David Cameron ‘guaranteed’ he would make a final decision on whether or not to expand Heathrow Airport by the end of this year.
But he’s now told us he won’t. Instead he promises the decision next summer. Or perhaps he does: his transport secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, told me that ‘hopefully’ a decision will be taken then. Business and the government’s political opponents are up in arms. One business leader described the non-decision decision as ‘gutless’. Is the delay justified or is the real reason the need to protect the political interests of the Conservative Party?
Until quite recently it seemed that a final decision on one of the most vexed issues in British politics really was imminent. For decades it has been known that airport capacity in the south-east of England is no longer adequate for both the greatly increased population of the region and for the needs of the economic powerhouse the region has become. Official inquiries into what to do about it go back as far as 1968.
London’s main airport, Heathrow, was built in 1946 after a decision taken, it’s believed, in a mere forty minutes. But no one back then could have foreseen the enormous increase in the demand for air travel, both for passengers and for freight, that would ensue in the coming decades. Other airports in the region were built – Gatwick in 1958 and Stansted, Luton and others later on – but there was always pressure for Heathrow to expand as the chief ‘hub’ airport for London. New terminals were built but capacity could be seriously increased only by increasing the number of runways. The political problem here is that Heathrow lies in a highly built-up part of west London and planes coming into land have to circle over one of the most densely-populated cities in Europe.
Endless inquiries and delays eventually led to a proposal (as far back as 2003) for a third runway to be built at Heathrow. Gordon Brown’s Labour government finally bit the bullet and gave the go-ahead for it in 2009. But the then leader of the opposition, one David Cameron, said (no doubt with an eye to important west London marginal constituencies) that his party was wholly opposed to the expansion of Heathrow ‘no ifs or buts’. Labour’s plans for Heathrow went down with its own defeat in 2010.
The new coalition government under Mr Cameron was completely at odds about what to do, with the junior LibDem partners challenging the need for any airport expansion in the south-east. To get round the political problem of such fundamental disagreement, the coalition went for delay. It set up yet another commission under Sir Howard Davies, to report after the 2015 election. Sir Howard duly reported back in the summer, recommending a third runway at Heathrow but saying also that a second option at Heathrow or the expansion of Gatwick were viable options though not, in his view, the optimal one. It was a decision on this recommendation the Prime Minister guaranteed by Christmas.
The reason given for the further delay is that more work needs to be done examining the impact of such a decision on air quality in London. The House of Commons environmental audit select committee recently reported to the effect that no decision should be taken until such work had been done. What especially concerned it was the projected future concentrations of nitrogen dioxide. This follows the VW emission scandal concerning the polluting effect of diesel cars. Increased car use is as much a factor in airport expansion as the increased number of flights and the government is believed to have feared that any decision to go ahead with Heathrow expansion might have been vulnerable to judicial review had this further examination of the impact on air quality not first been carried out.
Nonetheless, critics of the delay argue that the government could have made the decision on which airport should be expanded subject to such an examination taking place and they believe the reason Mr Cameron did not do so is purely political. Next May London will hold the election for its next mayor. The person chosen by the Conservative Party to be its candidate is Zac Goldsmith, the MP for Richmond Park. Mr Goldsmith’s past shows him to be as much a green as a Tory and he has always been vehemently opposed to Heathrow expansion, threatening to resign his seat and fight a by-election if the government opted for the main Davies recommendation.
Had Mr Cameron plumped for a third runway at Gatwick he would have been faced not only with a difficult by-election but with a mayoral candidate for his party vociferously arguing against the government position. This, many observers believe, is the main reason the decision has been put off.
The response of business has been scornful. The Institute of Directors said businessmen would be ‘tearing their hair out’. John Longworth, the director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said the government was ‘gutless’. And Terry Scuoler, the chief of the EEF manufacturing group, said: ‘It defies belief that, having set a target to double our exports, the government is refusing to approve the extra air capacity to help it.’
The government’s political opponents are equally scathing with Sadiq Khan, Labour’s candidate for mayor of London, saying the government should have got on with it by picking the Gatwick option. Boris Johnson, the current Tory mayor, called it a ‘fudgerama’ and many Conservatives will ask how such a ducking of so important an issue can be squared with the government’s new enthusiasm for renewing the country’s infrastructure and posing, in George Osborne’s phrase, as ‘the builders’.
Environmentalists, however, are delighted and hope the new examination of the impact of airport expansion on air quality will finally see off any expansion.
What’s your view? Do you think the government was right to go for further delay or not? Do you accept their explanation that they need to look more closely at the impact on air quality? Or do you think they have kicked the decision beyond the mayoral election for purely self-interested political reasons? And what ultimate decision would you like to see?
