Airports Commission: Final Report — House of Commons, 2015-11-26
Topic: Transportation
Alan Haselhurst (Conservative, Centre-right): I, too, am grateful for the opportunity to have this debate. It is our first opportunity to discuss the Davies commission and it is giving us an early view of how colleagues will be disobliging to each other in the course of deploying their arguments My interest in this matter goes back a long way, as the Official Report will bear witness. I often think that when I die, the word "Stansted" will be found engraved on my heart. I must declare that interest, which was formed when I was the hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich in Greater Manchester. That was at the time of the Roskill report on airports policy. I came to the conclusion that no inland site should be chosen for London’s third airport. Indeed, the report did not even recommend Stansted. I saw all the other sites and, as far as I was concerned, none of them was correct My stance was reinforced when BAA, the statutory authority at the time, concluded the infamous pact with West Sussex County Council not to have a second runway at Gatwick, the second airport, within 40 years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) said. To my mind, that was the aviation equivalent of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. BAA denied that anything could be done about the Perry Oaks sludge works, which sit to the west of Heathrow. I was told, as though I was a child, that I did not understand—it was too costly, it was technically impossible and so on. Of course, that is where terminal 5 now stands The Davies report comes out in favour of a hub airport. I am prepared, on balance, to accept that that is the current need. The report backs Heathrow in support of that concept. It then stops short of following its own logic by ruling out a fourth runway. Most airlines would say, "You can’t have a hub airport that is limited to three runways—look at what the competition is doing." Every factor that persuaded Davies to recommend a third runway will recur in time, whether it is connectivity with our provincial airports or the need for more long-haul routes to be established The tactic of ruling out a fourth runway is a repeat of what has happened on so many occasions in the past. It is a worthless condition. The infamous letter of Sir John Egan in 1995, when terminal 5 was finally discussed, stated "we do not want, nor shall we seek, an additional runway." It stated that they had "called on the Inspector to recommend that, subject to permission being given for T5, an additional Heathrow runway should be ruled out forever." When representatives of BAA appeared before the Select Committee on Transport, on which I had the honour to serve in the 1990s, we put it to them time and again that it could be recommended that, in addition to terminal 5, they should have a third runway, but they denied it, denied it and denied it. We cannot believe people when they try to bind the future in that way My constituents in Saffron Walden are also familiar with that tactic. After the airports inquiries of 1981 to 1983, Graham Eyre stated: "There are compelling reasons which are now manifest as to why a second runway at Stansted should not be developed under any circumstances and Government should make an unequivocal declaration of intention that a second main runway will not be built." He later described a second runway as an "environmental catastrophe". The Government made that declaration, but within seven years the Government—not a different Government, but the same one—began to water it down. Davies himself has said that in the longer term, he sees no difficulty with a second runway at Stansted. That completely devalues any undertaking that is given There are other weaknesses in the Davies report’s support for a third runway at Heathrow, as hon. Members have said. As I read the report, the impression grew on me that every consideration was being bent towards a recommendation on which the commission had already decided. Air quality has been mentioned. Will the cost of surface transport be achieved? Will there really be many regional airport connections and will they last for very long? I question the practicality of ruling out early arrivals at the so-called hub airport because of the effect that that will have on connectivity, if it is to be an effective airport in the future. I question how many new long-haul routes will be created. The accumulation of doubts could affect the timing and financing of any third runway at Heathrow Some people say that competition between airports is unrealistic. I am not sure that I agree. There is no doubt at all that Gatwick and Stansted have become much better places from which to operate under their new owners. However, the House will understand that it would be inconsistent with the view I formed a long time ago if I now accepted that north-west Essex was the most admirable site for a four-runway airport. I am sorry if this view disappoints the unlikely duo of my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and Lord Sugar I still believe that the Government of 1970 were right and that my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip is right in saying that the correct long-term answer lies in the estuary. To have a world-class airport for a world-class city, London needs to start again. The British have built excellent airports in other parts of the world, but not here. We should think in bigger terms and we should also think of the northern powerhouse.