Heathrow (Third Runway)

I was not completely sure how to attract your attention, Madam Deputy Speaker. [Laughter.] For some of my constituents, last week's statement was heartbreaking. Most of them, faced with the loss of their homes, schools, places of worship and whole community, found it devastating. For most of them, it brought about a stronger sense of community, and absolute determination to fight on to ensure that this disastrous proposal does not go ahead. My forced absence from Parliament over the past week meant that I held a number of meetings across the constituency, and the Mayor of London held his question time there, too. As a result, I spoke to more than 1,000 constituents that week. The message that they want me to convey to the House, and to the Government, is: ““We will not be moved. We will not allow this to happen. We will not allow our communities to be bulldozed in this way.”” I heard the Secretary of State say that he has ““carefully weighed”” the interests of local people. My constituents and those of the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) and other local MPs would be more convinced of that if, over the past decade, a single Secretary of State had come to our area to meet local residents. Ministers have been to the area plenty of times to meet the aviation businesses, but not one Secretary of State at any invitation has come and met the local people. I find that appalling. I issue the invitation again today, not to meet hand-picked delegations of one or two, but to come and meet the people whose homes they are threatening to demolish. I do not expect Members to know every detail of the decision. That is not the way of things. No one can know everything about every debate and every decision, but because it affects the lives of so many people, I expect Members to look at some of the information available to us. I have pored over the published documents associated with last week's statement. They are voluminous, but it is worth time and attention to study them. When the Government make the decision, we need to know what the economic arguments are, the implications for local communities, the environmental impact and what people feel about it. I jotted down some of the arguments that we have heard today. My right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) set out the alternative economic case. Heathrow is not failing. It is expanding. There will be another 30 million passengers in the coming planning period. The argument that it is failing as an aviation resource is laughable when one considers the intensity of the development that is taking place and the number of passengers that we are moving. Comparison has been made with our international competitors. We are moving across London and the south-east nearly three times the number of passengers that other capital cities are moving. Reference was made to a hub. It was pointed out that we have five airports, or six, including Northolt. Each one is providing a specialist service for the area. What we need to do now is connect them so that they become a collective hub, allowing people to fly into London through any airport and to fly wherever they want. That is the future for aviation in this country. The reason that it has not happened—let us be honest about it—is the strength of lobbying by BAA and BA, self-interestedly trying to develop solely Heathrow as their own airport to maximise the profits from BAA's ownership of Gatwick and Heathrow. We need to cut through that self-interested lobbying and develop the future of aviation in this country, so that it will be sustainable and have a collective, co-ordinated hub linked by high-speed rail. Members need to read the documentation about the social impacts of the development. We know about the 700 houses in Sipson because that is in the documentation, but there is no mention of Harmondsworth, Harlington, Cranford, South Hayes and all the rest. It is like Brigadoon. It is almost as though they had disappeared off the face of the earth. When Sir John Egan, the chief executive of BAA, wrote to my constituents at the time of the building of the fifth terminal, he said that BAA would not go for a third runway because of the destruction of 3,300 homes. There are now 4,000 homes in that area, which means that people in Harmondsworth, Harlington, Cranford Cross and Longford—this is particularly so as a result of the scrapping of the Cranford agreement—will live in homes that will eventually be bulldozed or in areas where they are breathing poisoned air and which have been rendered unliveable by noise and air pollution. The House, without a vote, is determining the forced movement of 10,000 people. Let us recognise that. It is not mentioned in the documentation. It is not just a matter of 700 homes. At one of my meetings, one of the people from Sipson got up and said, ““We're the lucky ones. Others face the lingering death of their communities around the area.”” The health implications for my constituents and others have been mentioned. We have been asking for a health impact assessment around the airport for almost 15 years. I took evidence to the terminal 5 inquiry about the respiratory conditions in our area. We did a survey. We asked the Government to make a health impact assessment before they made any decision, but none was forthcoming. My local primary care trust has just written to the Secretary of State saying that it would carry out the assessment but that it needed the necessary funding. How can we go forward with a decision such as this without even assessing the health consequences for my community? The economic arguments in the document are almost laughable. I say to hon. Members from other parts of the country that the costs are unsustainable. Grupo Ferrovial, the Spanish company involved, will pay for the building of the runway and the terminal itself, but we taxpayers will pay all the ancillary costs. For the next decade, that will squeeze out of this country's transport budget any potential for transport improvements across the country. Basically, we are committing taxpayers' resources to subsidise the profits of a Spanish company that has just taken over the British Airports Authority for speculative gain. Let me go back to the conditions. It has been said time and again in the House that the conditions will not stick. There is almost consensus on it; no one believes that they will do so. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) asked what single commitment BAA had given that it had adhered to, or that any Government had adhered to. We are told that the conditions will be legally binding, but we have been here so many times before. I am grateful for the lobbying done by some Secretaries of State in Cabinet, but to be frank, some of the commitments and conditions imposed do not stack up. The argument that there will be green slots on the runway, for aeroplanes that do not yet even exist, is farcical. People should look at some of the statistics in the paperwork published last week. There is even one analysis that says that in 2002 more than 7,500 homes were located in areas suffering from air pollution above the European Union limits, and that in 2015 there will be none. How will that miracle be brought about—on the basis of the assessment provided by BAA about non-polluting, non-noise making aeroplanes that will run off the new runway that will be developed by the company itself for profits? Nobody is given credible reassurances. I turn to the process itself. I am still unclear about how the decision will be made. We were assured that if there was to be a national policy statement in advance of the decision, it would be consulted on and there would be parliamentary approval in some form. I want that commitment today. I want there to be a vote in the House. The hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) quoted back to the Prime Minister something that he said when people were on the roof of the Chamber; I almost got the blame for that one as well. The Prime Minister said that the decision would be made not on the roof, but in this Chamber. I expect him to adhere to that commitment. I expect any national policy statement that will inform the planning and infrastructure commission to be debated and decided on the Floor of the House. What is wrong with debating infrastructure projects here? We have just spent the past two years debating Crossrail, which will have a major impact. Actually, I opposed that project in the early '90s, but as a result of the debate on the legislation we have improved it and as a result of democratic discussion and a vote in the House, there was consensus across all political parties. Why can that not happen on the most significant aviation infrastructure project in a generation, which at this rate will be decided by the Government? Finally, I find it unseemly how lobbyists have been able to permeate Government decision making on this issue. There has been exposure of a revolving door of lobbyists, and a Member of the House of Lords is paid full time to lobby on the issue on behalf of the aviation industry. The measure will not be credible without a vote of this House.