Kramer on Heathrow

10.42.04am GMT Wed 12th Nov 2008

• ' . . THE Secretary of State said something that many of my constituents will regard as the bare-faced truth but that was quite shocking to hear-that not only his Government but previous Governments have clearly given the steer that Heathrow was to expand in future. . . '

[Nov 11]: Susan Kramer (Cabinet Office; Richmond Park, Liberal Democrat): Will the Transport Secretary give way?

Geoff Hoon (Secretary of State, Department for Transport; Ashfield, Labour): I will give way in a second. We remain confident in the robustness of our forecasts. Indeed, only last year, Mr. Cameron argued that "it's unrealistic to think aviation is not going to grow"…

. . Susan Kramer: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Geoff Hoon: I will when I have finished making this point.

. . Susan Kramer: rose-

Geoff Hoon: The problem is that Heathrow's runways are already full. The airport is operating at around 99 per cent. capacity, . .

. . Susan Kramer: rose-

. . Susan Kramer: rose-

Geoff Hoon: This is the policy of the Conservative party: to constrain growth at our only hub airport. For an anti-European party to be exporting British jobs to the continent is a disgrace, and the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet knows it.

. . Susan Kramer: rose-

Geoff Hoon: I will give way.

Susan Kramer: I thank the Secretary of State for noticing me. If he looks at his own technical documents, attached to the consultation, he will find that leisure demand is driven primarily by fares, and specifically by cheap fares. We have cheap fares because aviation is so heavily subsidised. If it were properly priced, the demand that the Secretary of State has just claimed to be the basis for Heathrow would not exist. As for business demand, if he talks to firms he will find that they require a sufficiency of destinations. They do not require the ability to travel to every destination on the globe. That is why, although the number of destinations has fallen, business in London has increased at exactly the same time.

Geoff Hoon: I am not at all surprised by the Liberal Democrats' propensity to damage British business. What disappoints me deeply is that an Opposition party that aspires to government should want to damage business so irrevocably. The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet shakes her head, but I have a stream of quotations from senior business people who are appalled at the position that the Conservative party has taken, and cannot understand why the interests of British business are being so seriously damaged by a policy that the hon. Lady has advocated.

. . Susan Kramer: Can the hon. Lady cite the studies she has seen that determine what level of transit passengers is necessary to ensure a wide range of destinations? I question whether she could find such a study, because many other hub airports have a wider range of destinations than Heathrow on much lower percentages of transit traffic.

Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside, Labour): The fact is that transit passengers are important to enable international flights to develop. Heathrow is full-it operates at more than 98 per cent. capacity, and that is why it is losing some of its flights to rivals such as Schiphol, Paris and Frankfurt, where more runways cater for fewer passengers with greater reliability. That fact was highlighted in the recent Competition Commission report, which examined BAA's operations. The importance of regional routes for regional connectivity should also be taken into account. I am a strong supporter of high-speed rail, but I would pause before advocating that we should sever aviation links between the regions and the capital. That would be a major step … …

. . Susan Kramer: I have obviously timed this terribly badly, because the Secretary of State has just chosen this moment to leave. The Secretary of State said something that many of my constituents will regard as the bare-faced truth but that was quite shocking to hear-that not only his Government but previous Governments have clearly given the steer that Heathrow was to expand in future. My constituents have been told very directly, first in the battle over terminal 4 and then over terminal 5, that each expansion was going to be the last. I remember being taken aside by Sir John Egan, who tried to explain that the then Member for Richmond Park, now Baroness Tonge, did not understand aviation economics when she said that terminal 5 would be followed by the third runway.

I suppose that to hear it said so openly is refreshing in some ways, but in many ways it is a shock. It explains much of the cynicism and concern that my constituents feel about BAA and the Government when it comes to anything to do with Heathrow.

Someone else no longer in his place, Mr. Wilshire, talked about the third runway and the expansion of Heathrow as if that were going to lead to a new dawn. There may be a little breathing space when there is some capacity and a pleasant atmosphere but, given the way that BAA runs that airport, it will be filled to the brim even if it has to offer £4 seats. That is how the aviation industry works: if it is given some additional infrastructure and capacity, it will do to fares whatever is necessary to fill it. In only a matter of years, we would return to exactly the same chaos we have now.

John Gummer (Suffolk Coastal, Conservative): Does the hon. Lady agree that the reason for that is the financial mechanism according to which aviation companies are run? If they can keep aeroplanes in the sky, because the costs go on in any case, they can make money even if they carry just five passengers to Manchester. That is inevitable given the way the leasing of aircraft operates.

Susan Kramer: The right hon. Gentleman is exactly right. Even a whole debate would not encompass some of the complexities and biases, including the subsidies mentioned earlier, involved in aviation economics.

Much has been said that I do not want to repeat, but with which I would like to associate myself. Concerns have been raised about the devastating impact of the third runway on Sipson in particular, but on the entire surrounding community. Concerns have also been raised about climate change and the fact that moves to expand Heathrow fly in the face of any attempt to tackle what is probably the most serious problem of our day. I want to associate myself, too, with all the plans for modal shift and high-speed rail, which I have spoken about in this House before. Those issues have been expressed clearly.

However, because of the circumstances of my constituency, I would like to focus not on the third runway but on the plans to end runway alternation. The Government plan to approve the third runway, but there are so many impracticalities and economic issues-not just the recession, but BAA's financial condition-and environmental resistance to the runway is growing so strongly, that I believe those plans will be set aside. The Government will then pursue an end to runway alternation, which will mean utter devastation for my local residents.

