Aviation Strategy

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

An estuary airport strategy would be binary and lumpy. The proposal is for one massive new airport opening at a single point in the future, but it would run the risk of being half-empty when it opened, and in the meantime we would have none of the capacity we need now.

It is ridiculous to suggest, as the Mayor of London did, that we could build such an airport in the same time it would take to add one runway to an existing airport. And all the while, the economy is suffering. The Stalinist command-and-control-economy assumption that we could move hundreds of thousands of jobs to the Thames estuary at the stroke of a Mayor’s or even a Government’s pen is preposterous: many of these jobs would not move, many would move to Europe and many others would no longer be economical, because the capital and investment on which they depended would be destroyed. The assumption that all the hotel and business infrastructure around Heathrow could be rebuilt, cost-free, in the estuary airport is wrong. If people had to pay twice for that, many fewer jobs would survive.

We hear from the Mayor of London that Heathrow could become like Kensington and Chelsea or Canary Wharf, yet he has just been to the old airport in Hong Kong, which, 15 years on, is still a shell, with next to no development, in one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Boris told me that if he proposed this seriously, he would come down to look at the Thames estuary and the Hoo peninsula, in my constituency, where he wants to build it, but he has not come, so I can only assume that he is not serious. The Davies commission, which did come, was absolutely astonished. It thought, having listened to Boris, that it was like a blank sheet of paper, but there are more than 23,000 people living there, nine villages and some of the most important energy infrastructure in the country.

I am pleased at least that Transport for London has recognised that we could not use HS1 to access that new airport—it would not have the capacity and there is no where to put the trains at St Pancras—yet, like Fosters and Partners, which is in the clouds as much as my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), it is saying that there could be three other substantial railway projects, including a parallel new high-speed line. Even those three projects would not provide the local access to work for the people coming into that airport, which would require further tunnelling under the Medway towns to get those people across the two river pinch points.

Crucially, given the level of environmental protection in this area, legislation states that there must be an “absence of alternative solutions” even before we can consider building such an airport. It cannot be a credible option, therefore, if it has already been determined, as the Davies commission must, that there are other credible options.

I heard that the scheme would cost £80 billion, but the Deutsch Bank aviation analyst tells me it would be £120 billion. Of that, up to £30 billion would be public money. It is absolutely extraordinary. It is incredible. I do not think any Government would fund that. What about the private money? Ignoring all the new investment, we would still be looking at about another £50 on every ticket for anyone who used that airport. What a blow to business that would be!

As to its operational viability, National Grid said that

“the proposals being put forward for a Thames Hub Airport on the Grain peninsula are incompatible with the energy infrastructure”.

The fog is three times what it is at Heathrow and the risk of bird strikes is twelve times as high. The delivery risks are absolutely enormous.

We have heard a lot about Heathrow, but what about Stansted, which we have also heard about? It needs better train service connections. Perhaps even our Lib Dem friends would support those extra train connections to allow the half-empty runway to be better used. Gatwick should be strongly considered, too, because it has the money. It would only cost £5 billion to £9 billion —about one tenth of the Thames estuary airport—and with the improved train connections, particularly the Thameslink service to London Bridge and, crucially, to Farringdon, it would be a credible option and provide competition.