Answered by Sir Alan Haselhurst MP
I think it is very straightforward, it has to be at Heathrow which is part of the Governments policy and I regret that they chose in their White Paper to put the construction of a 2nd runway at Stansted ahead of the construction of a 3rd runway at Heathrow. I don’t say that for any ‘nimby’ reason, I look at that purely from the point of view of the interests of British aviation and British business. For good or ill Heathrow has become London’s principal hub airport. The Government has now recognised what it didn’t before the consultation document. You can’t have a 2nd hub airport serving the same catchment area and they know this now. Why was Heathrow chosen originally in the 1940s? It’s in the language of the time to be London’s Civil Aerodrome and it rose higgledy piggledy. Had we got our time over again and been able to anticipate the explosion in air travel we might have done something entirely different. And as late as the 1970s there was a project to build an entirely new airport off the coast, what became known as Maplin sands, that scheme was axed by the succeeding government because by then the first oil shock had taken place and people believed that air travel was going to have a real set back. But within 2 years the demand for air travel bounced back and the then Government had to have a look around and that’s why the attention came back towards Stansted, but Heathrow undeniably is the principle airport. The economics of Heathrow are that it benefits from about 30% of interlining, which means almost by definition a very large percentage of people come through Heathrow on a British airline and go out of Heathrow on a British airline. This is not 100% but it enables British Airways, Virgin an others to say to the person in Denver who wants to get to Naples, and there isn’t a direct flight, to say we will give you the best service and will take you through Heathrow without your feet touching the ground or London itself. Some would argue why do we want that business, but I’m sorry that is part of the aviation industry and I’m in favour of British alliances succeeding against others, because on the whole they are rather good. But then people will only come to London if it gives them access to other destinations or if they do business in London they can exit from London to where they wish to visit. Heathrow at one stage had the reputation of being the busiest airport internationally and had the most flights but it has now slipped to about 5th in the league tables because of our lack of capacity at Heathrow and that is not good for the nation. Whatever one says about environmental considerations, which we do have to take increasingly seriously, no one will stop people flying. Yes, you can look at other ways of dealing with it so whilst we are in the business of flying we want London to be attractive to the businessman and not repelling him. Yes, it is important that we develop the 3rd runway at Heathrow and I know that is opposed by people around Heathrow, but equally there are a lot of people that recognise the economic importance and the significance of jobs in that area which is quite different to what is happening in rural Essex where Stansted is. So we certainly need that runway at Heathrow and I’m not sure that we need another in the South East that aren’t already there which could be utilised. It is interesting to see how London City has blossomed to the extent that it has its developing its own business. There are others that could be brought into use certainly for short haul destinations and so on. What I might add to that is we are very bad in this country to providing support and infrastructure. It took 50 years, having decided on Heathrow, it took 50 years to build an over ground railway and now we are repeating the same thing perhaps not quite as badly in relation to Stansted. It is served essentially by a two track railway which is causing the Stansted Express to become steadily less express as the years pass because there is too much congestion on the line. It only takes one train to break down and everything comes to a halt behind it. Its absurd, why don’t we put in the infrastructure. It’s been the case all along. So Heathrow really is by now by default the principal London airport. You can’t replicate what it does, it is in competition internationally with Charles de Gaulle in Paris and Schiphol and with Frankfurt and if we choose to ignore that then London will decline as an economic and business centre and I don’t believe that is in our interests and I certainly don’t believe that Stansted can be a substitute for what Heathrow offers.
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