Committee also called for the sections of the draft NPS that deal with air quality to be revised before the final NPS was tabled. The air quality impact on nearby populations had been estimated only within the immediate 2 km vicinity of Heathrow airport, and had not been updated since 2015. The population impact assessments still do not appear to be updated in the final version of the NPS, and I would be grateful if the Minister could explain why.

It will be for hon. Members to judge whether the balance of potential benefits and costs of the proposed north-west runway is sufficient to approve the NPS. If they are to make an informed judgment, they need the full suite of facts to be on the table. That is why we recommended that the Government comprehensively update the evidence base and the final version of the NPS to accurately reflect the balance of evidence.

We also wanted to ensure that the conditions of approval in the NPS provided enough safeguards for the environment and for affected communities. Air quality was recently described by four Select Committees as a “national health emergency”. It is therefore vital to demonstrate that airport expansion is compatible with tackling that emergency. The NPS states that the north-west runway scheme will be legally compliant on opening, but it does not say that the UK’s legal air quality obligations are at a high risk of being breached between 2026 and 2029.

Legal air quality compliance for the scheme rests on national air quality measures being implemented in full. Three consecutive successful legal challenges do not instil a great deal of confidence in the Government’s ability to deal with air quality effectively. We recommended that the Government adopt a more stringent interpretation of legal compliance in the NPS to protect against the inherent uncertainty of modelling future air quality compliance. Are the Government confident that their interpretation of air quality compliance will be the same as that of the courts, given that there will almost certainly be a judicial review?

On noise impacts, we recommended that the Government define an acceptable noise limit that reflects a maximum acceptable number of people newly exposed to noise due to the north-west runway scheme. The Government have not done so, and I hope the Minister will explain how he can be confident that the noise impacts of the scheme can be effectively mitigated without clear targets in place. What safeguards will there be for communities that are concerned about the potential scale of noise impacts?

[Zac Goldsmith]

Noise is a key issue for my local constituents. Does the hon. Lady share my concern that hundreds of thousands of people will be brought under the Heathrow noise footprint who have no idea that that will happen, because neither the Government nor Heathrow have been honest with the communities that will be affected? The flight paths have not been published and we have no idea who will be affected. We simply know that many hundreds of thousands of people will be affected and that they will not be given a chance to make their views known before the decision is taken. Does that not strike her as fundamentally immoral, unethical and wrong?

[Lilian Greenwood]

The hon. Gentleman is of course concerned about the impact on his constituents. I think that he is right, and the Committee identified that only one set of flightpaths was used in the NPS. Of course it is important that people understand who might be affected and how they might be affected before we reach a decision. That was precisely why we asked for more evidence to be presented on the scale of noise impacts.

On surface access, we recommended that a condition be included in the NPS that ensures approval can be granted only if the target for no more airport-related traffic can be met. Heathrow has ambitious targets for modal shift, as it aims to increase the proportion of passengers and staff travelling to the airport by public transport. While there is a plan for significant investment in London’s transport network, whether that will be sufficient to cope with the extra demand remains uncertain. Without the condition recommended by our Committee, what incentive or enforcement mechanism will be in place to ensure that Heathrow meets its pledge?

[Andy Slaughter]

Unlike the Government, Transport for London has done a lot of work on this issue. The substantial improvements to public transport—Crossrail and the upgrade of the Piccadilly line—will be made to deal with additional pressures in London that are already priced in. Not only is there this huge bill for £10 billion to £15 billion that ultimately the public will have to pick up, but London is losing out by losing that additional capacity, and neither of those absolutely vital factors appear to have been taken into account by the Government; I hope that they have been by the Committee.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is right that the Committee will look closely at what the surface access needs are. It is fair to say that in the evidence we have heard there was considerable disagreement between the Government and Heathrow Ltd, and Transport for London. However, it is clear that if additional investment is needed the airport would be required to make a contribution to cover the costs of those improvements that would impact on their passengers and workers.

Our support was premised on suitable mitigations being in place to offset impacts on local communities affected by noise, health and social impacts. Now is the time to set the criteria and the limits of environmental impacts that Parliament deems necessary for the scheme to go ahead. That will enable the planning directorate to do its job and ensure that Heathrow’s detailed plans can be judged against the criteria set by Parliament.

