Airports National Policy Statement

Debate between Roger Gale and Adam Afriyie

Thursday 7th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

Sir David, it is a particular pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, on the eve of the 35th anniversary of our election to Parliament. It strikes me that we have been discussing this subject for most of those 35 years.

Sir David, you represent a constituency on one side of the Thames estuary and I represent a constituency on the other side. You and I are both fully aware of the discussions in the mists of time relating to Maplin Sands, and more recently those relating to Boris island. I think it is fair to say that we could probably agree, although I would not wish to drag you into the argument, that neither of those proposals was worth the back-end of the envelope that they were written on.

I am concerned about much of this matter. I pay huge tribute to the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), and indeed to her predecessor, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman). Together with their Committees, they have put an enormous amount of hard work into diligently scrutinising the proposals that we are considering this afternoon. I am extremely grateful to them for the work they have done, as I am sure all colleagues are.

This morning, colleagues who have opened their emails will have received a letter from Sir Howard Davies, the former chairman of the Airports Commission, and Sir John Armitt, a former commissioner at the Airports Commission and is now the Chair of the National Infrastructure Commission. In that letter, Sir Howard and Sir John say:

“The UK benefits from the third largest international aviation network in the world after the US and China; London has the largest origin and destination market of any city in the world; and Heathrow until 2013 served more international passengers than any other airport and even now is surpassed only by Dubai…the continuation of this success cannot be taken for granted, and the rise of Dubai is only one indicator of the risks that the UK faces. … As other hub airports in Europe and beyond continue to expand, the impression created is one of the UK being increasingly inward-facing and having limited ambition to expand its reach, even as it navigates the uncertainty caused by its impending departure from the European Union. Now should be the time to build on our strengths, not to diminish them, but preventing expansion at Heathrow would achieve only the latter.”

I am not remotely unsympathetic to the concerns expressed by colleagues representing seats in west and south London. My daughter has a home in Chiswick under the flightpath to Heathrow. I am a sufficiently infrequent overnight stayer not to have become acclimatised to the air traffic, so I understand what it means, and I also have considerable concern for the quality of the air that my six-year-old grandson, Soren, will breathe during the course of his young life.

That said, I support the proposals that the Government laid before the House on Tuesday, although two issues have to be addressed. Curiously, the Select Committee to some extent skated over them. The first issue is the timescale. Eight years seems wildly optimistic to me. I am not a betting man, but if I were, I would bet a gold sovereign that there will not be wheels on tarmac at any new runway at Heathrow inside 15 years. The other issue is freight, which was not mentioned to any degree in either the Secretary of State’s remarks on Tuesday or the Select Committee report. I will touch on both those points in the context of another airfield that is and should be available to us.

On Tuesday, the Secretary of State said that

“a new operational runway at Heathrow is still a number of years away.”

He says eight years; I have said 15. He continued:

“The Airports Commission recommended that there would also be a need for other airports to make more intensive use of their existing infrastructure”.

He went on to say that

“the Government support other airports making best use of their existing runways.”—[Official Report, 5 June 2018; Vol. 642, c. 171.]

Heathrow handles more freight than any other port in the country, but Heathrow is full. Even allowing for a growth in belly cargo, the capacity to handle more at Heathrow is non-existent. Gatwick is largely but not exclusively a holiday airport. It does not handle much belly cargo and has little freight capacity. Stansted has the capacity to some extent, but the turnaround time is eight hours, which is unacceptable for perishable goods. There is one airport in the south-east—Manston, in Kent—that is capable of turning around a freight aircraft in an hour and a half, has the capacity, has the runway and could bridge the gap. I want to direct attention to that this afternoon, very briefly.

Manston airport was operational until 2013. In November 2013, it was obtained for £1 by Mrs Ann Gloag, one of the shareholders in Stagecoach. She rang me on 30 November and told me in terms, “I am going to invest millions of pounds in Manston, and I will give it two years to turn things around.” Within three months, she was closing it. It is absolutely obvious that she and her successors—actually, the airport was acquired on a 100% mortgage, so effectively she still controls it—always had the intention to try to smother Manston in housing. As an aside, Manston airport is smack on top of the Thanet aquifer. If housing was put on it, the aquifer would dry up and Thanet would run out of water. That is one of the many minor details that the proposed developers have sought to overlook. That, however, is not the point of my case this afternoon.

