Commons Chamber

House of Commons

Wednesday 28 January 2009

The House met at half-past Eleven o’clock

Prayers

[Mr. Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Wales

The Secretary of State was asked—

Rural Economy

Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire) (LD)
1. What assessment he has made of the contribution of the rural economy to economic performance in Wales; and if he will make a statement.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Wayne David)
A strong rural economy is vital for Wales as a whole, particularly during the present challenging economic conditions. We and the Welsh Assembly Government are committed to supporting rural businesses with the range of packages that were announced recently, which are designed to help all businesses.

Lembit Öpik
As the Minister knows, Montgomeryshire has seen shops such as Woolworths closing and businesses such as Stadco preparing to lay off scores of staff. Indeed, the number of job losses has risen by more than 60 per cent. in the last year. While the new assistance package is welcome, is the Minister aware that banks are putting such a tight squeeze on local firms that their viability is threatened? Will he meet local business representatives in Montgomeryshire to hear about the effect of reduced bank lending? Such a dialogue would undoubtedly help firms, and also the Government.

Mr. David
We are, of course, aware of the situation in mid-Wales, and in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency in particular. We are especially concerned about what has been happening to Stadco, where the loss of 100 jobs was announced recently. The important point is that we are essentially on the side of people who are suffering in this way, and totally understand their predicament. As Members will know, the proposals announced recently by the Government are designed to promote cash flow and to help small and medium-sized enterprises. In Wales in particular, high street banks have been turning down applications for loans, and Finance Wales has stepped in successfully to help. We are certainly aware of the problems, and we want to see the position improve.

I should be delighted to visit the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. Perhaps we can discuss an appropriate time later.

Dr. Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab)
The rural and valley areas in Wales need better opportunities to embrace the knowledge economy and, to that end, the Welsh Affairs Committee is about to start an inquiry into digital inclusion in the country. Does the Minister agree that Governments at all levels should encourage the public, private and voluntary sectors to work together to overcome the current difficulties in such communities and reduce the isolation that they experience both socially and economically?

Mr. David
I entirely agree. It is vital that we maintain and reinforce our commitment to the development of a knowledge economy in Wales: that is the future.

Speaking as the deputy Minister for digital inclusion, I also consider it important for us to recognise that our investment in new technology and full participation must continue apace. We must not use the present economic downturn as an excuse not to proceed with that agenda; on the contrary, the downturn must be used to reinforce our commitment to its development. We must also ensure that at all times we are strongly committed to the public and private sectors working together. That, too, is the future. I commend what my hon. Friend has said, and the work of his Committee.

David T.C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that enacting legislation that will require all companies, or at least private companies, to use the Welsh language in all forms of business could prove very detrimental not just to the rural economy but to the rest of the economy in Wales, at a time when, tragically, we are seeing hundreds of jobs lost?

Mr. David
The hon. Gentleman should choose his words carefully. I am sure that the last thing any Member would want to do is be seen to be against the Welsh language. It has developed over the past few years, and we want to ensure that it continues to develop with the consent of all the people of Wales.

As the hon. Gentleman will know, the draft Welsh language legislative competence order is due to be published next week. I hope that, as a result, there will be full discussion among all the people of Wales about what is the best way forward.

Mrs. Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the rural economy in Wales needs to recognise the vital opportunity provided by the economic downturn, and the fact that people are holidaying in the United Kingdom, to promote our wonderful natural environment, particularly the environmental protection areas? My constituency contains the national nature reserve at Kenfig, and there are local nature reserves all along the coast. In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) is the wonderful Garw valley, one of the most beautiful spots in Wales. Does the Minister agree that environmental tourism is a real saviour?

Hon. Members
Answer!

Mr. David
That is a very difficult one to answer.

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. My constituency contains the magnificent Caerphilly castle, the largest castle not just in Wales or Britain but in the whole of Europe. There are plenty of opportunities for Welsh tourism, and we need to recognise that indigenous tourism is particularly important at this time. I am delighted to say that the Welsh Assembly Government have invested some £2.2 million in the United Kingdom campaign to extol the virtues of Welsh tourism.

Mr. Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that one significant boost to the rural economy of west Wales at this time would come from the construction of the new gas-fired power station at Pembroke, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Carmarthen, West and South Pembrokeshire (Nick Ainger)? The project has taken four years to reach this point. It has passed its environmental consents, and merely awaits a decision from the Minister’s colleague the Energy Minister. Will he speak to the Energy Minister and unlock this important project? The United Kingdom needs the generating capacity, and my constituents need the jobs.

Mr. David
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right: this is an important project. We are mindful of that; discussions have taken place with my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen, West and South Pembrokeshire (Nick Ainger), who represents the constituency where the new installation will be based, and I am sure that, across all Departments, we are absolutely committed to ensuring matters are expedited as quickly as possible, but also in a proper manner.

Mr. Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
Market towns are a key component of the local rural economy across Wales, and they have maintained a range of quality independent retailers, which make them attractive not only to the people who live there, but to tourists and visitors. Town centres with closed shops and pubs are very unattractive, however. As our thoughts turn towards the spring and Easter holidays, will the Minister intervene with his colleagues in the Assembly—and, indeed, in Westminster—to find ways of reducing the burden on these businesses, particularly in respect of business rates? The Government come forward with new initiatives day by day, but will the Minister now stand up for the retailers and shopkeepers of rural Wales?

Mr. David
Indeed, we stand full square behind small enterprises generally, and in particular retail businesses. The business rates issue has been looked at, and the Government nationally and in Wales are doing everything possible to help. We can be absolutely certain of one thing: we will do everything possible to help people get through this difficult period. I must say, however, that I am impressed in all sectors of the Welsh economy, including the one the hon. Gentleman refers to, by the determination and commitment of the people of Wales. It is very important that we reinforce the determination to get out of this economic downturn as quickly as possible, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will work closely with us to achieve that.

Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy) (PC)
Does the Minister recognise that small and medium-sized enterprises in Wales are vital for employment throughout Wales, and in particular in rural areas? Will he join me in congratulating the Welsh Assembly Government on their £290 million flexible support package for business, the £7 million rates relief package for smaller businesses and the £115 million investment fund? Does he not agree that the Assembly Government have been very proactive at a time when such action is required?

Mr. David
Yes, I agree. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has listed some of the initiatives that have been introduced, and it is important to recognise that, in the critical area of the development of our economy, we are seeing good practical examples of the Government here in Westminster and the Welsh Assembly Government working together and pulling together in the interests of the people of Wales. There are other initiatives as well as those that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned. I also believe we have led the way in the United Kingdom in holding economic summits. There have been three very successful economic summits, and another one in north Wales is planned shortly. That reinforces the partnership that has been established not just between Cardiff and London, but between all the main players in Wales.

Small Businesses

Mr. Henry Bellingham (North-West Norfolk) (Con)
2. When he next expects to meet representatives of small business organisations in Wales to discuss the regulatory burden on them.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Wayne David)
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I met the Wales CBI only last week, and I recently held a meeting with the Federation of Small Businesses to listen to its specific concerns. In March I shall be participating in the FSB’s national conference.

Mr. Bellingham
I thank the Minister for that reply. Ministers keep telling the House how much they are doing to support small firms, but why did Ministers not do more to resist the job-destroying EU agency workers directive, which was vehemently opposed by every single small business organisation?

Mr. David
The Government are certainly doing everything they can to help small businesses—there is no doubt about that. However, it is important to recognise that we are talking specifically about Wales, and we can point to initiatives that have been taken by the Welsh Assembly Government, such as the ProAct and ReAct programmes. We can also allude to the fact that significant sums of European money have gone into these initiatives. They are helping small businesses and the people who are directly affected by the economic downturn, so I think it is very important that, unlike Opposition Members, we take a balanced view of the European Union. I believe that, on balance, our membership of the EU is positive and helpful, and many thousands of people in Wales would testify to that fact.

Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
My hon. Friend will be aware that one of the problems that small businesses face is getting large-scale procurement contracts from local government and, in my constituency, from the Ministry of Defence. This problem has come up at a number of meetings hosted by the Wales Office. Can he assure me that in these difficult times, and through the economic summits that we have had in Wales, we will be able to relax the rules or even explain them better to local businesses, so that they can have the opportunity to get the contracts and get the work locally?

Mr. David
I entirely agree with the point that my hon. Friend makes, because this issue has to be addressed. I am pleased to say that there will be a meeting on Monday to discuss precisely that point of procurement and how government at all levels can do whatever they can to help. We are also pressing strongly for the next economic summit in Wales, to which I referred, to address the issue specifically. As far as Anglesey is concerned, we will do everything possible to help sustain jobs; I am aware of the excellent work that he is doing on Anglesey Aluminium, and we stand full square behind him on that issue as well.

Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
I am sure that empty property business rates have been a significant feature of the Minister’s discussions with the Federation of Small Businesses and others. Although we welcome the increase to £15,000 for relief, that is not enough for many of our constituents. One of my constituents faces a bill on empty properties of £30,000 a year, and that is very much compounded by the unhelpful attitude of the banks. Will the Minister continue to advance the case for raising that threshold further in his discussions with the Welsh Assembly Government and, consequently, the UK Treasury?

Mr. David
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman recognises that we have already taken action on business rates—I think it has been warmly welcomed by those people directly affected. We will take the necessary action and we will keep the situation under review. We have given an explicit commitment to doing whatever is necessary to ensure that we all move forward together as quickly as possible through this economic downturn. All those issues that he has raised will be carefully examined—this is a moving brief.

Mrs. Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Major job losses in Wales, such as those at Corus, understandably make the headlines, but the Minister must know that the consequential impact on small businesses can be just as catastrophic, if not more so, for families and individuals. Can he explain why, despite all his summits, he and the Welsh Assembly Government are not helping businesses more directly by bringing in our proposals, such as those for a six-month VAT holiday, a cut in corporation tax and a cut in payroll taxes for companies with fewer than five employees?

Mr. David
Forgive me for smiling, but it is important for Labour Members, at least, to recognise that a tremendous effort has been made. The Wales Office recently published a document that itemises all the efforts that have been made and all the initiatives that have been taken by the central Government, in co-operation with the Wales Office, and by the Welsh Assembly Government. I would be more than delighted to ensure that the hon. Lady has a copy, so that she is able to avail herself of all the information that it contains. It clearly sets out the umpteen initiatives that have been taken, which have been well appreciated and, most importantly, are having a direct positive effect to help businesses in these difficult times.

Mrs. Gillan
I am not smiling, and I happen to have had a copy of that list, for which I am very grateful. Forgive me if I am sceptical about the Minister’s warm words, his summits and his lists. How can businesses rely on a Labour-Plaid Welsh Assembly Government who during this dreadful recession have taken decisions to cut further education budgets that would retrain workers; to hand back to Europe, because of their own bad planning, £77 million of aid for the poorest regions; and to inflict an above-inflation rise of almost 5 per cent. on business rates from April this year? The Minister may be smiling but business in Wales is not. How will such moves help small businesses or, indeed, any business in Wales?

Mr. David
The hon. Lady’s jokes are in bad taste and her mock humour is inappropriate. Over the past few months we have seen a strong partnership between the Welsh Assembly Government and central Government. European funds have been effectively accessed as far as the ProAct and ReAct schemes are concerned. Those programmes are in place and they have had a direct effect.

The hon. Lady might not like it, but the Welsh Assembly Government have led the way in helping small and medium-sized enterprises. Europe is playing a critical role and the best action that the Welsh Assembly Government could do is to reinforce that partnership with the European Union to ensure that money comes through the structural funds and through the European Investment Bank. The single most important thing that the hon. Lady could do is listen to her shadow Business Secretary on VAT, for example. He recognises the importance of the VAT reduction and the importance of Europe. It is a pity that the rest of his colleagues do not do the same.

All Wales Convention

Mr. Don Touhig (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
3. What recent discussions he has had with the chair of the All Wales Convention on the work of the convention.

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Paul Murphy)
I have been following the convention’s work with great interest and I have met Sir Emyr Jones Parry on a number of occasions.

Mr. Touhig
When families across Wales are concerned about their future does my right hon. Friend think that anybody gives a fig about the All Wales Convention? It is wasting £1 million of taxpayers’ money, calling shambolic meetings, showing videos that give a distorted picture of Wales and pandering to those who think that the big issue of the day is independence. Would it not be better spending its time talking to the Corus workers?

Mr. Murphy
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his robust comments on the work of the convention. I think that the convention is doing a proper job in trying to find out what the people of Wales would think about extra powers for the Assembly. I agree with him that it is more important to concentrate these days on the effects of the economic downturn on the people of Wales than on constitutional issues, but I do not undervalue the work of the convention.

Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
On constitutional issues, does my right hon. Friend have any plans to slash the number of Welsh MPs before any further devolution settlement and to gag them when it comes to speaking on UK parliamentary issues? If he does not have such plans, does he know anybody who does?

Mr. Murphy
I think I do. The Government have no plans to reduce the number of Welsh Members of Parliament or the effectiveness of the Welsh representatives in the House of Commons. The Government have no plans to gag us in any way whatsoever. However, I was surprised at the Conservative Front Benchers when they decided some weeks ago to suggest that we might reduce the number of Welsh Members of Parliament. They then changed their minds, for which I am very grateful.

Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
Will my right hon. Friend ensure that the chairman of the convention is aware of the success of the legislative competence order process in ensuring that, where it is appropriate, additional responsibilities and powers are provided to the National Assembly for Wales? Given the amount of disinformation that we see from the press and media in Wales and from some who seem to want to pretend that the process is not successful, is it not important that the convention should ensure that people understand that the process is successful?

Mr. Murphy
Yes, it is. It would be useful for my right hon. Friend to meet Sir Emyr to put those points to him. The process has improved over the past months and will improve even more.

Employment (South Wales)

Julie Morgan (Cardiff, North) (Lab)
4. What recent estimate he has made of levels of employment in south Wales.

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Paul Murphy)
The levels of employment show the continued effect that the global economic slow-down is having on the Welsh labour market. Although that problem requires a global solution, we are doing everything we can, in partnership with the Welsh Assembly Government, to help minimise the effects on Welsh families and on our economy.

Julie Morgan
I thank my right hon. Friend for his reply. Is he aware that 330 jobs are likely to be lost from Cardiff Gate and from my constituency if the International Baccalaureate continues with its plan to move to a mainland European city such as Amsterdam? Is he aware that one of the reasons given for that is that Cardiff and south Wales do not have an international mindset? Is that not extraordinary when we consider that the first full IB school was Atlantic college at St. Donats in south Wales?

Mr. Murphy
Yes, I very much agree with my hon. Friend, who rightly points out that the International Baccalaureate was started in Atlantic college, and that, far from being a parochial place, Cardiff is very much an international centre. I fully support her early-day motion. I have written to the director-general in Geneva about keeping the 300 jobs in Cardiff and I hope that her campaign is successful.

Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (John Smith) has claimed many times that hundreds of jobs will come to Wales as a result of the defence training review programme, but the programme has rising costs and increasing delays. Indeed, in his desperation, the hon. Gentleman visited the Prime Minister this week, even though the latter has given no assurance that the defence training review will go ahead in Wales. Do we not need an early statement from the Secretary of State giving us the truth about the project and its rising costs?

Mr. Murphy
I have had no indication at all that there will be any change of plan concerning that huge investment in Wales. The Government are committed to it and I am sure that, when the time comes, there will be a proper statement to this House of Commons.