Our Committee also wanted to ensure that the conditions of approval in the NPS provided enough safeguards for passengers. People will rightly say that this is a privately funded scheme, but investors expect a return on their capital. It is airlines and their passengers who will pay for that return and ultimately bear the financial risk of this scheme. The CAA has done some preliminary work on the scheme’s ability to be financed, but questions remain over whether it can be paid for without increasing charges for passengers. Heathrow is already the most expensive airport in the world, and the evidence we received suggests that if airport charges were to increase significantly the benefits of expansion would be diluted. Fewer passengers would use the airport and Heathrow’s competitiveness as a hub, particularly in comparison with its European counterparts, would be undermined.

The Secretary of State expressed his desire to keep charges flat, but desire is not enough; we recommend that it be translated into a firm condition of approval in the NPS. Every single airline that we heard from reiterated this view. The Government are relying on the CAA to meet their ambition to keep charges flat, but can the Minister give us confidence that that ambition will be achieved, given that history suggests that Heathrow’s charges have increased each time it has made a significant investment in infrastructure?

Our support was also premised on suitable measures being in place to guarantee benefits for regional passengers. There is a risk that domestic routes will be priced out of an expanded Heathrow and that the non-London regions and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be left with fewer direct connections from their own airports and potentially no new domestic slots into Heathrow. We recommended that the Government outline more clearly how they intend to secure 15% of new slots for domestic connections, including the policy levers they will use to achieve that target.

The Government have said that they believe most routes will be commercially viable and that public service obligations will be their main policy lever to secure domestic routes. Can the Minister explain how PSOs can be used to secure domestic slots, because I believe that they could be used only on a city-to-city basis, provided there is an overriding social need? What other mechanisms are available to secure slots for the regions and nations?

The final objective of our scrutiny was to ensure that any risks of a successful legal challenge were minimised. The north-west runway scheme can be legally challenged at two stages of the approvals process, the first of which is the immediate period after the NPS is designated by Parliament. A legal challenge can be mounted, not on the contents of the NPS document but on the way in which the consultation was conducted. We recommended that the evidence base be comprehensively updated and that its robustness be improved, to ensure that the consultation has been completed in a comprehensive manner and to avoid a successful legal challenge at the first hurdle. Is the Minister confident that he has done enough to address our concerns?

The scale of this project and the grounds upon which a legal challenge can be mounted suggest that there are still more hurdles for this scheme to overcome if it obtains Parliamentary approval. Even in a best-case scenario, a scheme is not going to be delivered until 2026. It is therefore essential that we make best use of the UK’s existing airport capacity in the interim, and our Committee has recommended that the Government develop a strategy to do so. Can the Minister tell us whether the Government intend to develop and implement such a strategy, so that aviation growth can continue across the country while the Heathrow scheme is being developed?

In conclusion, the Committee’s support for the north-west runway was conditional on the concerns that we identified in our report being addressed by the Government in the final NPS laid before Parliament. The Committee has not yet had the opportunity to discuss whether we believe our conditions have been met. Ultimately, it is for every Member to form their own judgment on the Government’s proposal. I hope that our report has provided Members with a strong foundation upon which to make that judgment.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Cadbury]

The right hon. Lady is right. There is absolutely no reason why the Government and Heathrow airport cannot draw a straight line east and west of the third runway site for at least six to 13 miles. Irrespective of the NATS wider flight path revisions, by the time the planes are overhead in my constituency, they are locked into a final approach and there can be no variation. Therefore, if we know where the runway is, we know where the final approach is. Neither the Government nor the airport have had the courtesy to produce a map to show to people in Heston, Osterley, Brentford, Chiswick and Hammersmith. I really think that they should.

Up to 2 million people will experience more noise, and 300,000 more people will experience significantly more noise than they do at the moment. They are looking at planes, but generally not hearing them very loudly at the moment. Those people will start experiencing noise at the level currently experienced in parts of Isleworth, West Hounslow, Kew, Putney and so on.

