Robert Marshall-Andrews

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Heathrow

That this House has considered the matter of adding capacity to Heathrow.

Mr. Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway) (Lab): The great Paul Theroux begins one of his finest travel books by saying that it is

“no coincidence that none of the 650 major languages and dialects contains a sentence, phrase or clause that even approximates to the words, ‘as pretty as an airport.’”

That is particularly true of urban airports, of which Heathrow might be advanced as an exemplar. They are paradoxes, and they destroy lives, as we have just heard eloquently expressed, but they provide livelihoods, so nobody should approach the issue in a cavalier way and without considering balance. But, having considered balance, I must say that there is not the slightest doubt that this proposal for Heathrow should be opposed in this Chamber, implacably opposed outside this Chamber, will, I predict, be voted on in this Chamber, which is a point that I shall come to in a moment, and will be defeated in this Chamber. All those processes should be gone through.

I should like to set out three simple premises. They have been mentioned before, and I regret that there will be repetition, but it is worth repeating these things—three simple premises that seem to me to be immutable. First, of course, Heathrow is in the wrong place. In 1946, the last Lancaster flew out of the site and the first converted Lancaster bringing passengers flew into the site, where they disembarked and sat in tents in armchairs, no doubt sipping glasses of champagne and smoking cigarettes through long, elegant holders. If one had said to those first passengers, “Do you know that from this site in barely half a century’s time, we are proposing to fly 700,000 flights a year?”, they would have looked around at the villages and said, “You are stark mad.” But, of course, the madness persisted, and it persisted because of an irresistible and, apparently, irreversible process.

The process was very simple: every expansion of Heathrow was used to reinforce the idea that Heathrow was indispensable. And that indispensability became the basis for every subsequent application and demand for expansion, so the process became circular, and it became never-ending. It is never-ending, and the villages in the constituency of my good and hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) will be the first to go. But the truth is that nowhere is safe. I have a mental vision of Her Majesty herself standing on the battlements of Windsor castle, looking with angst-stricken eyes as the first bulldozers appear on the far side of Windsor Great park. Indeed, for those who know it, the royal ride through the centre of the park would make a splendid runway—apart from the statue of George III in the middle of it, which would have to be ritually removed.

Adam Afriyie: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Mr. Marshall-Andrews: Of course. The hon. Gentleman is going to say that it is not George III.

Adam Afriyie: At a public meeting in my youth, before I came to this place as the Member for Windsor, I was asked what I was going to do about the third runway, and I said, “They will build that runway over my dead body.” I hope that that will not be the case, and that today we will win through with the comments that the hon. and learned Gentleman makes.

Mr. Marshall-Andrews: Absolutely. Heathrow is, of course, a curse and, in some ways, a blessing for those who live around it. Those who have lived around it—I declare an interest, because I have, to a greater or lesser extent, for 40 years, so I know about it—have come over the years to a sort of melioration, a sort of understanding, with the airport. It is based on certain concessions that have been made over the years. The Cranford agreement is one of them, but immensely important as well is the alternation of the runways. A failure to alternate runways will simply be the breaking of a bargain that has existed with Heathrow’s neighbours for half a century, and it will change beyond repair the lives, and the dimension of the lives, of children and other people living in that area. The Government need to get on board, because raw anger will manifest not among a few privileged people but among 2 million people in London who will be exposed to that blight.

The second premise that I wish to place before the House is a very simple one. In this day and age of climate change and the desperate fight to preserve our environment, it is a very simple premise: the days have long gone when we can destroy and despoil our environment to create a non-essential improvement in human lifestyle. Of course, there can be essential improvements in lifestyle; as we all know, they exist in the third world. In such circumstances, some compromise with the environment may be necessary, but not here—not to enhance the lifestyles of people, frequently mentioned by the Secretary of State, who travel to visit their relatives. That is not a reason for the kind of damage being contemplated.

As has been said, the Government are now in an extraordinary position. Two weeks ago, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change came to the House and, amid justified adulation and approval, gave the best and most outstanding undertakings on the environment in the world. Two weeks later, his Cabinet colleague, the Secretary of State for Transport, has come to the House and wrecked them. We are told that there is division in the Cabinet—such information must be highly unreliable of course, because, as we know, the Cabinet is a leak-proof zone. However, we are told that there are deep Cabinet divisions on this issue. That is hardly surprising: when one Secretary of State wrecks another’s policy, there will be such division from time to time. Let us hope that it is resolved sensibly and properly.

The third premise is the myth of demand and the idea that it should be assuaged in these circumstances. That demand is not atavistic or fundamental—it does not relate to food, drink or even the desire to procreate. It is based on the preference of people who wish to fly. That is all. Manifestly, that demand can be managed and
controlled. It is, to use a word employed by George Soros in relation to the economy, a “reflexive” demand—that is, it increases according to the capacity used to feed it, and it will recede as that capacity goes away. Such demand must be addressed, but it must also be sensibly managed. One citizen must understand that their right to fly is not immutable, and cannot be predicated on the destruction of other people’s lifestyles.

Finally, I turn to Cliffe airport, which was to have been in my constituency. It was one of the potential airports in the White Paper and the consultation. Let me say this: Cliffe was never a sensible option, and it was never thought to be. I shall say how I know that. We all thought it all the time, but immediately after the consultation the former Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, came to my constituency and helpfully said so. It was never a sensible or real option. It began to look like a real option only for a moment on one occasion. That was when I was talking to the former Prime Minister about the subject at the beginning of the consultation, and told him that even putting Cliffe in as a proposal would make it likely that we would lose my parliamentary seat. For a moment, I saw a thought flash across his mind as he contemplated virtues that he had not previously seen.

There will be a vote on this issue; the Government will not avoid that. This place is not so enfeebled or lacking in creativity that we cannot find the means to have a vote, and we will have it. I say to the Secretary of State that when that vote comes, the Government will lose it—and with it, their new-found and deserved reputation for environmental custody. That will be terrible, not only because of the loss of that reputation, but in electoral terms. I hope that the Secretary of State and the Government will take that on board.