---

Heathrow

I hope that the Government have listened to tonight’s very good debate. The message has been pretty clear, as we have heard speeches of passion and knowledge. I am not going to be uncharitable to the Secretary of State, who is new to his job, but I cannot pass over one element of his speech. I understand that he has not had time to be fully briefed on all the weaknesses in the Government’s position on noise, but his reply to the perfectly reasonable interjection by the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) was astonishing. He suggested that he was going to apply the same criteria to the possibility of ending runway alternation as he was going to apply to the prospect for a third runway. That was truly astonishing, as one issue is about levels of noise and the other is about the crucial matter of timing: they are completely different. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made a remarkable speech, as he passionately set out his concerns for his constituents. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) made a thoughtful speech, in which she liked the idea of looking further into high-speed rail, but queried whether it could make enough difference to justify its use as an alternative to a third runway. I shall return to this in a few moments. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire), in a thoughtful speech, sought to find areas where consensus could be achieved—another matter to which I shall return. He made the case for the other side of the argument passionately—not quite alone, but very nearly alone—from the Back Benches. I associate myself with the generous tribute of the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Alan Keen) to Sir Michael Bishop. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) threatened to lie down in front of a bulldozer. I must say that it would have to be a brave bulldozer. The right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) made a strong case for regional airports, and was the first to draw attention to the importance of all the spare capacity in them at a time when ““point to point”” flights are increasingly on the agenda. It was a remarkable coincidence that we should hear first a strong speech from the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) and then one from my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, East (Mr. Wilson). Both those Members, whose constituencies are a long way from Heathrow, said how much their constituents were affected by the existing operation. We then heard three speeches, of which the most remarkable was that by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), who explained just how seriously the proposed development would damage the credibility that the Government are rightly trying to build on climate change. We heard a typically punchy speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd), who defended his constituents vigorously. Other forms of impact were are all very well, he said, but what about the health impact? He also reminded us that a cap-and-trade scheme—or emissions trading, as we call it in Europe—can work only if a country has a sensible cap, which, sadly, we have not. The hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) produced his usual well-informed defence of the Government’s argument—the only one apart from that of my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne—and I shall return to some of his points later. We heard a powerful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening), whose remarkable investigations, through a series of freedom of information requests, have revealed so much about the gaps in the argument. We also heard strong speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands) and for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin). There are two propositions on which I believe we can agree. The first is that aviation is an important part not just of our economy, but of our way of life. Not only is it our fifth biggest industry; it provides opportunities for businesses and ordinary families of which our grandparents never dreamt. The second proposition is that we all want to make Heathrow a successful airport of which we can be proud. Where we disagree is on the question of how to balance the case for extra capacity presented by BAA and a number of airlines—and still, for a little bit longer, it seems, by the Government—against the huge environmental price to be paid by the local area, the wider region and the globe. The hints that we have been given by the Secretary of State in the media recently and what was said at the BAA conference—welcome as those comments are—suggest that the Government are suddenly warming to the idea of high-speed rail, but they also seem to involve a degree of selective amnesia. We have argued that high-speed rail could replace a significant chunk of Heathrow flights. The Government and BAA now respond by saying that we should have both, but that was not the position even a few months ago. As recently as March the hon. Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris), the then Under-Secretary of State for Transport, confirmed that not a single official in the Department was working on high-speed rail proposals. Indeed, until a few months ago, BAA was still committed to a programme of redevelopment of its terminals 1 to 4 and the Queen Elizabeth building which, had it gone ahead as planned, would have involved the Airtrack route through Feltham—which has pluses and minuses—but would have ruled out for a generation the proper construction of the Heathrow hub that is at the heart of our proposal. Today, passengers at Heathrow can take a train directly to very few major United Kingdom destinations. Either they must climb on to a frequently crowded underground train to reach a station where they can change to a train that can take them somewhere, or they must take the purpose-built Heathrow Express route to Paddington. Then, to reach most destinations, they must take an underground train or taxi to another terminus from which they can travel to their eventual destination. We say that that they should be able, in the terminal, to climb straight on to a high-speed train to the north of England or to Europe, or directly access the rail system to the west—including, Cardiff, for which the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley made such a strong case, and, indeed, Reading. The Secretary of State has made hints. If he wants to intervene, he is welcome to do so. So far he has been remarkably reluctant to challenge any of the attacks made on his alleged facts. The Government are welcome to move to our view on high-speed rail, but it is incredible for them to pretend that it was their policy a few months ago or even that they were looking at it seriously. It is very sad that the International Air Transport Association report of 2008 picked out Heathrow alone of all airports in the world for special mention for overcharging. Some of its problems are undoubtedly related to runway overcrowding, but not one of the issues for which BAA plc was slated by the Civil Aviation Authority a fortnight ago was related to runway capacity. They ranged from lack of lounge seating to slow provision of disembarkation piers to dirty facilities, strengthening the case for the break-up of BAA, to which a number of Members have alluded. Another area that needs to be addressed to make the airport better is security. My noble Friend Baroness Neville-Jones is carrying out a comprehensive study on security, which, by learning lessons from best practice abroad, should both improve security and reduce unnecessarily burdensome queues. The CAA has rightly highlighted that and threatened fines over it. The Government have been unwilling to focus on the issues affecting either local or global environments. Locally, people face serious problems with nitrogen dioxide, noise and mounting road congestion, which in turn feeds back into still further NOx problems. The Secretary of State has confirmed that NOx readings in excess of those set by the EU for 2010 have already been taken, and that is with existing levels. They are outlined in a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs document published last year, and the Environment Agency has pointed to:"““The potential for increased morbidity and mortality over a dense local population.””" It took a Greenpeace freedom of information request for this information to be dug out. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) pointed out, both the M4 and the M25 suffer from severe congestion, as do many of the lesser roads in west London. Congestion is bad for drivers and bad for business, and, of course, it contributes to NOx. I ask Members to imagine adding the equivalent of Gatwick to the existing Heathrow operation, and then let us remember how much bigger aircraft are getting. Many extra passengers will be arriving, a high proportion of them by car—more than 60 per cent. if present patterns continue. Time does not permit me to rehearse all the arguments made about noise, but my hon. Friend presented a devastating case. There is the brushing aside of the ANASE—Attitudes to Noise from Aviation Sources in England—study, and the fictitious aircraft that nobody is planning to build that plays such a big role in the profiling. Let me add one point. BAA has not helped itself by the stinginess of its insulation scheme. Boeing operates a useful website comparing the performance of various airports in this regard, and it shows Heathrow to have one of the stingiest arrangements in the world. Indeed, if Heathrow were to adopt tomorrow the approach voluntarily adopted by City airport, it would be insulating buildings as far away as Kensington. However, insulation is not the main issue. The plan for this scale of expansion, combined with the threat of an end to runway alternation, represents a potentially devastating blow to the peace and enjoyment of hundreds of thousands of people. There is not sufficient time to go back over the arguments on climate change, and after several excellent contributions, particularly that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal, I do not think I need to do so. We cannot on the one hand say, ““We want to lead globally on this””—which all the main parties agree on—and then on the other hand say, ““We are going to build this extra runway.”” The arguments on the other side are twofold. First, it is said that the aviation industry requires this expansion if Heathrow is to remain a world-class airport. It is certainly true that Heathrow has lost a small number of its thinnest routes in the past decade, but it remains connected to 180 airports, and eliminating some short-haul connections—not just the 3 per cent. to Manchester and Leeds, but also those to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam as the high-speed rail link kicks in—will release some spare capacity. When slots are changing hands for tens of millions of pounds, nobody will persuade me that Heathrow is close to the edge.