The consultation documents propose that with a full mixed-mode process-the opposite of runway alternation-an additional 60,000 aircraft movements a year become possible, which is a 12 per cent. increase. Those are not movements as we know them because the airport is currently able to pursue a policy known as continuous descent approach. In other words, aircraft stay as high in the air as possible and come down as steeply as possible, minimising the noise impact on the ground. That will disappear with a move to mixed mode, and the consultation documents are clear on that. At present, about 85 per cent. of planes use a continuous descent approach; that figure would fall to between 35 and 40 per cent. if we moved to mixed mode, which would mean the noise was much louder. The noise would be overhead all day.

Alan Keen commented that the impact on daily life would be phenomenal. That was very well said. When we look at the consultation documents, we see that the shoulders of the day would be most impacted by the move to mixed mode. One of those shoulders is the period from 6 am to 7 am. Let us imagine that being the worst hour of the day for noise in my constituency. There would be a plane overhead every 90 seconds between 6 am and 7 am. The second worst time of the day would be between 11 pm and 11.30 pm. Those would be the two most noise-impacted periods if we adopted the mixed mode. The impact would be devastating.

There would not just be an impact on my constituents, although that is bad enough. Already, little boys stop me and say that they cannot hear their television programmes because of planes overhead. We all know that people cannot talk in their gardens, and that families who want a wedding in a church garden have to pick an afternoon when the planes will not be overhead; otherwise, the whole ceremony will be destroyed. I went to the opening of a school by Sir David Attenborough. The opening of the wildlife garden was timed slightly wrong, and he had to stop his speech every 30 seconds to allow for the planes to go past. The impact is huge. However, my area is economically important, and if people will not live there because their lives are about to be destroyed, the potential of London's economy will be undermined.

Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway, Labour): I simply offer the hon. Lady another example. As I think she knows, many schools in her constituency plan their curriculum around runway alternation every week.

Susan Kramer: The hon. and learned Gentleman is exactly right. He will know that the consultation document says that if we go to mixed mode, 20,000 schools-a phenomenal number that I will need to double check, but the Minister will undoubtedly do so-will be impacted by the greater noise to the extent that they will require compensation and insulation. The impact would be huge and devastating.

I am afraid that there is a divide-and-conquer strategy behind the policy. The Minister could come to my constituents and say, "Look, if we have a third runway, you can get rid of runway alternation." That strategy would be an attempt to divide and conquer. We have hung together because of the issues of climate change, quality of life and London. My constituents are determined, and they would not appreciate the subterfuge that I think will be presented to us.

I shall move on because I am trying to get through my speech quickly. I will make a couple of comments on the business issues that were raised, because business is my background. When I first saw the consultation document and asked for the addendums with the technical details, I thought I would see a proper analysis of business in London and what it needed in the way of transport and aviation services. It was not there. We have a generalised analysis that says, "If fares go down, leisure traffic goes up, and we assume that fares will go down, therefore leisure traffic will go up." That is part of the mispricing process we talked about.

The analysis said that business travel was not much attached to anything-except perhaps slightly to GDP. Essentially, it said that we do not really know why business travellers travel. From talking to businesses, I find that nearly everyone is determined to reduce their carbon footprint, and they are all looking at alternatives to travel. When I ask them the simple question, "Do you want a bigger Heathrow?", they say, "Yes, and more destinations would be nice," , but when I ask them what they specifically want, I find that they want to get to certain major destinations across the globe with reasonable frequency, and nothing more. Heathrow provides for that, which is exactly the point I have been making. That is why the number of destinations have come down. This is not a macho situation where people say, "I move to the place with the most destinations". Businesses want a service that works for them, which is all that they need. They need a reasonable number of services to the main destinations around the globe. They already have that, and growth is not required.

My final point relates to my constituency. Mention was made of Airtrack, and I attempted to intervene on the Secretary of State on that issue. Airtrack is a wonderful notion, and it is tied into Heathrow, not just with regard to PR matters but as a way of showing people that air quality will be managed by new public transport.

BAA Airtrack sounds wonderful. People can get on a train at Heathrow, go through Staines, Twickenham and Richmond and end up at Waterloo. Who could complain about that? But in developing this proposal, BAA and the Government forgot my constituency. I only heard that this project was to be made real some days ago, through an accidental comment made by a reporter. I have met BAA since, and it understands my concerns. It is finally going to hold an exhibition on this project in my constituency as part of their consultation.

About a third of Richmond Park is bounded to the north and east by the river and to the south by a railway line. There are four level crossings on that railway line and, according to Network Rail, those level crossings will be down for 45 minutes out of the hour at peak time because of the Airtrack project. About a third of my constituency will become, in effect, landlocked. People will not be able to get out to work, school or the shops. We will not be able to get police, ambulances or fire services in-we are landlocked. The consequences will spill on to the major arteries-the A316, the A205 and the south circular-making them impossible. Nobody considered the matter-it did not even occur to anybody. No one picked up the phone to Richmond council when developing the proposal. It is phenomenally daft. It happened because, when they hear the word "Heathrow", BAA and the Government think about the airport and the passengers and forget the surrounding communities.

I ask the Minister to help me. I have attempted to arrange a meeting with the new Minister responsible for rail. BAA had the courtesy to send its chief executive to participate in the conversation, and I hope I can get that commitment from the Minister in his winding-up speech.

We have demonstrated the lack of concern for people who live near the airport. The airport is where it is because neighbouring residents are willing to allow it to be there. However, if we try everyone's patience too far, we will begin to threaten Heathrow's continued existence. That would be devastating.