What happens to an airport runway if a prime minister is against it? It goes ahead. What happens if the previous prime minister is also against it, “no ifs, no buts”? It goes ahead. What if the Chancellor of the Exchequer is against it, as well as the Transport Secretary, the Education Secretary, the Mayor of London and the previous mayor? It goes ahead.
Today’s decision, albeit provisional for a year, to expand Heathrow is a display of raw power as deployed by corporate Britain. It is a result of that blight on modern government, lobbying. If anyone complains about public cynicism towards politics, just say Heathrow.
The third runway at Heathrow — after successive governments pledged not to build it — is not about reason or planning or the environment. We should remember that 10 years ago Heathrow’s owners planned to shift their future expansion to Stansted because they expected no government would allow anything as polluting as more Heathrow.
Gordon Brown stopped them, saying this would be too much market share for one company. He gave Stansted to the owners of Manchester Airport instead. Today, 40 per cent of Stansted’s capacity lies unused. London’s one-time “third airport” languishes unloved. Its much needed high-speed rail link to central London was supplanted by one for the Olympics.
Meanwhile a furious Heathrow plc amassed an army of lobbyists to take on Gatwick, Stansted, west London, sensible planning and the entire environment movement. It confronted prime ministers, civil servants, residents of west London, pollution targets and congestion fears. It even took on its “buddy” airline, BA, which opposes the new Heathrow runway as too expensive. It beat them all.
Heathrow is not a government agency or a planning authority. it is a subsidiary of a Spanish company, Ferrovial. It argued that Heathrow was the biggest British airport and big was beautiful. It therefore held the key to “UK plc”. It would mean jobs and growth.
Of course, a runway anywhere means jobs and growth, but overheated west London needs them least. Locating an airport, for freight and passengers alike, is a planning decision. For passengers it is mostly a luxury service. Barely 20 per cent of London air travel is for “business”, the rest being tourism and leisure, overwhelmingly for Britons going abroad. That does nothing for exports.
Heathrow may be full. So are Paddington and Victoria stations, so are the M25 and M40, so are Barts and Guy’s hospitals. Supply does not have to answer demand. Price can take the pressure. We no longer “predict and provide” the supply of roads or houses or even hospitals. We ration by price and congestion. As for infrastructure — the spending craze of the moment — it is better roads that British business desperately needs, not more planes at Heathrow.
The Heathrow decision is bizarre in every way. May has apparently granted her colleagues, including ministers, freedom to oppose it for the next year. Will she and the Chancellor, Philip Hammond do so, having in the past opposed the runway? Will they vote against what they once thought a dumb decision in Parliament? Or is May seeking to avert the catastrophe of her Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, honouring his “pledge” to hurl himself under the first Heathrow bulldozer?
London now faces two decades of controversial mega-project disruptions
London now faces two decades of controversial mega-project disruptions, for Heathrow, HS2 and Crossrail 2. Heathrow means a predicted decade of legal and planning argument before a single bulldozer gets the chance to bury Johnson in mud, then a further decade of chaos. That will be 20 years of no investment in London airport capacity, including a pandemonium of closures of the M4 and M25. It also means an estimated £18 billion of associated infrastructure, money that will not be available for other, far needier, parts of London’s transport network.
What if, during these two decades, airport demand shifts towards smaller provincial airports? Suppose the double-length runway at Heathrow emerges as cheaper and quicker than the monster third runway? Suppose we find new ways of costing congestion, disruption and pollution, rendering a new Heathrow unthinkably expensive? Suppose the proposed “year of consultation” yields an overwhelmingly hostile response, leading to furious public inquiries, Supreme Court hearings, civil rights claims and global warming protests? The smart money already is on this being, in reality, a do-nothing decision.
The one overwhelming case against it is that in the 21st century it should be inconceivable to send vast, noisy jets screaming over the heads of millions of people
I am not against Heathrow as such. It is a compact, comfortable and, for me, convenient airport. The one overwhelming case against it is that in the 21st century it should be inconceivable to send vast, noisy jets screaming over the heads of millions of people. All world cities nowadays position their new airports well away from harm and hearing. London is entering the dark ages.
Expecting millions of leisure fliers each year — I repeat this is about tourism — to go to Gatwick and Stansted might seem harsh.
But we don’t allow heliports in Hyde Park for the benefit of “UK plc”. We don’t put wind turbines on the Embankment or fracking sites on Hampstead Heath. Other considerations sometimes apply. It would hardly be the end of the world for business routes to be concentrated at Heathrow and predominantly leisure flights to go elsewhere.
The trouble with Heathrow is noise and pollution. Perhaps one day there will be quiet jets that create no smog. Airlines keep promising this, but never deliver. As with Hinkley Point and HS2, Theresa May has shown herself a patsy to big-time lobbying.
London must now wait two decades for a new runway. When it arrives, it will be in the wrong place, more polluting and more congesting. And Stansted remains half empty, just because it belongs to Manchester.
http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/simon-jenkins-expanding-heathrow-will-be-a-monumental-blight-on-west-london-a3378226.html
