Davies Commission Report

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords, the Secretary of State accepted in the other place today that lack of airport capacity was holding this country back. Now that we do not have the alliance, we can rely on the new Conservative Government to implement this particular expansion. Can we now expect the Davies report to be the main determinant of the Government’s decision?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

As my noble friend is aware, we commissioned the report in 2012 during the previous Government. I believe that was the right thing to do at that time. The issue of capacity in London and the south-east is something that we have been reviewing and looking at over the last 50 years. This was an extensive report, which looked at more than 50 different options and then whittled them down to the three on which it has reported. Of course it will be a primary consideration for the Government in thinking about the way we move forward on south-east airport capacity.