Amendment of the Law

Debate between Lord Walney and Mike Gapes

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock]

I will not give way any more because I am running on and I want to give other Members time to speak.

The Government came to power with just one policy on aviation capacity—to abandon the Heathrow third runway. Since the election, the Government have come up with no practical thinking on alternatives. Instead, they seem to have outsourced their aviation strategy down the river to a Mayor who is more interested in trying to grab attention than in finding a plan that will work. That is no way to treat a vital economic driver that is critical to the country’s future growth.

As the Secretary of State is well aware, the plans for an airport in the Thames estuary are being met with a barrage of opposition from the area, including from her own party’s MPs and councillors. She would be even clearer on that if, like my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State, she had been to north Kent and talked to local people in the areas affected. The idea of building a new airport from scratch in the Thames estuary is a huge distraction from the real need for airport capacity here and now. It is obvious why so many people, but apparently not the Secretary of State, see an estuary airport as a complete non-starter—there is the impact on local communities, the destruction of internationally important habitats, the safety threat from explosive-laden wrecks, a liquefied petroleum gas terminal and a huge offshore wind farm.

[Mike Gapes]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the reason the Government have not yet come out explicitly on these issues is that they do not want to damage Boris’s chances in the mayoral election and undermine his fantasy island proposal? The reality is that this proposal is completely opposed by whole sectors not just in Kent but north of the River Thames, including in my constituency.

[John Woodcock]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Frankly, Britain deserves better.

The overwhelming majority of the aviation industry agrees that Heathrow would struggle to continue in its current form alongside an estuary airport, placing at least 140,000 jobs in west London and the M4 corridor under threat. I hope, then, that when the Secretary of State finally publishes her thinking, she will choose a sensible course based on providing additional capacity at existing airports, not a strategy based on a pie-in-the-sky estuary airport.