Heathrow Expansion: Surface Access

Tania Mathias Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Heathrow expansion and surface access.

It is a great pleasure to conduct my first Westminster Hall debate. I thank the Minister for his engagement on this issue, which will greatly impact upon my constituents in Richmond Park and north Kingston. I welcome every opportunity to discuss the matter of Heathrow expansion with the Department for Transport.

On 2 February, the Government launched consultations relating to the proposed expansion of Heathrow airport. While many issues relating to the decision to build a third runway concern me, this afternoon I shall remain focused on the surface access strategy, which is not yet something we are able to consider.

Heathrow airport has pledged that its landside road traffic will be no greater than it is today if planning permission is granted for a third runway. It is not entirely clear which day “today” is supposed to refer to, but logic demands that 2 February should be treated as “today” for the purpose of benchmarking, being the date that the national policy statement was published. If the pledge has any prospect of being honoured, the public have a right to know what benchmarks are being used to measure landside road traffic.

Assuming that “today” is in fact 2 February, will the Minister confirm that detailed measurement and analysis of the landside road traffic was conducted on that day, for the purposes of comparison? Will he further confirm the extent of the area that was included within the measurement boundaries; whether that included my constituency; and that that analysis will be published without delay, so that the information is available to the public during the consultation period?

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate and agree with the important points she is making. Does she agree that on 2 February, pollutant levels should have been documented for the NPS? In London, we have already breached our annual air pollution limits.

[Sarah Olney]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Air quality is another very important issue, alongside surface access, when considering whether the decision to expand Heathrow is the right one or not. The focus of my attention today is the surface access strategy, but she is correct, and I shall address that point later.

If, by some chance, the analysis of current landside road traffic was not carried out on 2 February or on any other day prior to today, will the Minister give details of exactly how Heathrow airport will be held to its pledge that there will be no increase in landside road traffic? I am sure he will agree that the possible increase in road traffic across a wide area of west London is a source of considerable anxiety for local residents, and that evidence of the Government’s commitment to hold Heathrow airport to its pledge that there will be no increase in traffic would set a great many minds at ease.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)]

What a delight it is to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, and to respond to this short but significant debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) on securing it. I know that she cares about this issue a great deal. She follows in the footsteps of a Member who, one might say, was a champion of this cause.

Other Members who have contributed—notably my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias), but also my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry) and the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury)—have raised these matters regularly and vehemently. It is right that hon. Members should do that. All those I have mentioned are tireless workers for the interests of their constituents, and they are right to press the Government in the way they have done and continue to do.

[Dr Mathias]

I greatly appreciate my right hon. Friend the Minister’s words. Does he agree that there is now cross-party unity on the need for better information in these consultations, as was so ably expressed by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney)?

[Mr Hayes]

Yes. It is important, as I said, that the Government are held to account. That is the purpose of debates such as this. I take a plain view about these debates—I do not know whether all Ministers follow my lead, but would that they did, frankly—which is that they must have a purpose beyond the Minister coming with some prepared speech that he reads out, rather like reading the lesson at church, and being unaffected by the contributions made before he speaks. It is important that these debates are a proper opportunity to challenge the Government, to scrutinise what we are doing and to elicit from the Minister a meaningful response, which is what I hope to give today.

To that end, let me start by saying that there is a proper debate to be had about the character of the consultation. We have begun to speak today about whether, in the national policy statement, we should have come to a conclusion about the detailed plans for surface access, and should then have consulted on those plans, or whether one should have a consultation based on the NPS and, from that consultation, discern what is right and go into rather more detail later. That is about how one sees a consultation. One criticism often made of consultations is that they are foregone conclusions. This one clearly is not a foregone conclusion; it is a legitimate consultation exercise, designed, as I have said, to give people the opportunity to make their case, to take their argument to the Government, and the Government will then cogitate, consider and draw conclusions. Hon. Members on both sides of the House would have had every right to complain had we come to a definitive conclusion about these things prior to the consultation and then gone through the motions of a consultation without meaning to take any notice of what local people said. That is not our approach, and it is certainly not my approach.

That said, it is important that we recognise some of the arguments that have been made in this debate, so let us be clear: it is fundamentally important in relation to expansion that Heathrow provides a detailed application, built on a detailed transport assessment, including a surface access strategy. That should be part of the process as we go forward, and it will be. That detailed analysis should be based on the latest available evidence on how the requirements in the airports national policy statement will be met. It is important to appreciate that, as we move to the point at which Heathrow Airport Ltd lodges its planning application, it will be expected to provide that kind of detailed analysis as part of the planning process.

Moreover, the Government have been clear that it would be for Heathrow to meet the full costs of any surface access that was required only for airport expansion. That is set out in the draft airports national policy statement. As has been said, we are carrying out a full consultation, because we want to hear everyone’s views about the detail of that, but I repeat that we are committed to the principle that Heathrow must meet the costs of any surface access changes necessitated by its plans for expansion.

Let me go further and say that the hon. Member for Richmond Park and others are right to point out, in relation to the way people get to the airport, that although no final plans or designs have been approved for the runway and there is a series of options, those changes will require us to think about the public transport needs of those who want to get to the airport. It is certainly our view that a greater proportion of people could be encouraged to use public transport to get to the airport.

The huge investment that is already planned or under way for the provision of better public transport services will play its part. The Elizabeth line—Crossrail—will significantly improve links between Heathrow and central London destinations. From May 2018, four trains an hour will run between Paddington and Heathrow airport, replacing the existing two-train-per-hour Heathrow Connect service. From December 2019, Elizabeth line trains will run from the airport directly to central London destinations, including Bond Street, Liverpool Street and Canary Wharf.

High Speed 2, of course, will connect directly to the airport via the interchange with the Elizabeth line at Old Oak Common, providing a new express route to the midlands and the north from 2026. Transport for London plans to increase capacity and upgrade trains on the Piccadilly line. Network Rail is developing plans for a new rail link from the Great Western main line to Heathrow, which will allow passengers to travel directly to the airport from Reading and Slough, and a new southern rail link from Heathrow to south-west London and the south-west trains network is being developed. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport has expressed his ambition to accelerate that scheme, and we are taking that into account as part of the planning process for the next funding period. There is no doubt that with the improved services to which I have referred, we will make available new means by which people can get to and from Heathrow from a range of destinations around London and well beyond it.

I emphasise that it is also true that the draft airports national policy statement recognises that expansion of the airport would have a range of potential impacts on the transport networks around it. Improvements would be needed to make Heathrow’s transport links adequate to support the increased numbers of people needing to access the expanded facility there. The proposition in the draft airports NPS for service access is to require the applicant to develop and implement a surface access strategy, which would mitigate the impact of expansion on the transport network.

That is a clear statement that we recognise the arguments of the hon. Member for Richmond Park about understanding that surface access is a critical part of the development and that its success will depend on getting surface access right. I entirely accept that. That does not seem to be an argument against expanding the airport, but it is an argument in favour of doing so in a way that is sustainable and that links the airport and growth there with the developments that will take place in and around its vicinity, and beyond.