The expansion will also mean around 50% more traffic movements on an already severely congested network, with the associated air pollution and the economic cost of the delays of that congestion. When we talk about traffic movements, we are not just talking about passengers. Any transport modelling must factor in all the other movements in and out of the airport, including those who work there, flight crew, flight servicing and, of course, cargo. Much of flight servicing and cargo cannot go on any route other than by road. Many of us just laugh at Heathrow’s claim that it can increase capacity with a third runway without increasing road travel.

I understand that the Minister told the House this morning—I am sorry I could not be there; I was on constituency business—that he does not recognise the £10 billion figure that was suggested by Transport for London as the cost of essential transport infrastructure. I gather that he then said words to the effect of, “It’ll be all right because the Elizabeth line, or Crossrail, and west and southern rail access will deal with the pressure of expansion.” As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith rightly said, those routes will deal only with current airport demand and population growth in the region.

Transport for London is very clear that the Elizabeth line, or Crossrail, will provide little modal shift from roads. The other two schemes have been ideas and plans since terminal 5 was constructed, and are still no further forward, particularly because the Government have not committed to putting any public funding into them. All three schemes are needed right now to deal with Heathrow’s appallingly low levels of public transport access. When it comes to a cap on the increase in airport-related traffic, the Government cannot get away with referring just to passengers.

The Transport Committee requested a minimum average period of seven hours of respite a night. The national policy statement does not change the initial Government proposal of a 6.5-hour ban. Even this week, the Government are saying that the NPS

“does not preclude consideration of different options.”

We are very worried about that. That sounds to me like going back on the night flight commitment.

I want to address the point about jobs, which trade unions and Labour colleagues often raise with me. There will of course be more jobs created at Heathrow—Heathrow Airport Limited said yesterday that there would be 14,000. I am not denying that there is some unemployment in our region, particularly of young people, but of all areas of the UK, our sub-region around Heathrow airport probably has among the lowest levels of unemployment.

The Transport Committee said that a lot of the new jobs creation promised by runway three will be displaced jobs. If anybody wants to know what the job situation is at Heathrow at the moment, just go on to Heathrow airport’s jobs recruitment site. It is looking for hundreds of people—low skilled, middle skilled and highly skilled—for all sorts of jobs. There is a recruitment crisis in west London and the Thames Valley, which is being exacerbated by Brexit. The jobs problem that we have at the moment, particularly at Heathrow, is one of too many low-skilled, zero-hours, poorly paid jobs with poor conditions. I congratulate Heathrow Airport Ltd on signing a commitment to the London living wage, but it cannot control all the various employers in and around Heathrow. There are regions of the UK that need those jobs far more than London. West London and the Thames Valley have many other growth sectors.

Those of us near Heathrow are used to the record of broken and watered down promises on Heathrow. I have been at this game for 16 years now. This week, the final NPS ignored the detail of many of the Transport Committee’s recommendations and has watered down previous commitments on the night flight ban, the cap on total flight numbers, and the cap on the charges to airlines if costs escalate. Runway three and continuing traffic congestion will mean that children and older people will carry on dying of respiratory failure as air pollution continues to escalate—some of that from aeroplanes; a lot of that from traffic.

What of the impact on UK plc? Much of the case for a third runway at Heathrow implies that the future of aviation is in the hub model, linking short-haul routes to long-haul through the hub and spoke model. However, the Transport Committee had very mixed evidence on the hub issue, with many reputable witnesses pointing out that point-to-point travel is growing, and will grow, faster than hub travel, particularly with the relatively recent emergence of the long-haul Dreamliner plane, selling far better than the enormous A380s. Moreover, the Transport Committee identified what the Department for Transport did not: that Gatwick is growing its long-haul destinations, and aims to have 50 long-haul destinations soon, so Gatwick could become a secondary London hub.

We have heard already that all bar four domestic routes will struggle without Government protection. That will add to the cost to the public purse of Heathrow expansion. The Secretary of State as good as admitted that when he released the NPS. He said that Birmingham airport will face “greater competitive pressures” as a result of runway three. Furthermore, the Transport Committee found that long-haul international routes from Scotland and northern airports are more likely to survive commercially if there is no additional runway in the south-east.

