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Heathrow

The hon. Gentleman asks for evidence. I shall give him a piece of what I believe to be evidence that has not been mentioned in this debate so far. Let us consider the air freight industry, and the two great world integrators of that industry—FedEx and DHL. Where are their European hubs? They are at Brussels and Charles de Gaulle. We have missed that opportunity; those jobs have gone. Businesses that want to locate next to an integrator, because they need just-in-time, high-value widgets, have gone. Those hubs, and the jobs and relocations that go with them, have disappeared. We will not get them back. I hope that the hon. Gentleman finds that adequate evidence. The other points that I want to make come from my experience of representing the majority shareholder in Manchester airport and chairing the board at Manchester airport when it built the only extra runway that has been built in this country since the second world war. The hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) looks surprised, but that is true. I do not blame any of my hon. Friends or any other hon. Member for doing their best to represent their constituents’ interests when their lives will be affected by the building of a runway. That is the proper job of a Member of Parliament. However, when we talked to people and carried out opinion polls, we found that even in the village that would be most badly affected by the second runway—Styal, in the second most affluent county in the country, Cheshire—there was majority support for the proposal. There were many headlines against it, but it had majority support. We were able to satisfy many of the environmental criteria. There is a detailed argument, which is often about cash. One of the people whose house was going to be affected by the second runway at Manchester fought the hardest battle. Her grandson was a barrister. At the end of the day, it came down to cash, and that barrister, who had fought a hard fight, went to work for British Airways, on the other side.