John Smith (Vale of Glamorgan) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that employment levels in south Wales will be greatly improved by the 5,000 jobs brought to the area by the defence technical academy? Does he also agree that it is about time that Opposition Members stopped knocking the project and began pulling together to ensure that it is brought in on time and within budget?

Mr. Murphy
That is what we all like to hear. My hon. Friend has been a great champion of the project. When those jobs come to Wales, it will be as a result of the biggest single Government investment in Wales ever.

Jenny Willott (Cardiff, Central) (LD)
Since January 2008, 11,000 jobs have been lost in Welsh retail and services. That is more than in any other sector, and thousands more jobs are at risk because of the unreasonable conditions being imposed on small businesses by banks. For example, a business in my constituency is being charged 10 per cent. interest above the base rate on a loan of only £4,000, plus significant amounts in fees. Does the Secretary of State share my concern that, if that continues, more Welsh businesses will be driven into the ground, with significant numbers of redundancies? What extra help can he offer to businesses in those circumstances?

Mr. Murphy
The hon. Lady—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. It is so noisy, and it is unfair to those involved in Welsh questions.

Mr. Murphy
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Banks should be lending, particularly to small businesses, and the initiatives taken by the Government are designed to help them do so. She will be aware that Wales is especially fortunate, as we have the Welsh Assembly Government’s initiatives and the schemes of the UK Government that help businesses in a very special way. However, I will make sure that the points that she has properly raised here in the House of Commons are raised at next week’s economic summit in north Wales.

Mr. Martin Caton (Gower) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend will be aware that Corus has announced the closure of Coated Metals in Pontarddulais in my constituency—a blow to the community and to the workers. However, all the workers have also worked at some time in Port Talbot, so will he urge Corus management to show flexibility and use a combination of voluntary redundancies and inter-plant redeployment to minimise the damage?

Mr. Murphy
Yes, I will. I had a conversation recently with the chief executive of Corus and the general secretary of Community, the steel industry’s main trade union. The points that my hon. Friend has made are very valid, and I shall raise them again with them.

Mr. David Jones (Clwyd, West) (Con)
Given the increasing numbers of job losses in south Wales, which of course include the 1,000 jobs lost at Corus this week, does the Secretary of State acknowledge the fundamental importance of maintaining flexibility in the labour market? Can he therefore confirm that the Government will continue to fight to maintain the British opt-out from the working time directive, notwithstanding the decision of Labour MEPs to support its abolition last months?

Mr. Murphy
Yes, I think that there should be as much flexibility as possible. That has helped us in the past, and I hope that it will do so in the future as well.

Manufacturing Industry

Sir Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield) (Con)
5. What recent discussions he has had with the First Minister on prospects for manufacturing industry in Wales.  My right hon. Friend has regular meetings with the First Minister, and hardly a day passes when the economic situation and manufacturing is not discussed.

Sir Nicholas Winterton
Does the Minister agree that manufacturing industry is the only source of non-inflationary, sustainable economic growth? Bearing in mind that the Secretary of State for Wales said that manufacturing

“will play an important role in bringing us out of recession”—[Official Report, 26 November 2008; Vol. 483, c. 710.]

what are the current Government and the First Minister in Wales doing to help manufacturing industry at this time?

Mr. David
The short answer is a heck of a lot. The hon. Gentleman is correct in saying that manufacturing is still important in Wales—it is—and the last available figures show that some 13 per cent. of the work force were employed in that sector. That is why we have seen central Government and the Welsh Assembly Government being so proactive to ensure that policies are in place not only to help manufacturing but, importantly, to plan for the future. It is absolutely vital to give the greatest possible assistance and investment regarding skills and training, so that when the upturn comes, we are well placed to ensure that we take the maximum benefit of it.

Nick Ainger (Carmarthen, West and South Pembrokeshire) (Lab)
My hon. Friend will be well aware of the £1 billion investment being made and, I hope, announced very shortly in my constituency to build a gas-fired power station. During its construction phase, it will employ 2,000 people. Will he agree to meet me and Alstom—the main contractor—to ensure that we maximise the number of local Welsh people who are employed during the construction phase?

Mr. David
My hon. Friend is correct in stressing the importance of that utility initiative in his constituency, and I give a commitment that we in central Government will do everything possible, in partnership with the Welsh Assembly Government, to ensure that the processes to bring that about are fulfilled as quickly as possible. Specifically, I very much hope that I will be able to come down to his constituency in the very near future, and that is one of the facilities that we can visit and discuss.

Prime Minister

The Prime Minister was asked—

Engagements

John Battle (Leeds, West) (Lab)
Q1.  If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 28 January.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Gordon Brown)
This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

John Battle
What we know from previous recessions is that the people who suffer most are those who have the least. So may I urge my right hon. Friend to ensure, in his forthcoming meetings and discussions with world leaders, that tackling the waste of poverty at home and abroad is now a top priority?

The Prime Minister
I applaud the work that my right hon. Friend does as chairman of the all-party committee on poverty and international development. It is precisely because of the dangers and risks to people who are poor and unemployed that we are taking the action that we are taking—raising the pension and pension credits, raising child benefit and child tax credits, helping the unemployed and making sure that small businesses have the finance that they need. That is part of the plan that we are introducing now that is being adopted in many countries of the world to help those who are poor and unemployed. To protect savers by capitalising the banks, to ensure real help to families and businesses now, and at the same time to extend lending to small businesses and homeowners—that is the plan that will ensure recovery not just nationally but, when it is adopted, internationally.

Mr. David Cameron (Witney) (Con)
In the last week we have discovered that Britain is facing the deepest recession in a generation. We have had the worst manufacturing figures since 1975, and this morning the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that the country’s debt burden will take a whole generation to pay off. How deeply will the economy have to contract before the Prime Minister finally admits that there is indeed an economic bust?

The Prime Minister
May I quote from the IFS “Green Budget”? [Hon. Members: “No!”] They do not like it. It says:

“Our central forecast is that the UK will avoid deep and prolonged recession thanks to the enormous monetary and substantial fiscal stimuli already agreed.”

If we had taken the right hon. Gentleman’s advice and done nothing, it would have been a deeper recession.

Mr. Cameron
The Prime Minister seems to be denying now that a recession is taking place. Extraordinarily complacent! I asked a very specific question about his definition of a economic bust—and I have discovered that he was asked that question before, in front of the Treasury Committee, and for once in his life he actually answered it. I have the transcript; let me read it to him. He referred to reductions in GDP of 1.5 per cent. He was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie):

“So that is the minimum definition of a ‘bust’?”

And the Prime Minister replied, “Yes.” Now we know that the economy shrank by 1.5 per cent. in the last quarter alone, will he finally admit something that every economist, every business and every family in the country knows to be true—that, even on his own definition, he did not abolish boom and bust?

The Prime Minister
This is a recession that is facing every country and continent in the world, and everybody except the Conservative party agrees that it is not a unique United Kingdom phenomenon; it is something that has got to be dealt with internationally. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Institute for Fiscal Studies; it also said:

“In current circumstances, the cost of doing nothing…is larger than the cost of acting”.

That is the rebuttal of the Conservative policy of doing nothing.

Mr. Cameron
Does the Prime Minister not understand the damage that he does to himself, and to his credibility, when he says things that are self-evidently nonsense? It is self-evidently nonsense to say that about the Opposition. Our jobs plan has been copied in his jobs plan. Our loan guarantees have been copied in his loan guarantees. When he says these things about the Opposition, he does not damage us; he damages himself. That is why his poll ratings are going back to Michael Foot levels. Let me ask him one more time. Even one of his own advisers said this week:

“It’s against Gordon’s nature to do a mea culpa but at some stage we’ve got to find the words”.

