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Heathrow

What is wrong with Britain when we can never take any big decisions in a sensible manner? I happen to think that airport expansion is not—for reasons associated with climate change—the way forward. If it really is necessary to have more airport facilities, it would be sensible to do what every sensible nation has done, which is to put them somewhere where aircraft do not have to fly up and down over large numbers of people. That seems perfectly obvious to me. Why we cannot take such infrastructure decisions defeats me. It is depressing in the extreme to see a former Minister laugh at the idea of doing something about high-speed rail, when he used to be in charge of the railways at a time when nobody was working for the railways, and then suggest that it is somehow inappropriate to demand what every other nation in Europe has done about similar problems. We then heard the Secretary of State suggest that it was somehow disgraceful for Members to be against Heathrow expansion on the grounds that their constituents were affected. He sought to distinguish me from my colleagues on the basis that I had a high-minded view whereas they had a low-minded view, which seemed to me to be intolerable. It is not taking a low-minded view to say that people’s constituents deserve a better quality of life than the one they will get if we go ahead with a third runway at Heathrow. I will not be distinguished from my colleagues in that way simply because I do not have a constituency interest in the matter. I have a very big interest in it, which is the interest of my children and my grandchildren—and unless we bite the bullet and face the fact of what climate change really means, we might as well give up the Climate Change Bill and all the rest of it. I read carefully what the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change said:"““Only if Britain plays its part will a global deal in Copenhagen to cut emissions be possible, so far from retreating from our objectives, we should reaffirm our resolve.””—[Official Report, 16 October 2008; Vol. 480, c. 935.]" What does he then do? He goes to Copenhagen and says, ““What I want you to do is to follow the British route. We are going to build a new coal-fired power station in Kingsnorth without any kind of carbon capture or sequestration. We are going to expand the airport at Stansted. We have already increased the number of airplanes there. What is more, to show our commitment to the battle against climate change, we are going to have a third runway at Heathrow.”” What kind of leadership is Britain going to be able to provide in Copenhagen if the Government fail to understand that joined-up thinking is a necessary part of fighting climate change? The truth of the matter is that we have a real opportunity at this moment to set the world on the right course. It is no good wittering on about the fact that this or that country has not done it, so until they do, we are not going to do it. We did not win the battle of the industrial revolution by saying, ““We are not going forward with industrialisation until they have.”” In the new green revolution, we have to take these decisions for the economic future of our country. I remind the Secretary of State that the quality of life report was written by someone who did not have a constituency reason for writing it and he did so at the point at which the Conservative party took the ideas on board—not for short-term local constituency reasons, but for the longer-term reason that we cannot cut our emissions by 80 per cent. by 2050 and build a third runway at Heathrow at the same time. We simply cannot do that. The Secretary of State’s problem is simple. He must recognise that there comes a moment in the life of any politician—it is a very frightening moment—when he has to think about how he is going to tell his grandchildren about the decision he made. This right hon. Gentleman is truly a right hon. Gentleman; if he does not have grandchildren, there are many surrogates to help him. He is a right hon. Gentleman and he knows very well that it is not honourable to do in the short term what he knows will destroy the policy of this and any other future Government of this country in the long term. The building of a third runway at Heathrow will make any possibility of Britain leading the world on climate change absolutely impossible. To suggest that we would replace present capacity by means of a sensibly placed airport somewhere in the estuary is reasonable, but a replacement is what it must be. People speak with forked tongue, if that is not a unparliamentary phrase, when they say—as my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) said—that we are not talking about expansion while asking, as he did, for more airport capacity to allow flights to Bangalore, Osaka and other such cities. It cannot be said that this is merely a matter of ““tidying up”” the airport; the intention is to expand the airport, to allow more flights, to increase emissions, and to make it more difficult for people to live nearby. That is the purpose of this proposal. What is more, as the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) pointed out, the same arguments will emerge next time. I have been in the House for a long time, and I have heard them all before. I have heard it said that we must have a fourth terminal, we must have a fifth terminal and we must have more capacity, because otherwise Heathrow will collapse, the British economy will collapse, and the world will collapse. That is not true, and the figures have to be fiddled to make that argument appear true. I realise that every time I look at the figures, and I hope that the Secretary of State will be honourable enough to look at them again. First, a calculation must be made on the basis that the airport is a place where people come in and go out. To make the figures work it is necessary to include both the number coming in and the number going out, but that is not what is actually happening: only one movement is involved. It is possible to halve the percentages, which is supposed to be so important, merely by getting the figures right. Then there is the comparison with rail travel. It is 13 times as sensible to travel to Paris by rail as to fly there, but the only way in which to contradict that statistic is to pretend that no one is on the train and everyone is on the aeroplane. If a full aeroplane of the most efficient kind is compared with a train containing one person in each carriage, it can indeed be proved that the aeroplane is more efficient. That is not a true representation of what is happening, but it is what must be done. The Government stand accused of being prepared to use any figures that are around to prove a case on which they have already decided. That leads me to the subject of the consultation, and, indeed, to the speech of the Secretary of State. Let me say frankly to him that it is not acceptable to turn to the House and argue that because the Government have met the requirements of 2003—even if they have not—the case has somehow been proved. The case that the Secretary of State must answer is this: how does he explain the expansion of Heathrow in terms of the commitments on climate change that are being considered at this moment in both Houses of Parliament? How does he explain the expansion of Heathrow in terms of what will be the 2009 Copenhagen statement? What will the Secretary of State tell the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change that he should say when he goes to Copenhagen? I have written one or two speeches in my time, but I would not like to try to write that speech. What is more, I do not think that he would accept it.