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Heathrow

I entirely agree, and anyone who has listened to this debate would certainly draw that conclusion. As the hon. Gentleman says, the debate is not only on the third runway at Heathrow, nor on Heathrow in general, but on the need for a national policy review and a statement of exactly what aviation means to the national economy, and how we should deal with the requirements given all the options. Like many other hon. Members, I agree that a great deal has happened in the past five years that should cause us to look at the situation again. I am thinking of the volatility in the price of oil; the fact that peak oil supply is probably, on some calculations, only 40 years away; the increasing tightness of carbon budgets worldwide; and possibly—I realise that this is uncertain and that it could be challenged—the gradually changing attitude of many consumers to air travel. For all of those reasons, I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. The second issue is the local environmental impact on 2 million people in hard-put-upon communities in west London. Jets roar over densely populated areas, in some periods as frequently as every 30 seconds. Bad air quality hot spots already exist, and they will certainly increase if the expansion goes ahead. I am glad to leave talk of the road links back to London, which are often snarled up, to those who are far better acquainted with the situation—we heard powerful speeches from my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and Opposition Members on that. I shall say simply that those issues, which were eloquently expressed in the Chamber today, will have widespread political, economic and social consequences. We ignore that at our peril. I wish to concentrate on the third issue, which I think is decisive in its own right. To put it bluntly, tripling Britain’s airport capacity is irreconcilable with meeting our climate change mandatory targets. A parliamentary answer in April this year made it clear that aviation already accounts for 13 per cent. of the UK’s total climate change impact. That is quite a high figure, but the key point is that it is now the fastest-rising generator of greenhouse gases in Britain. That has awesome implications. The Tyndall centre in Norwich, which is widely respected worldwide for its climate change research, is now predicting that aviation emissions on their current trajectory will account for up to 100 per cent. of the UK Government’s carbon budget by 2050. In other words, even if we retired every car off our roads, unplugged every electronic device and closed every factory, we would still not be able to meet the climate change targets, because of aviation. I recognise that a Secretary of State for Transport may not be overly concerned about climate change targets that, after all, have to be met 40 years in the future. However, it is extremely unwise not to take account of the fact that we now have five-year carbon budgets. If aviation continues disproportionately to increase its share of that limited budget, others, which can only mean industry and private households, will have to take a sharply decreasing share. That could cause extreme difficulties, to put it mildly.