Why does he not find the words now? You didn’t abolish boom and bust, did you?

The Prime Minister
I have said all along—

Mr. Speaker
Order. The Leader of the Opposition knows the rules of the House, and he knows how to phrase a question. [Interruption.] Order.

The Prime Minister
I have said that this is a deep recession. I have also said the truth—that it is hitting every country in the world. I think that the Leader of the Opposition would recognise that we were the first to act to deal with the recapitalisation of the banks and to stop savers losing their money. He supported that until last week, when he walked away from that position. We were also the first to recognise that there needed to be a fiscal stimulus. He will see today that countries that he often quotes, such as Canada, are now announcing a big fiscal stimulus. He will also see that it is right to extend lending. That is the way forward. We can play his game of student politics as long as he wants to play it, but what the country is interested in is whether we will take the action that is necessary to get us out of the difficulties. We are taking the action. His policies would cut public investment at a time when we need it: in other words, he would do nothing to help.

Mr. Cameron
Only one of us was a student politician—and he has never grown out of it. What is interesting about today is that in answer to the first question the Prime Minister denied that this was a deep recession, and in answer to the third question he said that it was a deep recession. I suppose that with this Prime Minister, that is progress. He talks about the global recession, and I want to ask him about that. In the same evidence to the Treasury Committee, he actually gave a definition of boom and bust. Let me read out what he said. [Interruption.] It will end when he admits that he did not abolish it; that is when it will end. What he said was:

“what I mean”—[Interruption.]

They probably wanted a definition; here it is:

“what I mean by ‘boom bust’…is running a policy where you allow the economy to grow too fast and then it sinks far further than it has in other countries, even when there is a world downturn”.

Is that not exactly what is happening right now? Yes, of course there is a world downturn, but our economy is sinking further and faster than the rest, so even on the Prime Minister’s own definition, is it not true that he led us into boom and bust?

The Prime Minister
America went into recession more than a year ago. The euro area went into recession more than six months ago. This is a deep world recession, and I would explain to the Leader of the Opposition that past recessions in Britain have been caused by high inflation. They have been caused, as they were in the early ’80s and the early ’90s, by the Government allowing inflation to get out of control and interest rates having to rise. He should know: he was in the Treasury in the early ’90s. This recession is not caused by high inflation; if anything, inflation is going to be near zero this year. This recession is not caused by high interest rates. This recession is a result of a global financial crisis. If he does not recognise that, he will not begin to be able to discuss or decide on the answers. I suspect that it is because he does not understand that that the Conservative policy is doing nothing.

Mr. Cameron
We have had all the Prime Minister’s economic understanding—and that is what led us into the mess that we are in now. The fact is that he let debt get out of control. He keeps saying that this recession all came from America. It was not America that gave us the biggest Budget deficit in the world. It was not America that made us the most indebted country in the world. It was not some American who designed our regulatory system that failed; it was him. If he will not retract something stupid that he said in the past, let me ask him about something crass and insensitive that he said this week. He said that thousands of people losing their jobs, homes and businesses was simply down to the

“birth pangs of a new global order”.

Would not anyone hearing that conclude that the Prime Minister cares more about his global grandstanding than about other people’s jobs?

The Prime Minister
If the Conservative party is not prepared to accept that this is a global recession that requires global action, it will get nowhere. Our public debt is lower than that of America, France, Germany and Japan. He should not be going around the country saying the opposite of what is true. At the same time, the measures that we are taking to deal with this global recession are measures that other countries are now taking, following us. The one thing that other countries are not doing is following the Conservative policy of doing nothing, which is not only the wrong thing, but a disastrous course for this country.

Mr. Cameron
I do not know where the Prime Minister gets his figures from. This year he is going to borrow 8 per cent. of GDP. That is the same amount as a Labour Chancellor borrowed and ended up back at the International Monetary Fund. Those are the figures; that is the truth. In the past three months alone, 4,000 businesses went bust, more than 11,000 homes were repossessed and almost a quarter of a million people lost their jobs, but the message from the Prime Minister seems to be, “Don’t worry, you’re just the birth pangs of a new global economic era.” Today we are told that the debt that he is building up will take a generation to pay off. What we have had from the Prime Minister is denial about the past—continuing today—failure in the present and debt for the future. Should those not be the death throes of a failed premiership?

The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman is not winning this argument. This is a global recession—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. Members will not shout anyone down in the Chamber. It is wrong to do that—[Interruption.] Order. Do not start defying the Chair.

The Prime Minister
This is a global recession, not just a UK recession, and the answer, as the IFS said today—the right hon. Gentleman quotes the IFS—is not to do nothing, but to take all the action that is necessary. I see no one else around the world supporting his proposal to do nothing. Indeed, the shadow shadow Chancellor has been giving interviews explaining what should be done. Does he support the VAT measure? Yes, he did. Does he support the fiscal stimulus? Yes, he did. Does he support our policy of helping children without the married couple’s allowance? Yes, he did. Does he support European co-operation to deal with the downturn? Yes, he does. He, at least, has the semblance of a policy. The Leader of the Opposition would do absolutely nothing.

Mr. Jim Cunningham (Coventry, South) (Lab)
Is the Prime Minister aware that Jaguar Land Rover welcomed the measures that he announced yesterday, particularly on green technology? Is he also aware that there will still be some anxiety in Coventry and the west midlands until people see the final outcome of yesterday’s package?

The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend has been a great supporter of the car industry and its development in his own city and round the country. I believe that the car industry is a sector with a strong future. That is why we want to unlock loans of up to £1.3 billion, guaranteed for low-carbon initiatives in cars. That is also why we are giving loans and guarantees of up to £1 billion for lower carbon initiatives for non-European Investment Bank projects. That is why we are discussing training grants, which would be in addition to short-time working, so that we can help people in jobs to keep their jobs. We will do everything we can to help the car industry. This is the difference. We know that in times like these we must act to help—but I am not sure that the Conservatives support us in this.

Mr. Nick Clegg (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD)
Does the Prime Minister think it is right that some Members of the upper House can use their status as non-domicile non-residents to get out of paying their full taxes here in this country?

The Prime Minister
Of course it is not right.

Mr. Clegg
In that case, will he—[Interruption.] Hang on. Millions of ordinary British taxpayers are filing their tax returns this week. They are the ones who deserve a tax break, not the super-rich. So will the Prime Minister support our private Member’s Bill to force peers, who make the laws of this country, to pay their full taxes in this country?

The Prime Minister
Where I would disagree with the right hon. Gentleman is to say that we are helping ordinary taxpayers in this country. We are raising personal allowances so that people will pay less tax; they will rise again in April as a result of the decisions in the pre-Budget report. We have cut VAT—and, if I may say so, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says today that that is a far more effective stimulus than critics are saying. Of course, we are also raising pensions and child benefit. Yes, we should take action against tax havens, but, yes also, we are helping ordinary taxpayers in this country.

Helen Southworth (Warrington, South) (Lab)
Q2.  In the current global economic instability, will the Prime Minister intervene rapidly to ensure that women workers who fear job losses get help to keep their jobs, learn new skills and keep the family income coming in?

The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The success of recent years has been that a large number of women who previously never had the chance of getting into work, partly because there was no child care and partly because there was no training, have had the chance to get into work. As people have to look at new job opportunities—and there are half a million vacancies—we want to help them, particularly those who have training needs and those who need child care help, into the jobs that are available. That was very much part of the package that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions introduced a few weeks ago. We will keep the new deal, we will make it more flexible and we will spend the £500 million that my right hon. Friend allocated so that we can help women and men to get the jobs that they need.

Dr. Andrew Murrison (Westbury) (Con)
Q3.  Why, according to the International Monetary Fund, the OECD and the European Union, is Britain heading for a longer and deeper recession than any of its competitors?

