established 1828A
n extra runway for Heathrow was
first proposed by a Labour govern-
ment — not Gordon Brown’s, or
Tony Blair’s, but Clement Attlee’s in 1949.
The revived scheme, announced in 2003, has
taken 13 years to win government approval.
Even now it’s unclear whether it will ever
be built, given the legal, practical and politi-
cal obstacles.
The MPs who will vote on this in a year’s
time will have difficult questions to answer.
Is it wise to further entrench the power and
pull of Europe’s busiest airport, rather than
expand Gatwick and promote competi-
tion? And must we expect regional traffic
to go via Heathrow for long-haul flights?
Why not allow smaller airports to expand,
so that Mancunians can fly to Manchuria
without needing to go near London? Trends
in aviation show that direct flights are the
future, thanks to the emergence of smaller
long-haul aircraft such as the Boeing 787
Dreamliner. Heathrow’s case is built on the
hub-and-spoke proposition of yesteryear.
In fact, we are really only back to where
we were in 2009 when Gordon Brown
approved Heathrow’s third runway (and was
condemned for doing so by Theresa May).
There will now be a public consultation —
and the inevitable legal challenges. Not to
mention the prospect of the Foreign Secre-
tary honouring his pledge to throw himself in
front of Heathrow’s bulldozers should work
actually start. By approving only Heathrow,
the government has guaranteed years of
wrangling and piled delay upon delay.
In Britain we have built one formida-
ble industry on the back of Heathrow: that
of lawyers and planners who specialise in
holding inquiries, commissions and feasi-
bility studies — and then, when a project is
under way, judicial reviews and other legal
challenges. Heathrow’s third runway has
already cost taxpayers £13 million for the
Davies commission and £4 million for the
study commissioned by Alistair Darling in- And that is before a single inch of land
has been cleared.
The sclerosis is not limited to airports —
we have been through exactly the same tedi-
ous process over Hinkley C nuclear power
station and the High Speed 2. Road-build-
ing all but ceased in Britain 20 years ago,
with just inadequate pieces of infill since.
Heathrow doesn’t even hold the record for
a non-appearing infrastructure project: the
Silvertown tunnel, approved by Sadiq Khan
this month, is the latest manifestation of
an east London river crossing first proposed
in 1944.
Part of the problem is political. Promis-
ing to block projects which have strong local
opposition has become too attractive an
option for parties that don’t have any bet-
ter ideas — as becomes all too evident when
they get into power. The last Labour govern-
ment did make an attempt to cut through the
red tape with the creation of the Infrastruc-
ture Planning Commission. One of the first
acts of the coalition was to abolish that body.
Another problem is that governments
have brought legal challenges to their own
decisions. The Climate Change Act, which
will form part of the basis of a judicial review
funded by Greenpeace and local councils,
places a legal commitment on the govern-
ment to reach targets for cutting carbon
emissions. Of course it is desirable that emis-
sions be cut, but setting legally binding tar-
gets — without any real idea of how they
would affect the economy in future — has
succeeded only in passing a huge amount of
power from Parliament to the courts. Where
to site an airport ought to be a decision made
by elected politicians (or, ideally, the mar-ket). Instead, it could ultimately be made by
an unelected judge.
There is a problem, too, with the way
projects are conceived. Vast numbers of
man-hours, for example, are going into
studies, reports and inquiries on HS2. Yet
the whole premise of the project — that we
need a 225mph railway rather than improve-
ments and expansion of existing lines, which
would offer lower speeds, but which would
access towns and cities bypassed by HS2 —
was never analysed. The whole idea was a
London- centric vanity project plucked out
of thin air, which is the reason for all the dif-
ficulties since. A new east-west line, connect-
ing Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Hull
would be far more useful. But in Whitehall it
seems that all roads, railways and air routes
must to lead to London.
In a few years’ time we may wonder why
so much effort has been expended over a
choice of London airports when the growth
in demand for air travel demands expan-
sion not just at Heathrow and Gatwick,
but at Birmingham and Manchester, too.
The Prime Minister ought to have said that,
given the decades of delay on the new run-
way decision, she would grant permission for
all four to expand. Heathrow’s third runway
may proceed as well as its owners claim. But
if it is sunk by its own impracticalities, then
its many rivals should have the freedom to
make their own plans.
The government is not very good at tak-
ing infrastructure decisions. It takes too long,
and then usually makes the wrong call. It
should have seized this chance to grant
approval to several airports, and let consum-
ers decide. Apart from anything else, a third
runway at Heathrow will soon be running
at full capacity — and the question of air-
port expansion will present itself yet again.
In choosing only Heathrow, the government
has ensured that airport expansion is a prob-
lem delayed rather than a problem solved.Flights of fancy
We have built one formidable
industry on the back of Heathrow:
that of specialist lawyers and planners