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Heathrow

I undertook to give way in a moment. If the hon. Lady will wait, I shall set the scene and set out the principles. It is important that the House should have this opportunity. I will certainly give way when we get on to the detail. We have since undertaken a three-year programme of technical analysis to assess whether these conditions can be met for a new runway given the construction time frame, as well as for the other options we set out for adding capacity at the airport. I will return to these conditions in more detail later in my speech. After that work had concluded, the consultation launched in November last year invited views on three different options: first, a third runway with a new terminal around 2020; secondly, mixed-mode landing and take-off patterns within existing capacity around 2010 and a third runway with a new terminal around 2020; and thirdly, mixed-mode within existing capacity around 2010, full mixed-mode around 2015 and a third runway with a new terminal around 2020. The mixed-mode process involves using each runway for both landings and landings and take-offs—the kind of operation that happens now at any single-runway airport such as Gatwick or Stansted. At Heathrow, however, it would mean aircraft arriving and departing on both runways, in contrast to the current practice of runway alternation, whereby aircraft normally arrive on one runway and depart from the other. Mixed-mode operations could provide additional runway capacity in the period before a third runway could be operational.