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Heathrow

We are all against it. We have no mayoral candidates, or anyone else, in favour of it. We are against any expansion of aviation in the south-east: we believe that there is no environmental case for it whatsoever. The issue of high-speed rail has been raised in a positive way by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet, the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington and me, and in a sort of ““grunt, grunt”” way by one or two Labour Members who do not agree that it has a role to play. Well, it has got a role to play. First, let us consider carbon. Eurostar’s externally validated figures demonstrate that the environmental cost in terms of carbon of travelling from London to Paris by train is about a tenth of what it would be by air. The Department for Transport fiddled some other figures earlier—that was the fault not of the present Secretary of State, but of one of his predecessors. The original campaign for high-speed rail was discredited in part because we were told it was not particularly carbon-friendly, but an examination of the figures for that shows that the Department had assumed a speed for high-speed rail that would have been impossible and that no one was projecting, and a load factor so low as to suggest that the train was almost empty. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Department’s figures demonstrated a poor carbon case. If sensible and realistic parameters are applied, however, it can be demonstrated that there is a massive carbon saving. We know that plenty of journeys could switch from Heathrow. There are up to 60 flights a day to Paris, which is more than to any other destination even though there is a very good connecting train service, and there are still 36 flights a day to Manchester, despite the improved west coast main line, and other such regional UK destinations could also be considered in this regard. Even if the high-speed line went only to Manchester or Leeds—although I would like it to go further than that, up to Scotland—there would be a significant saving in journey time for Glasgow and Edinburgh, which would make the rail line more attractive all the way down its route.