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Heathrow

I am the third Hillingdon MP to speak. My constituents are not being thrown out of their homes and they are not losing their churches, schools and cemeteries, but Hillingdon speaks with one voice on this issue. My constituents’ quality of life will be affected, by the new flight path and by an increase in traffic on the roads—but stronger than that is the real sense that Heathrow is big enough and that the social and environmental costs are too great to proceed. A voice says, ““We were told that terminal 5 was the end of it. That was a lie, so why should we believe anything else that is said by this Government or by anyone involved with this process?”” The message from Hillingdon is that enough is enough. That is the local view, and I make no apology for stating it, but, as the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) also acknowledged in his brilliant speech, there is a big national decision to be taken. The Secretary of State drew himself up to his full height at the Dispatch Box and talked about a long-term strategic decision—what a way to go about it. What a shambolic process. If this is how we take long-term strategic decisions, shame on us. This decision is rooted in an out-of-date White Paper—life has moved on a long way since then—and in a consultation document that was condemned by my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), who is also my neighbour, as a dodgy dossier with no credibility, and it all stands and rests on a business case that the Government are not even prepared to make or to commission. The work is being done by outside bodies, financed by the industry, and the best that they can come up with is that there will be, at present value, benefits of about £5 billion over 70 years. In this process, which has been so badly managed by the Department for Transport, the Government have left themselves open to accusations of collusion with BAA plc. It has got that bad. What a shambolic process. That is no way to make a long-term strategic decision of this importance. The Secretary of State is right to say that there is a capacity issue at Heathrow to address, and we have reached crunch time for a decision on it. We must decide whether to adopt the predict and provide approach to accommodate demand. He says that that is not what the Government are doing. We are now told, because the Labour briefing to Back Benchers says so, that no decision has been taken: you could have fooled me! It feels very much as though this Government have taken a decision and have subscribed to the myth that a nation’s status is judged by the size of its airport, so we are condemned to continue playing a game of ““My airport’s bigger than yours””.