Heathrow (Third Runway)

I speak as someone who has changed his mind on Heathrow. I have done so because, although I understand the importance of the competitiveness of British industry, I am convinced that if we go ahead with the proposal, it will make it impossible to meet reasonable climate change requirements. That is why I want to address the issue in a rather more measured way than that of the Secretary of State. I have no wish to claim any constituency interest in Heathrow, except to say that it will be better for my constituency if Heathrow is expanded, because it will make it less likely that Stansted will be expanded. I am not biased in that sense. We must take the problem seriously and ask how we deal with it in a way that meets the requirements of the Climate Change Bill and climate change demands. We cannot turn round and say that there is a balance and that we are going down on this or that side of it. I say that there is no balance: we have to meet the demands of dealing with climate change, so there is a need for an alternative policy to achieve that. I wish I could go along with the argument for Heathrow, but when one looks at the facts and figures, I do not think that they stack up. It has been suggested by the former Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Bolton, West (Ruth Kelly), that everything will be all right because of the European emissions trading system. I am a fan of that system, but there is no way that the price of those certificates will outweigh some of the economic incentives for unnecessary airline flights. It will not happen; the figures quite clearly prove it. It just happens to be economically advantageous to fly flights to Manchester, even though that is not a sensible thing to do, particularly if we replace the present railway line with a much faster alternative. The truth is that the flights going to Manchester show just how wrong it is to argue that there is somehow a scarcity of slots. The truth is that if we did not have the unnecessary flights, we would have the slots to the north of Ireland that are necessary, if that is the argument. The first thing we need to do, then, is to get rid of the flights that are not necessary and replace them with such additional air transport as may be needed. There is also the argument about stacking. One can deal with stacking very simply and remove 11 per cent. of emissions by having a sensible European-wide air traffic control instead of the present divided system. That would mean planes would not take off from Madrid unless there was point at which they could land. That is a sensible way forward. I am not going to argue the geographical case against Heathrow, as that is for others to do. In any case, I am in favour of replacing Heathrow for such air traffic as we need—a considerable amount—with a new airport, simply because the Hudson river example demonstrates the exact opposite of what the Secretary of State has suggested. The fact is that it shows just how dangerous it is to fly large numbers of flights over extremely densely populated areas. That also leads me on to say that to rely on arguments in the aviation White Paper of 2003 when we have moved on so far in climate change terms shows how difficult it is to resolve the problem. There are four things that I want to put to Ministers. First, it is very difficult to take the Government's assurances on a number of these issues seriously when the Environment Agency—the Government's own agency—which has not shown itself previously to be enthusiastically opposed on these issues, tells us that the Heathrow expansion should not go ahead. Secondly, I must request that we should not ask for a derogation from EU rules on low-level emissions because if we go ahead with that, it makes the whole argument about credibility very difficult to defend. The Government need to tell us that we are going to meet the EU requirements, not have a derogation and show that we can achieve what we say in a manner that any environmentally supportive Government would do. Those are local issues about the local environment, but the biggest issue of all comes back to the question of climate change. Here I want to address the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in particular. Britain needs to lead Europe and Europe needs to lead the world on this issue. President Obama represents a remarkable and wonderful change, but he will have his own internal difficulties, which will build up as the honeymoon period inevitably diminishes, so we have to put ourselves into the strongest possible position. I know that the Secretary of State feels that he has gained enough in this whole argument to put forward the case that we can both lead on climate change and have a third runway at London airport. I put it to him that that will not be possible, because at some point we have to draw the line and say that we cannot go on with the expansion of aviation at its current rate as well as realistically meet our climate change targets without putting so heavy a burden on the rest of industry that it will lose the very jobs that Heathrow is supposed to provide.