The Prime Minister
I have just cited the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which said—[Interruption.] They do not like hearing a statement—[Interruption.] First of all, our Institute for Fiscal Studies said that we would avoid a longer and deeper recession by means of the fiscal stimulus that we are taking. That is exactly the same view as has been expressed by the International Monetary Fund. I am afraid that the Conservatives are living in a dream world if they believe, one, that this is purely a British problem, and two, that the answer to it is doing nothing. They have to go back to the drawing board and think again.

Mr. Mohammad Sarwar (Glasgow, Central) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is aware of the tragic humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Does he share the anger of thousands of my constituents and millions of people across Britain at the BBC decision to refuse to air the Disasters Emergency Committee Gaza appeal? Does he agree with me that the corporation’s decision has damaged the reputation of the BBC both at home and abroad?

The Prime Minister
It is not for us to interfere with the independence of the BBC and Sky, which made the decisions about whether they would broadcast the appeal on Gaza. But what I can say is this: we are making the appeal as widely known as we can through our own information services. At the same time, we have put £28 million into helping with humanitarian aid in Gaza. The situation that has been found is one where children have to be flown to hospital, where unexploded bombs have to be dealt with and where humanitarian aid and food has to be provided immediately. I think it would be the wish of all people in this House for this to be done as speedily as possible.

Mr. Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Q4.  Last week, the Prime Minister tried to cover up the expenses of Ministers. This week—

Hon. Members
Oh!

Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman must withdraw that remark. It is not a proper thing to say. Try to rephrase the question in another way.

Mr. Stuart
I withdraw that remark, Mr. Speaker.

This week, Labour peers stand accused of selling the law of the land for cash. Does the Prime Minister still claim, like his predecessor, that Labour is whiter than white?

The Prime Minister
Baroness Royall, the Leader of the House of Lords, has taken immediate action to deal with the problem. All of us are deeply concerned. These are serious allegations, which have to be dealt with. That is why we immediately set up the committee on privileges to look at how a proper code of conduct could be introduced; that is why we investigated the interests, which is happening under Baroness Prashar; and that is why Lady Royall said this morning:

“If the current allegations are proven, we may need as well to consider emergency sanctions”.

Those are the steps that we are taking. I hope that it is true of all parties in the House that we wish to root out any mistakes that have been made, and ensure that they do not happen again.

Jessica Morden (Newport, East) (Lab)
Given the announcement this week of devastating job losses at Corus, over 500 of which are in my constituency in Llanwern, will the Prime Minister meet, as a matter of urgency, a group of MPs from the all-party steel and metal related industries group to consider what support can be given to this crucial part of our manufacturing base—and, crucially, to the steelworkers who have stuck with Corus through thick and thin and who now need our help?

The Prime Minister
We have talked to Corus, and we have said that whether it is through the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, the regional development agencies in Wales and in other parts of the country, or Jobcentre Plus, we will do everything we can. Steel is absolutely crucial to the manufacturing future of this country. We know from Tata, the owners of Corus, that it wishes to keep the steel plants moving forwards. Following the jobs summit, we are already working with Corus to look at what could be done to help with training costs for the future. I assure my hon. Friend that I will be very happy to meet her all-party group of MPs.

Mr. Nigel Dodds (Belfast, North) (DUP)
Q5.  Does the Prime Minister agree that there can never be an equivalence between terrorists, on the one hand, and the innocent victims of terror, on the other? Does he therefore acknowledge the deep hurt and offence that has been caused by the obnoxious proposal in the Eames-Bradley report published today on the past in Northern Ireland, which suggests a £12,000 payment to all relatives of everyone killed, regardless of their status—which effectively does away with the distinction between murderers and those whom they went out to murder and kill? Will he reject any definition of victimhood which elevates terrorists to the same status as those whom they targeted for murder and violence?

The Prime Minister
There can be no justification for terrorist violence, and there will be no justification ever given for it. The issues raised in the report published today by Bishop Eames and Mr. Bradley are very serious indeed, and I understand why one of their recommendations has evoked such controversy in Northern Ireland. The Government will consider the report with great care, and we will reply in due course. I believe that some of the recommendations will be acceptable to all parties, such as settling outstanding cases, pushing forward with reconciliation, and having a reconciliation fund that will help different groups to come together so that we can get away from the incidents of the past. I will never forget the thousands of innocent victims in Northern Ireland. I know that the hon. Gentleman speaks for the whole community in Northern Ireland when he says that we must respect the fact that innocent people lost their lives, and that that should never be forgotten.

Jeff Ennis (Barnsley, East and Mexborough) (Lab)
Does the Prime Minister recall that in the 1980s this country was the world leader in the development of clean coal technology via the fluidised bed plant at Grimethorpe colliery in my constituency? That was until the Thatcher Government pulled the plug on the funding. We now have another opportunity to lead the world, but this time in the development of carbon capture and storage. Will the Prime Minister reassure the House that, in contrast to what the Tories did with clean coal technology, this Government will not let the country down on that important issue?

The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. History will show that we did need coal, and we did need the new coal technologies. I am sorry that in the ’80s the clean coal technology projects were abandoned in that way. However, we are now looking at carbon capture and storage. He is absolutely right that this is a transformational technique for dealing with carbon emissions. We will make an announcement in due course and try to persuade our European colleagues, who have set up a fund for the purposes of sponsoring carbon capture and storage, that Britain deserves to have one of the first demonstration plants.

Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
Q6.  Which of these should concern the Prime Minister the most: powerful criticism of the south-west regional spatial strategy by hon. Members of all parties; the fantasy economic growth rate of 3.2 per cent. per annum that it is using; the green light that it has given developers to neglect the social urban and village housing that we actually need and head straight for treasured local countryside and green belt, damaging everything—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman must ask a question. [Interruption.] Well, perhaps the Prime Minister can try to answer it now.

The Prime Minister
May I say that in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, even after the recent rises in unemployment, long-term unemployment is still 75 per cent. down on what it was in 1997? We will of course look at what he says about the strategy and all the facts that he brings to bear on it, but no Government have done more to support industry and public investment in the region, and we will continue to do so.

Mr. Don Touhig (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
Q7.  The Corus job losses are a bitter blow, and all our efforts must now be dedicated to helping the steelworkers and their families. But even in this difficult time, should not our message be that Britain is the right place to invest and the right place to grow a business, and that the British people are worth backing? Despite the doom-mongers opposite, our society is not broken and we are determined to come through this economic downturn successfully.

The Prime Minister
Yes. Those who talk Britain down will regret doing so, because we are a resilient and determined society. We know that we can come through these difficulties, and we know also that we have the industries that are the basis for future growth. I believe that the British people will come together around the plan that will take us through this downturn.

Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)
In 1997 the Prime Minister said that he “relished” the prospect of abolishing the “unaccountable and unelectable” Members of the House of Lords. Why is it that after 12 years of a Labour Government we still have an unelected Chamber, double standards on financial disclosure and no way of removing peers who break the law?

The Prime Minister
We have put forward our proposals for the reform of the House of Lords. They were in a paper that was issued a few months ago. In that paper there is also the proposal on sanctions for Members of the House of Lords who commit criminal offences. Baroness Royall has today put forward proposals for new codes of conduct and for new rules that include the ability to expel Members of the House of Lords from their duties if they are guilty of an offence, and she has said that in the cases that we now know about, she is prepared to bring forward emergency sanctions to deal with those issues. I believe that when a problem is identified, we are taking the action necessary.

Charlotte Atkins (Staffordshire, Moorlands) (Lab)
Q8.  What assurances can the Prime Minister give my constituents that Government-funded construction projects such as the Biddulph health centre in my constituency will go ahead as soon as possible? These projects will give a much-needed boost to the construction industry and, in the case of Biddulph, ensure that my constituents have a really important health centre for their health needs.