Despite promises to MPs, the Transport Committee report showed that all the growth in passenger numbers are outbound leisure travellers—that is, yet more Brits taking their holiday pound away from Britain’s beautiful places, which would really benefit from more tourists. The Committee said that if the UK is to comply with its commitment to cut carbon dioxide emissions, then if runway three goes ahead, growth will have to be curbed at all other UK airports. Furthermore, other sectors of the economy face serious reductions and restraints to keep UK carbon emissions within the limits.

Why should whole swathes of London and the south-east pay the price of yet more noise, increased congestion, worse pollution, and a greater safety risk? Why should other sectors of the economy have to further curb their carbon emissions when, according to the Transport Committee report, a third runway at Heathrow shows poor value for money for the UK and no additional international connectivity? It will mean that non-UK regions risk losing their connections to London without subsidy. They will lose direct international connections and their tourist pounds.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I just wanted to clarify one point. My hon. Friend said that the Transport Committee had said that there would be less international direct connectivity. That is not the case. We said that there was not a huge increase with the expansion of the north-west runway than there would be under other expansion options. It is worth pointing out that direct international connectivity for non-London airports will increase under an expansion scenario, but it will not increase as much as it would have if there was no expansion.

[Ruth Cadbury]

I apologise to the Committee Chair if I got that wrong; I will double check the facts. I would certainly agree that the growth of direct international connectivity is not dependent on another runway at Heathrow. In fact, I believe that there will be only one additional destination from Heathrow with a third runway. Much of the increased demand will be, as I have said, outbound leisure tourists adding to existing routes that are already heavily used. That is where most of the demand will be and not, as Heathrow keeps saying, to newly emerging destinations. It can say that as much as it likes, but unless the demand is truly there to sustain the new routes, they are not going to happen.

Why risk sucking capital funding that is needed for essential regional transport infrastructure and upgrading into yet another expensive project in London that actually does little for the economy? By pushing for runway three, the Government are just writing a blank cheque on behalf of the UK taxpayer or the passenger, while further undermining an already poor environment for large parts of London and the south-east.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lilian Greenwood]

I am pleased to have had the opportunity to debate our Select Committee’s report on this vital decision for the future of our national infrastructure. I am grateful to all Members here for reading the 154 pages we produced. In some ways this debate has been a rehearsal for the one we will have in a few weeks’ time. I hope we have succeeded in highlighting the issues that hon. Members will want to consider as they examine the case the Government presented in their final NPS. The Select Committee will certainly be reading those documents carefully and discussing whether the 24 recommendations that the Secretary of State has told us he accepted have been adequately reflected in the final proposals. The House needs to weight up the evidence and make the right decision. I hope that this debate makes a contribution to those deliberations.

Airports National Policy Statement

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The project cannot pass the development consent order stage unless the airport can demonstrate that it will follow air quality guidelines. We have been very clear about that, which is why Heathrow is consulting on a potential low-emission zone. The whole point about air quality, however, is that it is a broader problem, for London and other cities, which will need to be dealt with well before 2026. That is why the Government have issued air quality proposals, and that is why we are determined to see changes in society that tackle the air quality issue.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I welcome the statement, and the Secretary of State’s acceptance of the points made by the Transport Committee. We look forward to examining the detail in the final national policy statement. We said that an expanded Heathrow must deliver for the whole of the UK, not just the south-east of England. Can the Secretary of State explain how public service obligations can guarantee that a new runway will result in more domestic routes which will be distributed fairly across the regions and nations of the UK, and can he tell us how this proposal fits in with his Department’s plans for high-speed rail connectivity between cities in the midlands and the north?

[Chris Grayling]

Let me deal with the last point first. I think that we will need both. Creating a rapid link between our great cities is a necessary part of doing business domestically, and that will mean connectivity to airports as well. However, I think that the real benefit of expanding the runway is the linkage that results from the ability to fly, for example, from Edinburgh to Heathrow to Shanghai if a direct flight is not available. The local market will simply not be big enough for a regional airport to deliver the direct route.

As for the public service obligation process, we will introduce the strongest measures to ring-fence those slots. We will ensure that they cannot simply be taken away, and that should mean that they must be provided at a cost that is affordable for UK domestic aviation. If routes that are strategically necessary for the United Kingdom require PSO support financially, I have no doubt that this Government, and future Governments, will wish to ensure that those routes are provided for as well. We already apply that to some key routes.