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Heathrow

No, I would like to make a bit of progress. I am conscious that the Front Benchers are taking up a lot of time, and lots of Back Benchers want to speak. The potential for substituting high-speed rail for flights is likely to improve significantly with improvements and additions to the high-speed rail network in the UK and the rest of Europe. Furthermore, there is an increasingly widespread acknowledgment that the flight growth forecast made in the 2003 White Paper should be revisited. The White Paper is simply no longer fit for purpose, drafted as it was in completely different economic times and before the urgent need to tackle climate change had forced its way up the political agenda. Eurostar tells us that its high-speed trains emit just a tenth of the carbon of competing aviation. The latest generation of high-speed trains from Alstom are greener still. Even with a higher carbon electricity generation mix than those figures assume, it is clear that high-speed trains are far greener than planes. Our high-speed link would provide a major boost to jobs throughout the country, but the impact would be particularly strongly felt in the midlands and the north, helping to remedy long-standing imbalances in the economy—imbalances that have seen more and more pressure piled on the south-east with the north left at an economic disadvantage and starved of the transport improvements it needs.