Airports National Policy Statement

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Thursday 7th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[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.

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[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?