Heathrow (Third Runway)

The debate has been curious. I do not support the expansion of Heathrow, but I was disappointed in the speech of the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers), which failed to rise to the occasion and showed that the Opposition still face a steep learning curve on aviation and transport policy. I applaud Labour Front Benchers' efforts to mitigate the consequences of Heathrow expansion. I applaud their efforts to set limits and restrictions, especially focusing on climate change concerns, to try to square the circle of environmental objectives and the interests of the economy and aviation. However, I do not believe that their position is tenable long term. The location of Heathrow means an inherent conflict between quality of life and environmental objectives, about which many hon. Members feel deeply, and the interests of the economy and aviation. I fully endorse the Secretary of State's view that we cannot sacrifice the latter without losing competitiveness to other countries. We must address the issue of how we can provide some additional capacity for aviation—which I believe is necessary—in a genuinely sustainable way. I listened with great care to the admirable speech that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Ruth Kelly) made. She focused in a very intelligent way on the importance of international measures, particularly the introduction of a system of carbon trading that could be applied to aviation in order to achieve the necessary effect. That is part of the answer, but it cannot address the other tensions that are inherent at Heathrow, including the problem of its location in the middle of a densely populated area of west London in which hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people live under the flight paths and are subjected to intolerable noise pressures. Nor can such a measure deal with the problem of a highly congested road network that is responsible for many of the air quality problems that the Government are trying to address. However effectively we reduce the emissions from aircraft, the emissions from motor traffic around Heathrow will remain a crucial constraint. Furthermore, as one or two hon. Members have said, there remains the separate but equally important issue of the impact on the people of Sipson and the surrounding areas, whose homes will be demolished to make way for this expansion. I do not believe that it is tenable to set that aside and not treat it as a serious issue. The question ultimately must be whether Heathrow is the only site on which we can achieve the maintenance of a hub airport capacity—which I believe is necessary and important to our economy—while meeting our environmental objectives. The answer is that I do not believe that Heathrow holds out that possibility, and that we have to look at the alternatives. Last Friday, I had the good fortune to travel to the Thames estuary, in the company of the Mayor of London and Douglas Oakervee, to explore a site that is the focus of a study being undertaken by Doug Oakervee into the feasibility of an estuary airport. In absolutely filthy weather conditions, we embarked on a barge from Sheerness and travelled to an extremely remote site some eight miles out into the estuary. It was the site not of a wind farm but of a world war two anti-aircraft battery that had been placed there to defend London from a different type of aviation in the 1940s. Interestingly, it is still there today. We could not have been given a clearer message that the site should be considered for an airport, if that were feasible. It is several miles from either shore, and therefore very remote. Also, aircraft would be able to take off and land over water, which would avoid the degree of conflict that is caused by noise problems in surrounding communities. That would give it a huge advantage over Heathrow. Furthermore, the river is relatively shallow at that point. The very fact that anti-aircraft batteries could be located there is living proof of that. As I said in an intervention on the Secretary of State earlier, Doug Oakervee was the chief engineer and project director responsible for the Hong Kong airport, and he is now the chairman of Crossrail. He is an extremely distinguished engineer, and he made it quite clear that, in engineering terms, it was a feasible option. He also believes that it would probably be feasible financially. It would be very expensive—no question—particularly because of the need for all the ancillary infrastructure, including the high-speed rail links and other links, necessary to make it work.