The Prime Minister
I believe that that is a £10 million project that will help my hon. Friend’s constituents and bring better health care in her constituency. The important thing that the Health Secretary is making absolutely clear is that these health projects are moving forward. We are not cutting investment in them, they are moving ahead, and all the health service investment that we want to see happen has been budgeted for and will go forward. It cannot be said that a party that wants to cut public expenditure and public investment has any answers to the problems of our country.

John Barrett (Edinburgh, West) (LD)
Q9.  One way to stimulate the economy in the north and south, tackle pollution and reduce the demand for increased airport capacity would be to invest in a national high-speed rail link. Why, after 12 years of this Labour Government, are we still waiting?

The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman will know that when the Secretary of State for Transport announced the proposals on Heathrow, he also announced our proposals to set up a company to pursue a high-speed rail link, and that is exactly what we intend to do. We are prepared to make a commitment to that project, and all the work that is now starting is designed around getting high-speed rail links moving forward.

Dr. Ian Gibson (Norwich, North) (Lab)
Q11.  What are the implications of the economic downturn for the private finance initiative, and will my right hon. Friend consider investigating the PFI contract with the Norfolk and Norwich hospital to see whether it might be a good deal to buy it out at this stage?

The Prime Minister
The Treasury is looking at PFI issues that arise from the loss of lending capacity in the economy, but the Health Secretary assures me that the project that my hon. Friend mentioned will go ahead.

Andrew Selous (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Q10.  If all our problems come from America and the rest of the world, why is the pound falling so sharply against the dollar and the euro?

The Prime Minister
If I could just say—[Hon. Members: “Answer!”] The experience of targeting the pound and the exchange rate has not been particularly beneficial for this country. Targeting the Deutschmark and the exchange rate mechanism, and then membership of the ERM, did not work. So we are not targeting the pound, but inflation. That is the Bank of England’s role, and I believe that it is best way to bring about a recovery in the economy. I caution the hon. Gentleman and his party against any policies that would target sterling.

Miss Anne Begg (Aberdeen, South) (Lab)
Q12.  My right hon. Friend will be aware of proposals in the Welfare Reform Bill to oblige drug addicts to accept treatment and rehabilitation in order to receive their full benefits. What can he do to persuade the Scottish National party Administration in Holyrood that that policy is both popular and the right thing to do?

The Prime Minister
I would urge all councils to engage with the Department for Work and Pensions on those issues. The policy recognises that just keeping drug addicts on benefits is not the answer to their problems. They need the treatment that is necessary and the support for that. That is exactly why we have changed the policy to make it possible for people to get the treatment and to give them support while they are doing that. That is the right policy for the future of this country, whatever the Scottish National party says.

Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
What is the sterling value of an ounce of gold today, and what was it when the Prime Minister started selling our gold reserves in July 1999?

The Prime Minister
It was right to diversify our portfolio. [Hon. Members: “Answer.”] One thing we did was buy euros, and the hon. Gentleman will be sad to hear that the value of euros is up in our portfolio.

Opposition Day

[2nd Allotted Day]

Heathrow (Third Runway)

Mr. Speaker
I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

12:33:00

Mrs. Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
I beg to move,

That this House urges the Government to rethink its plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport and to give full consideration to alternative solutions; regrets the Government’s heavy reliance on data supplied by BAA in assessing the case for expansion and notes the likely forthcoming break-up of BAA’s ownership of three of 5 London’s airports following the investigation by the Competition Commission; believes that the consultation paper Adding Capacity at Heathrow Airport was deeply flawed, as it paid insufficient regard to the costs of air and noise pollution in the surrounding areas and the commitment to curb carbon dioxide emissions to tackle climate change; regrets the fact that provisions to improve high-speed rail lines from 10 Heathrow to major cities have not been fully explored, along with the potential of other UK airports to handle more long-haul flights; and urges the Government to initiate a consultation on a new national planning policy statement on the theme of airports and high-speed rail.

I welcome the support of the Liberal Democrats for the motion, which is lifted verbatim from early-day motion 2344, tabled last year by the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), with cross-party backing. The issue is of grave importance, and rightly spans party boundaries.

Let me first explode a myth peddled by the Secretary of State. To oppose a third runway is not to oppose flying. We recognise the importance of aviation and the benefits of flying for our economic competitiveness and for holidaymakers. We applaud the work of the budget airlines in bringing air travel within the reach of a wide range of people, for whom it would have been a distant aspiration less than a generation ago.

However, there comes a time when stuffing thousands and thousands more flights and millions and millions more passengers into the same overcrowded corner of the south-east of England starts to impose an unacceptable cost on our environment and our quality of life. We believe that Heathrow needs to be better, not bigger. That is why we and so many others oppose the Government’s plans to build a third runway.

Colin Challen (Morley and Rothwell) (Lab)
I regret that the hon. Lady’s party has chosen to make a political football out of a cross-party early-day motion. Will she tell us whether the Conservatives would consider a proposal for a new airport for London and the south-east in the Thames estuary, and whether they oppose the expansion of regional airports?

Mrs. Villiers
We are not making a political football out of Heathrow. We are giving the House the opportunity to vote on the issue, which the Government would not give us. In response to pressure from both sides of the House, we thought that it was right that hon. Members, particularly those whose constituents are directly affected by this important decision, should have the right to vote on this matter. On the Thames estuary, that is not an option that we are looking at, at the moment. I shall come in due course to the subject of regional airports, but we acknowledge the possibilities and benefits that could come from the proportionate and carefully considered expansion of regional airports.

Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The hon. Lady will appreciate that many people are concerned about the impact on climate change of the expansion of air transport anywhere. Can she explain to the House the difference between the impact of expanding flights at Heathrow and that of doing so elsewhere?

Mrs. Villiers
The difference between Heathrow and so many other airports is that its flight paths cover an incredibly densely populated part of the south of England. The environmental problems associated with Heathrow expansion, as I shall explain, are dramatically wider than just climate change. Yes, climate change is a concern for many of our constituents, and for all Members of the House, but with Heathrow, we have to take into account the fact that nitrogen dioxide pollution is already a serious problem. The Environment Agency has warned that a third runway would increase the risk of serious illness and early death. Those are environmental considerations that we cannot, and should not, ignore around Heathrow.

Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal) (Con)
Does not my hon. Friend think it amazing that the Government have not given us an opportunity to vote on this issue, given that their own Environment Agency has said that the expansion of Heathrow is environmentally unacceptable, and given that the Government have set up a Committee on Climate Change and are supposed to be keen on dealing with emissions? In the light of all that, does she not agree that this democratic Parliament should have the last word and a proper vote on the matter in Government time?

Mrs. Villiers
Absolutely. It is regrettable that the Government have refused to give us the vote that we need on this issue in their own time. It is also regrettable that they are proposing that the ultimate decision on the issue will be made by an unelected, unaccountable quango.

Mr. Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the hon. Lady think that it makes environmental sense for aircraft to spend half an hour flying from Manchester to London, and then to spend another three quarters of an hour circling London because there are not enough runways to land on?

Mrs. Villiers
That is one of the reasons why we are providing a viable alternative to a third runway—namely, a top-class, high-speed rail link between Leeds and Manchester and London.

Mr. Tom Harris (Glasgow, South) (Lab)
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
I have taken a lot of interventions, and I shall take more later in my speech, but I want to make some progress now.

I want to look at four key problems: air pollution, road congestion, aircraft noise and carbon emissions. I shall then look at the economic issues, and finally at the alternative ways to make Heathrow a better airport.

Emily Thornberry (Islington, South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
Not at the moment.

