Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when they plan to publish a breakdown of the costs of Heathrow Airport expansion.

The Government is clear that the Northwest Runway scheme at Heathrow will be financed by the private sector without Government support. Heathrow is a regulated airport and as such any plans for expansion, including expenditure, are subject to scrutiny from both its airline customers and the regulator with updates expected as appropriate.

Ahead of the decision to designate the Airports National Policy Statement (NPS) the Government and its independent expert advisors concluded that, so far as can be assessed at this early stage of the process, Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) is able to privately finance expansion without Government support.

The Airports NPS is clear that it requires a scheme that must be “capable of delivering additional capacity of at least 260,000 air transport movements per annum” – and it is for an applicant to demonstrate how the phasing of any scheme would deliver this capacity increase in its Development Consent Order application.