Heathrow (Third Runway)

I wanted to speak in today's debate because I want the Government to understand that, even 50 miles down the road to the west of London, my constituency is still one of those affected by noise from aircraft coming to and departing from Heathrow. Many of the points that have been made by Members whose constituencies adjoin mine apply to my constituency. My postbag on this subject is large, because Henley and the surrounding area is one of those places above which aircraft bank to approach Heathrow. That causes noticeable intrusion. My constituency also contains the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty, where one of the features is tranquillity—an escape for Londoners as much as a feature for locals. We spend an enormous amount of time going to great lengths locally to preserve that on the ground with tight planning, but it would seem that we are not prepared to do that in the air. The hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) has mentioned some of the local difficulties on the ground, rather than in the air, particularly in relation to air quality. Of course, many of those difficulties relate to and come from congestion on the roads. None of my constituents has any belief or trust at all that the measures proposed by the Government to try to relieve congestion on the M4 and the M25 will have the slightest effect. Unfortunately, they are coming to the conclusion that there will inevitably be a wall of congestion between my constituency and London, as a result of the third runway going ahead. We need to reiterate, and understand, that being anti-third runway is not the same as being anti-Heathrow or anti-aviation industry. I am not anti-Heathrow; I am not anti-aviation industry. No hon. Member who has spoken today has seriously doubted whether Heathrow will be a major part of the south-east's air transport network, at least for our lifetime. That is why there is such a huge need to make it better, rather than bigger. To do that, we need to understand that high-speed rail is an alternative that would take passengers out of the air, and not just make it easier for them to travel when they land. If Members do not think that attitudes and behaviours are already changing as a result of experience of high-speed rail travel, they are wrong. I give my own example: having used high-speed trains in mainland Europe, I now find it inconceivable that I would fly, except in the most dire circumstances, even between destinations as far apart as Geneva and Rome, as my experience of using high-speed rail networks to get to those places has been so positive. There has been much mention of a number of business leaders who have claimed that the third runway is essential for the global competitiveness of the UK—or perhaps we should say the south-east. I am not surprised. It is not the first time, and I doubt that it will be the last, that many of those business leaders have been out of touch with people, partly because they, like the Government, have failed to reject the old-fashioned notion of predict and provide. If we move away from those business leaders and speak to businesses on the ground, we see that many of them have already moved away from a business-centric model of how development should take place to one in which there is a balance between a range of issues, including climate change and general environmental impact. Those issues are the lifeblood of those businesses as much as earning profits is. I find the claims for the essential role of the expansion of Heathrow increasingly fanatical. As Members have said, that is partly due to the refusal to see Heathrow as part of a ring of airports around London. There is no proven link between the number of runways and global competitiveness. How have we lost competitiveness in the UK in the past five years, since the last major redevelopment and extension at Schiphol? There is no evidence to show that we have done so. It is even more absurd when the argument involves comparing London and Frankfurt as financial markets. We are asked to believe that the defining factor in London's continued success as a global market is the number of runways that Heathrow has, compared with Frankfurt. That is absolute nonsense. London is a global market; Frankfurt is not. That is due to the substance of the markets with which they deal, rather than the impact of individual runways. Two years after the last major development at Schiphol, the Corporation of London produced a report entitled ““The Competitive Position of London as a Global Financial Centre””. It showed that the development had had no impact on the position at all, and the foreword states that two year afterwards, London had"““moved further ahead of Frankfurt and Paris as””" an"““international financial centre””." The report looked into what people considered to be the defining factors in that success, and business and transport infrastructure did not even make it into the top three. As other hon. Members have said, the most disappointing aspect of the Government's position is the lack of serious study of alternatives, but what particularly stuck in my craw was the notion that the Government were suddenly wedded to the idea of UK plc. After all, they have spent the past 11 years demolishing the idea of UK plc through excessive regionalisation and the pitting of one region against another. I cannot fail to see that the decision on Heathrow is more a reflection of the triumph of that policy, and of the greater lobbying powers of the south-east, than of anything else.