Planning Bill

Resisting the expansion of Heathrow Airport is an article of my political faith, and the Committee ought to know that. I declare an interest as the president of HACAN ClearSkies, which is the main campaigning group against the expansion of our airports. I want particularly to look in detail—I did the maths before I had a very good dinner tonight, so I am pretty sure that it is accurate—at Amendment No. 136, which questions the use of the number of passengers to assess the expansion of an airport. It is not really so relevant when you are thinking about the noise pollution and air pollution in an area. That is much more related to the number of air traffic movements. If you do the sums, 10 million passengers could be contained in 50,000 aeroplanes, if one assumes that the average—I am told—of 200 passengers per plane applied. If you had an average of 200 passengers per plane, an increase of 10 million passengers would mean 50,000 extra air traffic movements. That is not stated in the Bill. In fact, we know that does not happen, because planes do not have an average number of passengers. Sometimes they are quite small, and sometimes they fly with very few passengers at all. We have seen examples in the press recently of aeroplanes flying with no passengers, but they must do so to keep that slot in that airport open for that airline. We are causing air pollution and noise pollution just for the sake of keeping a slot open, with no passengers transported at all. Many more flights than 50,000 might be used to carry those 10 million passengers. As my noble friend said, the amendment is to probe the Government’s thinking on the issue and to attempt to more accurately quantify the nuisance to an area from noise and pollution, should the expansion go ahead. If the Government will not use just air traffic movements as the criteria, they should use both either/or; either 10 million passengers or a limit of 50,000 air traffic movements. That would be a much more reasonable way of expressing it. As my noble friend said, the recently announced Stansted expansion is for 10 million passengers and no more than 23,000 air traffic movements. If you do the maths, that assumes that every one of those 23,000 planes would have over 400 passengers, which is rubbish. We know that will not happen. Therefore, those 10 million passengers in fact are much more likely to be carried in 50,000 air traffic movements. My noble friend Lady Hamwee said that the conditions imposed melted away after the terminal 4 inquiry and the terminal 5 inquiry. In fact, we were told after terminal 4 that there would be no more expansion at Heathrow, and we were told during the terminal 5 inquiry—of which I attended a great deal—that there was no need for a third runway and that the rumours that were being put about were ridiculous. In those inquiries and just after, we were actually told lies. When I saw the figures for Stansted, I thought, ““Here we go again, misleading the public and trying to bamboozle people into thinking that there will be less disturbance than there really will be””. I urge the Government, on the side of honesty and decency, to specify carefully in the Bill just what we are expecting in terms of passenger numbers and air traffic movements.