---

Heathrow

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I welcome your reiteration of Mr. Speaker’s statement that the House should properly be informed first. I fear, however, that BAA rather than the House was informed first, which underlines the concerns of many of us that the Government are hand in glove with BAA. It shows that the Government give higher priority to keeping BAA rather than Members of this House informed about their intentions. That is nothing new, of course. We know that in January 2007 there was a meeting between Department for Transport officials and BAA, at which they discussed how to ratchet down forecasts of the environmental impact. The Sunday Times, which revealed this matter, said that the civil servant involved had sought clarification from BAA on what data could be"““stripped out to achieve compliance””." I raised this matter before, as did the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening), and no attempt was made to correct my account, so it was accepted as fact by the Government of the day. There seems to be no attempt to correct it now, so the hand-in-glove relationship between the Government and BAA continues to this day. In common with the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin), I do not blame BAA; it has a business to look after and is lobbying as effectively as it can—very effectively, in fact, as it has got the Government on board adopting its own policy. I blame the Government, and I ask the House this question: if BAA had written the Secretary of State’s statement today, in what way, if any, would it have differed from the statement that was actually read out? I suggest that BAA did write it.