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Heathrow

Of course I did not make that claim. These are long-term, strategic decisions that the country expects the Government to take. They are not driven by winning the next election or by appeasing people who are understandably concerned about noise—they are about taking a sensible strategic view. I demonstrated statistically to the hon. Lady the fact that this country is already losing out to Schiphol and Frankfurt. In a horizon that goes to 2030, we would expect a little more of the Conservatives thinking in the long term, and not taking easy, populist decisions. She has to face up to that. The hon. Lady completely failed to deal with the points that I made about the number of long-distance destinations served by Heathrow having fallen since 1990. Let me give her one further statistic to consider. More people now travel from Manchester to Schiphol than through Heathrow in order to get connecting flights. Why is that? Because Schiphol has a greater number of destinations available. That will continue, and, in the long term, it will affect the competitiveness of the British economy.