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Heathrow

In a second. There are now more than 1 million flights a year. That is what has changed—the need for new capacity has got greater. And in response, the Opposition have collapsed into incoherence on the issue. Airport capacity throughout the United Kingdom was fully explored in the run-up to the 2003 White Paper. At the time, that was the largest transport policy consultation we had ever undertaken, attracting around half a million responses. The scale of the consultations to date clearly illustrates how important aviation is to the country and to the lives of the many people it touches directly or indirectly. It also highlights the vital need for the Government to take long-term, strategic approaches to future UK airport capacity. These are not questions that can be fudged for politically expedient reasons.