Heathrow Airport: Public Consultation

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Sir Henry. I thank my constituency neighbour, the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable), for securing the debate. I also thank the Library, which released this week an excellent summary of where we are and how we got there. It is neutral, dispassionate, but factual, and pulls together all the references that we need for such a debate. I also thank the No 3rd Runway Coalition for its help in briefing some of us for the debate.

I will not cover, as we have covered between us many times before, the details of the impact of a third runway; the net cost to the economy, according to Department for Transport figures; or the increased air and noise pollution. We have had, and will have, many other opportunities in this House and other places to raise those issues. I want to focus on the current public consultation, but I will just give the context. My constituency, Brentford and Isleworth, lies immediately to the east of Heathrow airport. Two thirds of my constituents live underneath the approach path for the two runways on westerly operations, and the other third of my constituency will be underneath the approach path to the third runway, so this is a massive issue for my constituents.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way so early. I would compliment her on her speech, but she has not given it yet, although I know it will be brilliant, because she is an absolutely stalwart campaigner on this issue. Does she agree that one problem with the consultation is that we know that hundreds of thousands of new people will be affected by noise, but we do not know which hundreds of thousands, because the Government and Heathrow have yet to tell us where the new flight paths will be, which renders the entire consultation process entirely disingenuous, if not dishonest? It is a bit like saying, “We’re going to put a new incinerator in your constituency, and we’d like to ask people their opinion, but we’re not going to say where it’ll be put.” Surely the entire basis of the consultation’s legitimacy has a question mark hanging over it.

[Ruth Cadbury]

The hon. Gentleman, another constituency neighbour, has stolen one of my key points; I will come on to that.

As I was saying, my constituents live under either the current or the proposed—or inevitable—flight paths. Also, living between central London and Heathrow, we have the traffic congestion and the associated air pollution, so this is a really big issue for us. I have been dealing with the issue for more than 15 years—before coming to this place, I was a lead member of Hounslow Council— and it feels like we have been involved in perpetual consultation. Again, the Library report lists a lot of those processes. In the autumn, there was the Government consultation on the draft national policy statement on airports, and I felt sorry for DFT staff in that consultation, because the answer to so many of the questions that local residents asked them were, “I’m sorry; I don’t know,” or, “I’m sorry; we don’t have that information yet.” I see the same thing happening with Heathrow airport staff in the newly relaunched consultation. Last week, Heathrow Airport Ltd launched its consultation on a slightly different proposal from that covered in the NPS consultation, but as far as my constituents are concerned, there is not a lot of difference.

What is clear in the Heathrow consultation is what is not clear; so little is said. I have to read out a key quotation from the consultation document:

“we have been assessing the design options for developing a scheme which meets the government’s requirements for an expanded airport, whilst responding to the needs of local communities and mitigating environmental impacts.”

That makes it look like we will see some detail, but the document goes on:

“We are still working through this process, therefore there is not yet a fixed master plan for the expansion of Heathrow.”

If it is not yet possible to map the detailed impact on local communities, what is the point of consulting right now?

What my constituents want to know is this. First, where is the approach path to the third runway? There is no reason why that cannot be mapped now, because the runway is there. We are within 6 miles of the airport, and all flights will be locked into final approach; it is basic physics. So why cannot we be told where the approach path is, how high the planes will be and how wide the approach path will be? We are not in one of the areas where there can be concentration or spreading out. We are so close to the airport that all planes have to be locked in, at least on approach. I think it is deliberate that we are not being told. The thinking is, “It’s okay, because we’re going to tell people that they are going to be underneath the flight path.” I challenge Heathrow airport or the Department for Transport to tell us that we are wrong.

There is very little information on respite. We have a marginal improvement on previous situations, in that there will be no night flights for six and a half hours, but in the real world, no night flights does not actually mean no flights overhead for those night periods. It means no scheduled night flights, but there might be emergency flights, VIP flights, medical flights and so on. There is probably a good reason for all of them, but at one of the busiest airports in the world, there is seldom a time when there are actually no flights at all during those periods, and certainly the rules are not as strict in the UK as they are in other jurisdictions.

What will the air quality implications be if there is no diesel scrappage scheme? How will a congestion charge affect the many local businesses and residents that need to travel around the airport even if they are not actually using it? What will the new transport infrastructure be? There have been many questions about that. And of course nationally we are all concerned about who will pay for this. There is no clarity on how the runway, terminal buildings and essential work will be paid for, and there is certainly no clarity or agreement on the essential traffic impacts. The issue of traffic impacts is not just about passengers or people who work at Heathrow. It is not just about freight. By the way, the aim is to double the amount of freight going in and out of Heathrow with no additional freight vehicle movements. There is no clarity about how that will work, and I challenge any transport engineer to map it.

The issue that no one ever seems to mention is the additional flight servicing. There will be 47% more flights with runway 3. That to me means 47% more journeys in and out of the airport servicing those flights. I am thinking of the catering vehicles and the long-haul flight crews, who stay at our local hotels and are bussed in. There is nothing about that, but of course it will put additional pressure on the local transport infrastructure. I can see that I do not have any more time. I have deliberately focused on the omissions from the consultation and the issues that most affect local residents in Brentford and Isleworth.