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Heathrow

The Secretary of State wants us to take long-term decisions. I agree that we must take long-term decisions on how we achieve an 80 per cent. cut in carbon emissions. We must also take long-term decisions on delivering a high-speed rail network that could have a huge positive impact economically and environmentally. It is Labour Members who are taking short-term decisions based on data that are flawed and that have been wholly undermined by the ““freedom of information”” documents that I have discussed. If runway capacity determined whether a financial sector captured market share, why is London streets ahead of Frankfurt? Why are there more German banks in London than in Frankfurt? What happens if Schiphol and Charles de Gaulle build yet more runways? They have the space to do it. Do the Government expect us to match them—to play a game of indefinite runway poker until even more villages have to be demolished for more and more runways? Where do they draw the line? Would the Secretary of State care to rule out the possibility of a fourth runway, or even a fifth? Perhaps the most fundamental flaw in the Oxford Economic Forecasting study and the consultation document is that they consider only the status quo versus a third runway, and nothing else. They do not consider alternative ways of dealing with the problems that passengers all too often experience at Heathrow. I believe that in proposing a new high-speed rail line connecting Heathrow terminals directly with Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and the channel tunnel link to Paris and Brussels, we have found that alternative. Our proposal would relieve overcrowding problems and make Heathrow a much better airport, but without the negative consequences for the environment and for quality of life that would inevitably come with a third runway. It would not only dramatically improve public transport access to Heathrow— evidence from Europe clearly shows that high-speed rail provides a viable and attractive alternative to competing flights. For example, Air France has entirely abandoned flying between Paris and Brussels, preferring instead to charter carriages on Thalys high-speed trains. The extension of the Spanish high-speed rail network to the south had a major downward impact on domestic flight numbers. Figures published by BAA confirm that there were about 63,200 flights between Heathrow and Manchester, Leeds, Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam and Rotterdam in 2007.