Airports Commission: Final Report

Debate between Rupa Huq and Gerald Howarth

Thursday 26th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Heathrow has been in the background for me for 43 years. I was a pupil at Montpelier primary school, just north of Ealing Broadway, and when someone was doing a reading in assembly, they would have to stop as the teacher told them to hang on while Concorde or whatever it was flew past, after which they could continue. I now live in south Ealing, which is even more directly under the flight path, so I notice when the switchover happens. People I went to school with had parents with jobs at Heathrow and adults I know now have jobs there. It is a significant local employer of vital strategic importance to the whole of west London. I have good relationships with it as an employer: I went back to that primary school recently on an engineering challenge with people from the airport; I have been up the control tower as a candidate; and I recognise its figures even though the figures available are slightly different depending on whose one chooses. A tri-borough study carried out by Ealing, Slough and Hounslow talked about 70,000 jobs, whereas Heathrow gives figures of 76,000 direct jobs and 40,000 indirect jobs. That is not to be sniffed at. I also used the airport last week as a passenger, and I like the fact that I can directly get a Piccadilly line train to it in 20 minutes.

Despite all that, and the fantastical figures that Heathrow promises will come with expansion, I cannot support expansion at this time, because it is in the wrong place. If we were starting from scratch, we would not build London’s main hub airport in a densely populated urban area, bringing a raft of problems such as noise, air pollution and traffic congestion impacts. Schiphol, the main European hub, is not in a comparable destination; it was built over fields.

Those impacts of Heathrow are already high, as the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) pointed out, so how is an extra runway going to solve that situation? Air pollution and traffic gridlock are much worse than ever before. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) mentioned villages, and Harmondsworth and places in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) would be bulldozed in any expansion—we are talking about thousands of homes.

In expanding Heathrow, there are more snakes than ladders. If we were to do a SWOT analysis, the environmental threats—I am talking about air quality, noise pollution and carbon emissions, which is the biggest threat of our time—far outweigh those in the rather spurious claims made by Heathrow. We know that Heathrow already breaches the legal limits on air quality, and that there is insufficient reassurance in this report to address that.

Conversely, Gatwick, an option which is still on the table according to Davies, has never broken legal air quality limits, and would remain within them even with an extra runway. I think the figures are that 18,000 people would be newly affected by expansion at Gatwick, but 320,000 people would be affected by Heathrow—17 times more.

We are living at a time when every pound of public expenditure should be justified. To expand Gatwick would cost the Treasury pretty much nothing, whereas Heathrow will need a £20 billion taxpayer subsidy. Willie Walsh has also said that expansion at Heathrow is unjustifiable in terms of costs. We constantly hear that Heathrow is at capacity, but Gatwick achieved 40 million passengers last year. The Airports Commission report said that that would not be achieved until 2024, which shows how flawed its analysis is. Clearly, Gatwick is crying out for expansion.

Yesterday evening, I was at a public meeting at St Michael’s church in the much-mentioned area of Chiswick. There were 200 people there—the organisers said that it was 300, so perhaps it was a median between the two—and they were unanimous in their opposition to a third runway at Heathrow. We have seen flash mobs. I think that there was one even this morning at Terminal 2, which showed the strength of feeling against the expansion.

In my maiden speech, I said that I wanted to be a voice for the suburbs. Bedford Park, which is said to be the world’s first garden suburb, was initially marketed as the world’s most healthy place. The Bedford Park Society believes that an expansion to Heathrow would make a mockery of that.

Regional expansion is another possibility. We could even think beyond our reliance on planes. The meetings that we all have could be done by telephone conferencing. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) says that there is an excellent airport in Bristol that could be expanded. Stansted is also echoingly empty when compared with both Gatwick and Heathrow. Extra capacity at Manchester airport would fit the northern powerhouse strategy of which we hear so much.

To say that the Government’s position on this report is long awaited is an understatement. This matter has been talked about for a long time. I am talking about way, way back in the mists of time. I became a candidate in 2012, but the discussions go back nearly 20 years. The ball is in the Government’s court. The right decision must be made for west London, because the matter cannot be pushed into the long grass any longer.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Let me refer to Bedford Park, which I used to represent as a Conservative councillor. May I put it to the hon. Lady that all those people who live there—and it is a pretty affluent area—not only knew that Heathrow was there when they moved there, but, given the nature of their occupations, probably benefit very substantially from the close proximity of Heathrow to where they live?

[Dr Huq]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It depends on when they moved there. There were people at the meeting yesterday who said that when they moved there, Heathrow was only a glimmer of what it is now. Certainly, there were not five terminals. I am not saying that we should raze Heathrow to the ground. I recognise its strategic importance to west London. I like the fact that it is very near me, but London is big enough—its population is heading towards 10 million—to be a dual hub city. Many cities in America have dual hubs. Why can we not have the same, with the two destinations of Gatwick and Heathrow—those are the two airports mentioned in the report? It is completely possible. We could even consider regional alternatives. After all, there are places other than London in this country.