I shall start with air pollution. A massive increase in flights at Heathrow would intensify a serious problem with nitrogen dioxide pollution at an airport that is already in breach of the EU pollution limits that are due to become legally binding from next year. The damage to health caused by nitrogen dioxide is well established and, as I have already said, the Environment Agency has warned that proceeding with a third runway would lead to an increased risk of serious illness and early death in a densely populated area around the airport. It is therefore a matter of grave concern that the Government are now seeking a derogation from the air quality directive, despite their promise that they would not let their expansion plans undermine their efforts to comply with it.

The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Geoffrey Hoon)
For the benefit of the House and the country, will the hon. Lady set out the criteria by which she would judge any decision on airport expansion in air quality terms? Does she stand by the terms of the EU air quality directive?

Mrs. Villiers
I am calling on the Government not to try to wriggle out of the obligations that they have undertaken under the air quality directive; they signed up to it. I am afraid that this is one environmental precondition that the Government will find it impossible to wish away.

Mr. Hoon
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
No, I have already answered. That precondition could yet provide a legal bar to building runway 3. Of course, a major contributory factor in the nitrogen dioxide problem is surface traffic generated by passengers travelling to the airport, which takes me to the second major problem with the third runway—road congestion.

The plan set out in the congestion consultation document envisaged an increase in passenger numbers at Heathrow to 122 million a year—nearly double current levels. On the Government’s own figures, that would mean that passenger-related car journeys at Heathrow climbed to 53.4 million. Road congestion around Heathrow, as anyone who has travelled there will know, is already a major problem, and the Government’s plans will only make a bad situation worse—not just for people living around the airport, but for those attempting to use the M4 and the M25 for longer journeys. Neither the consultation document nor the Secretary of State’s recent announcements contain any of the convincing proposals for a major shift out of the car on to public transport that are needed to deal with the congestion or the air quality problem. Indeed, paragraph 56 of the document “Decisions following consultation” states:

“The Department is clear that a detailed surface access strategy is not a prerequisite for a policy decision and would be a matter for the airport operator as part of a planning application in due course.”

According to the Department for Transport, that is BAA’s problem, not its problem.

Mr. Hoon
Again, may I give the hon. Lady the opportunity to set out on behalf of her party to the House and the country what criteria on road congestion she would use in order to determine these issues and related matters affecting other airports?

Mrs. Villiers
I have answered that question already. Actually, we have set out plans to build a new Heathrow rail hub, close to the airport, enabling many people to get the train directly from their home town to the airport; connecting Heathrow directly to the main Great Western main line; and enabling people living in cities as far apart as Bristol, Exeter, Cardiff and Swansea to get a train directly from their home town to the airport. That is an effective strategy to reduce congestion and nitrogen oxide emissions, in the absence of the Government’s having proposed any effective strategy at all. Let us look at the record. BAA has yet to—

Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon) (Lab)
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
No.

BAA has yet to meet the Government’s 40 per cent. target for public transport use, which it was supposed to achieve eight years ago. The proportion of people using public transport to access Heathrow has actually fallen in the last couple of years, and the company has downgraded its own targets on the issue. BAA has talked about Airtrack for years, but there is no guarantee that the scheme will go ahead, and London councils of all political complexions, representing all 33 of the city’s local authorities, do not believe that the Piccadilly line will be able to cope with expected uplift in passengers.

Thirdly, I turn to an even more serious problem: noise.

Mr. Dismore
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
No.

In debates in the Chamber, hon. Members representing areas as far apart as Maidenhead and Windsor in the west and Vauxhall, Brixton and Greenwich in the east have expressed their concerns about the impact that aircraft noise from Heathrow is already having on their constituents.

Alan Keen (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
Not at the moment.

According to the local authorities in question, 114 schools are already seriously impacted by Heathrow aircraft noise, affecting at least 100,000 children.

Mr. Dismore
Will the hon. Lady give way on that point?

Mrs. Villiers
Okay.

Mr. Dismore
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who is also my parliamentary neighbour. Her motion does not refer at all to mixed mode, but does refer to “alternative solutions”. Under mixed mode, her constituency and mine would probably have been affected by noise, so why does her motion not rule out mixed mode as one of the alternative solutions, as the Government have already done in their announcement, which is to the benefit of her constituents and mine when it comes to noise?

Mrs. Villiers
One of the reasons why mixed mode is not there is that the Government have apparently promised us that mixed mode is not going to happen. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that that promise is not worth the paper that it is not written on. Many people might actually agree with him on that. Obviously we welcome the Government’s retreat on mixed mode, which would have had a catastrophic impact on people’s quality of life across a huge area. As he says, it would have impacted negatively on people living in my constituency and in his. So yes, I welcome the Government’s decision to drop their plans for mixed mode, but it remains to be seen whether this promise will prove any more durable than so many others that have been subsequently abandoned when the pressure for expansion has risen again.

Emily Thornberry
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
Not just at the moment. The simple fact remains that a new runway with a massive uplift in flights and a new flight path over a densely populated area will make an already serious noise problem at Heathrow a whole lot worse.

Mr. Hoon
Will the hon. Lady kindly give way on the question of noise?

Mrs. Villiers
Certainly.

Mr. Hoon
We all recognise that noise plays a part in these decisions; that is why, necessarily, they are difficult. Will she set out for the benefit of the House and the country what—[Interruption.] I am very sorry, but there is an important question here. The Conservative party cannot say that it rejects expansion without describing the basis upon which that decision is taken. If the party wants to be taken seriously, it has to give the criteria. Will the hon. Lady say whether or not she supports the noise criteria set out in the 2003 White Paper?

Mr. Gummer
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker
I do not think that this is a point of order, but I ask the right hon. Gentleman to give it to me.

Mr. Gummer
Is it not true that the right hon. Gentleman is going to make a speech of his own later on?

Mr. Speaker
Order. I knew that it was not a point of order. I call Mrs. Villiers.

Mrs. Villiers
The Secretary of State is in no position to make assertions or claims about, or to ask questions about, the basis for noise calculations. His credibility on noise is completely undermined by the documents revealed under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 by the assiduous work of my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening), which show his officials deliberately reverse-engineering and re-forecasting the data to try to meet the tests and get the answers that Ministers wanted.

Mr. David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a very powerful case against Heathrow expansion and in favour of high-speed rail. Surely rail would be a better alternative to short-haul flights for both the environment and noise nuisance?

Mrs. Villiers
I completely agree with my hon. Friend, and I will respond to that point in more detail later.

The Secretary of State’s assurances on noise simply lack credibility because the Government have made every effort to duck their promises in the past. Let us take their assurance that expansion would not lead to an increase in the area covered by the 57 dB noise contour. Even setting aside the criticism of the validity of that contour—such criticism came from both the World Health Organisation and the DFT’s own research study, “Attitudes to Noise from Aviation Sources in England”, or ANASE—the Government use the 2002 base year for their calculations, a year when Concorde was still flying. The way in which the Civil Aviation Authority’s noise model operates means that the demise of Concorde allows the headroom to give the green light to major increases in flight movements by conventional planes, without exceeding the noise tests set.

Ruth Kelly (Bolton, West) (Lab)
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
Not just at the moment.

Even more controversially, as I have said, the documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show the DFT and BAA working closely together on a re-forecasting, and reverse-engineering the projections for future flight mix to try to meet the tests that the Government had set and get the answers that Ministers wanted. Even then, the Government are still relying on a massive leap forward in aircraft technology to enable them to reconcile their promises on noise with the increase in flights that they want to see, including the delivery of the now notorious twin-engine “green jumbo” which is not in the design portfolios of either major aircraft manufacturer, and yet is expected by the DFT to replace completely all 747s by 2030 and virtually all units of Boeing’s successor to the 747, which is not even on the market yet.

