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Heathrow

I am a good European, and I am proud that the answer to these questions is a European answer, but we must take the lead. ““After you, Claude”” is no policy for a serious Government. I resent the Secretary of State’s suggestion that, because I am a passionate European, I am right, in a curious way, to believe that Europe will decide this. What will happen is that countries in Europe will take the lead, and we cannot take the lead—in the way that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change suggested we ought to—if the step that we take is a backward one. We cannot expect Europe to take a common view if we pre-empt that at the outset by expanding Heathrow airport in this way. It is because I am a committed European that I believe that my role in Europe is to lead and not just to follow.