The point of my case this afternoon is that we have a gap that we have to bridge. Today, we are losing business—not tomorrow, next week, next month or next year, but today—to Frankfurt, Schiphol, Charles de Gaulle and Dubai, as Sir Howard said in his letter.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

I am impressed by my hon. Friend’s passion for Manston, despite some of the challenges. He talks about competitiveness and how we are losing business to other European countries and further afield, including Dubai, but does he accept that if landing charges per passenger go up to £31, £32 or possibly even £40 from their already very high level of £22 to £23, the third runway at Heathrow will drive even more business away from this country?

[Sir Roger Gale]

For the sake of argument, I will accept the point my hon. Friend is making, but it is safe to say that my argument is that I am concerned about UK Ltd and post-Brexit freight. As a country, we will have to develop markets in the middle east, Asia, the far east, Africa and South America if we are going to survive in a post-Brexit modern economy. We will have to have air freight capacity to handle high-value goods coming in and going out. There is nowhere within striking distance of London for those goods to go.

I freely concede that regional airports can and will play some part in helping to solve the problem, but the problem is massive, and if we do not solve it now and we lose Manston airport as a potential freight hub, we will live to regret it. Once it is gone, it can never be retrieved. It is a national asset, not a local asset, and it has to be regarded as such. I hope and expect that when a development consent order goes in for Manston airport, the Planning Inspectorate will have cognisance of the Secretary of State’s remarks on Tuesday that we must use the available runway capacity. We have to hang on to Manston. If we can do that and use the capacity of our regional airports, we can stem the flow of business to other countries and bridge the gap, but that gap will be a large one.

I support the proposal for Heathrow. I think it is necessary, although I suspect that in fairly short order we may find that we need another runway at Gatwick as well as Heathrow, not instead of. In the interim, we have to make the best use of what we have, and what we have right on our doorstep and available is Manston airport.

Air Passenger Duty

Debate between Roger Gale and Adam Afriyie

Thursday 1st November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir Roger Gale]

If I wanted to use one word to describe the banding, it would be chaotic. That is what it is. We are losing business now.

We have an opportunity—I have a constituency interest in this—in Manston, Kent’s international airport. My hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury is aware, I think, of the opportunity Manston presents. It has one of the longest runways in the country and also one of the widest—three runways wide—because during the war it was used for landing planes one after the other. There is no suggestion that it should ever become a fourth, fifth or sixth London airport, but it could be developed at very modest cost to take the pressure immediately—not in 10 or 15 years’ time—off Gatwick, which in turn, with released capacity, could take the pressure off Heathrow. That would create the breathing space we need while the Government work out whether to have a third runway at Heathrow, a second runway at Gatwick, a second runway at Stansted or Boris island—that is not the purpose of this debate. If we are to develop Manston and use its capacity, we must give it a chance to breathe commercially, and air passenger duty is damaging that chance.

We need a modest investment in infrastructure, and the Minister of State, Department for Transport, who has responsibility for aviation, will visit us very soon. As long as the air passenger duty element of travel from the United Kingdom is as high as it is, regional airports such as Manston, and the many others that Members across the House have represented this afternoon, will suffer. Because Manston is in the south-east, it will presumably be banded at a south-east price, which in itself is nonsense. We must take into account the nature and capacity of each individual airport. I want air passenger duty to go completely, but I believe that in the interim, as a short-term measure, we have to look seriously at banding, which has been referred to, and at some kind of variation between regional and hub airports.

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury might be new to his role, but he is very bright and he can do sums, which is why he got the job. It is very easy to say glibly that something is worth £2 billion, £5 billion or whatever to the Treasury without taking into account what my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) referred to as the downside. The real cost must be calculated in terms not just of aviation lost, but of lost business, tourism and all the other things that flow from being a world-class, international centre, which is what London is, always has been and must be allowed to remain.

There is a Treasury mantra—I am looking to the civil servants’ box—which says that more tax equals more money. That card was played earlier this afternoon with regard to beer duty. It is wrong. A modest amount of tax might raise a modest amount of money, but there comes a point, and my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary must recognise this, when a tax kills the goose that lays the eggs, whether they are gold, silver, bronze or straightforward eggs. We cannot go on killing this industry, and that is what is happening. Of course, another huge concern has been voiced by holiday travellers. The impact on family holidays is dramatic and costly.

[Adam Afriyie]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. It strikes me that at the heart of the debate there is an absence of evidence; there is an evidence-shaped hole at its heart. All the points that have been made, including his points, could be dealt with cleanly and crisply if the review takes place.

[Sir Roger Gale]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and his point leads me swiftly to a conclusion. The sums have not been properly analysed and so we need the review. There is no evidence to support the case that the Treasury is making. In the meantime, United Kingdom Ltd is being damaged. We need the review. I ask the Minister, please can we have it?