Heathrow (Third Runway)

I am grateful for that intervention. A number of colleagues on both sides of the House have raised some criticisms of the Government for not holding a formal vote on Heathrow's third runway in the Commons, in Government time. That issue was initially raised by the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening). I intended to intervene, but I generally try not to intervene on Back Benchers when there is a time limit on speeches. I wanted to ask the hon. Lady whether, if the Government had brought forward a Government motion to support the proposal for a third runway and if that motion had been carried, she would have accepted that decision and walked away from the campaign. Would anyone in the Chamber who opposes a third runway respect that democratic decision? The corollary of that is to ask whether, if such a motion had been defeated, they would expect the Government to adhere to that decision. The answer, of course, would be yes. The absence of a formal Government motion on the issue makes not a jot of difference. The hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) suggested that by taking the EDM signed by 57 Labour MPs and using it as the text for an Opposition day motion, the Conservatives were somehow extending the hand of friendship across the Chamber in an effort to build some kind of cross-party consensus. Perhaps he has not been here as long as I thought that he had, but that is a typical silly little tactic that is used only to try to embarrass colleagues who have signed an EDM by asking them afterwards, ““Why didn't you vote for it in the Lobby?”” I will give to colleagues who are considering voting for the Conservative motion a good reason not to do so: it is a Conservative motion. There is all the difference in the world between words in an EDM and the same words in a Conservative Opposition motion.