Airport Capacity

Lord True Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I think I have been clear in saying that it will be by the summer. If the noble Lord is asking me to specify the year, I do mean the summer of 2016.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interest as leader of a London borough council. Like hundreds of thousands of other Londoners, I welcome this stay of execution on Heathrow, although I see two nooses still hanging in the yard. The Minister referred to air quality and noise. A bigger Heathrow would fail on those. I put to him also the issue of security—it would be foolishness to fly another quarter of a million flights over our capital—and that good old Conservative principle of competition. How on earth can it be in our national interest to load more, as the right reverend Prelate reminded us, on to a single monopoly airport owned by foreign interests and hedge funds—our fair-weather friends in China and Qatar? Is not the truth that the Prime Minister took the right decision in 2010 with “no ifs, no buts”? Perhaps we should have got on with building the alternative then, and we should certainly do so now.