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Heathrow

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for making that point, and I absolutely agree that the British aerospace industry works incredibly hard at delivering technological advances. I made that point at the beginning of my remarks, and I pay tribute to the industry. Indeed, I believe that aircraft will become cleaner and quieter, but I challenge the Government’s assumptions. I do not believe that the Government’s predicted time frame for delivering those advances is realistic. As a result of the revelations in the documents that were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, it is necessary for us to consider the Government’s heavy reliance on BAA’s data and modelling. It is a cause for major concern. Leaving aside BAA’s obvious commercial interest, why should we believe a word that it says when so many times over the years, it clearly said that it would not seek to build a third runway at Heathrow? One of many examples is a ““Dear Neighbour”” letter that was sent in April 1999 by Sir John Egan, the then chief executive of BAA. In it, he said:"““We have since repeated often that we do not want, nor shall we seek, an additional runway. I can now report that we went even further at the Inquiry and called on the Inspector to recommend that, subject to permission being given for T5, an additional Heathrow runway should be ruled out forever.””"