It is this history that undermines the Government’s credibility when they make more promises on ‘green slots’. When challenged, the Secretary of State was unable to give one single example of a model of plane green enough or clean enough to qualify to use the new slots, and it is a major concern that documents published alongside the statement on Heathrow contain no explanation of how the system for regulating the use of new slots will work. Most controversially of all when it comes to noise issues, The Sunday Times recently reported that figures passed to the Civil Aviation Authority by BAA predict an increase in flights between 11 pm and 7 am from about 27,300 in 2006 to 35,000 once the third runway is operating at full capacity—an increase on today’s levels of more than 25 per cent. We strongly and successfully resisted the Government’s attempts to lift the cap on night flights, which can have such a corrosive impact on quality of life. Yet again I urge the Secretary of State to guarantee the future of the ‘night cap’, and to drop his plans to review it.

Then, of course, there is the climate change impact of a third runway. With 222,000 more flights, the airport could well become the largest single source of carbon dioxide in the United Kingdom, emitting nearly 27 million tonnes every year. According to research by Greenpeace, by 2050 emissions at that level could take up around a fifth of the entire UK carbon budget under the Climate Change Act 2008. Even with the increase in flights restricted to 125,000, and even if optimistic estimates of efficiency gains are factored in, Heathrow could still consume approximately one eighth of the nation’s total carbon budget by 2050.

Emily Thornberry
Can the hon. Lady assist the House by telling us what carbon dioxide emissions would result from the proportionate expansion of regional airports to which she has referred?

Mrs. Villiers
I shall say something about regional airports shortly, but I think the hon. Lady is wrong to dismiss their importance. They can have a significant impact on regional development, and as I have said, they can play a part in relieving pressure on capacity in the south-east.

Emily Thornberry
rose—

Mrs. Villiers
I have answered the question.

While the Secretary of State may have placated his Cabinet colleagues, I am afraid that his proposed climate change safeguards do not stand up to scrutiny. Let us take the proposed 125,000 cap on the use of the new runway. There is no guarantee as to how long it will last. It is expressly stated to relate to the initial use of the runway, and a review is promised in 2020, but it is unlikely that a new runway—

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Edward Miliband)
It is up to the Committee on Climate Change.

Mrs. Villiers
Why should we believe that the Government will take any notice of the Committee on Climate Change, given that they are currently ignoring the Environment Agency, the Sustainable Development Commission, a huge coalition of environmental groups, Lord Smith, who is one of their own former colleagues and who chairs the Environment Agency, and their own vice-chairman for the environment, the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter)?

Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West) (Con)
I strongly agree with my hon. Friend about the role that regional airports can play. I think she is aware of the two misconceptions about Conservative policy in this regard. One is that the party is opposed to aviation per se; she has already dismissed that idea, which is welcome. The other is that we would rule out any expansion of aviation capacity in the south-east. Will she now debunk that myth as well, for the benefit of the House?

Mrs. Villiers
My hon. Friend is right. We do not rule out the possibility of airport expansion in the south-east; nor, as he says, are we against flying.

Let us return to that 125,000 cap. As I was saying, there is no guarantee as to how long it will last. There is to be a review in 2020 anyway, and it is unlikely that a new runway will even have been built by then. In reality, the Secretary of State’s assurance about 125,000 flights takes us no further than the promises that Labour has already made, many years ago.

Edward Miliband
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
In a moment.

The consultation document acknowledged that the full uplift to 702,000 flights could not take place until 2030 in any case, as not even the Government, with their optimistic approach to aircraft technology, believe that there is any prospect that before then technology will deliver aircraft clean or quiet enough to comply with the promises on noise and pollution that Labour made as long ago as 2003.

Edward Miliband
On the subject of carbon, the hon. Lady said something very interesting. She said that she did not rule out aviation expansion in the south-east. She has also said this:

“We recognise that the economic arguments for expanding Heathrow are much stronger than any other airport in the south-east”.

How does she reconcile those two positions?

Mrs. Villiers
That last statement does not represent my view. I am happy to acknowledge that my thinking on the economic arguments relating to Heathrow has moved on. [Laughter.]

Edward Miliband
rose—

Mrs. Villiers
No. I am happy to acknowledge that I did, at one stage—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. I am trying to hear the hon. Lady. It is unfair for Members to do all this shouting.

Mrs. Villiers
I make no secret of the fact—indeed, I said this on the “Today” programme—that I once thought that the economic arguments in favour of expansion at Heathrow were stronger than they are. Having looked at the detail, I find the economic arguments wholly unconvincing.

Edward Miliband
This has been a most illuminating exchange, I must say. The whole country will now realise that the hon. Lady is disowning a statement that she made on 22 November 2007—a statement made 15 months ago. How can we possibly trust what she is saying now?

Mrs. Villiers
I believe very strongly that the economic arguments in favour of Heathrow expansion are not convincing, following detailed reflection on them.

Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
No, I will not.

Lynne Jones
I am trying to help.

Mrs. Villiers
All right, then.

Lynne Jones
Was it not Keynes who said “When the evidence changes, I change my mind”? I congratulate the hon. Lady on having had a change of heart on this issue. I am still unsympathetic towards her view that airport expansion is possible in the south-east, but I hope she may come to review that as well.

Mrs. Villiers
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the point that she has made.

Let me return again to the 125,000 cap. I am afraid that the credibility of flight caps is undermined by the long list of broken promises that has characterised the history of Heathrow, and by the fact that Labour was pushing hard to lift the flight cap that it promised to impose when it gave the go-ahead to terminal 5, years before the terminal had even opened its doors for business.

Then there is the target of reducing aviation emissions to below 2005 levels by 2050, not mentioned in the voluminous document published alongside the Secretary of State’s statement earlier this month. I am afraid that this has all the hallmarks of something cobbled together at the last minute to paper over internal divisions.

Mr. Hoon
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
No. I have given away to the Secretary of State already. He will have his chance later.

Leaving aside the limited impact of having a target so far in the future unless demanding interim milestones are imposed, let us look at page 84 of “UK air passenger demand and carbon dioxide forecasts”, which was published alongside the Secretary of State’s statement. Table 3.7 predicts that by 2030 Heathrow will emit 23.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, and that the combined total for all the London airports will be 31.6 million tonnes. Yet according to the target set by the Secretary of State, in 2050 the entire industry must emit less than 37.5 million tonnes, the 2005 level. The Government’s calculations, as set out in that document, leave no room at all for regional airport expansion, which would need to be constrained below the 2005 level to avoid breaching the limit. Some regional airports might even have to close to allow for the uplift in flights in the south-east, even if we assume no emissions growth at Heathrow between 2030 and 2050.

Mrs. Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
No. I have been very generous in giving way, and I want to make some progress now.

Whereas the environmental case against the third runway is compelling, the economic case, as I have said, is unconvincing. It is astounding that the Oxford Economic Forecasting study on which the current economic case is based fails to make any attempt to deduct the costs of increased air pollution, aircraft noise and a massive increase in congestion on some of the United Kingdom’s most important roads. Nor is any attempt made to assess the carbon cost of inbound international flights. The CE Delft study for HACAN ClearSkies disputes the £120 value that OEF claims every passenger arriving in the United Kingdom contributes to the economy. It also concludes that OEF overestimates the extent of suppressed business demand for air travel at Heathrow. Indeed, the Government’s whole analysis completely ignores the huge efforts being made to reduce the need for business travel. According to a recent survey conducted for the World Wildlife Fund, 89 per cent. of the FTSE 350 companies interviewed expected to cut flights over the next 10 years.

Emily Thornberry
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
Not at the moment.

Also worth noting is the success of initiatives such as Project Icarus, which asked companies to pledge to reduce their travel carbon footprint by 60 per cent., and which has attracted significant support from major blue chip companies.

Mrs. Ellman
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
No. I have been very generous in giving way.

In a recent poll of small businesses conducted by Continental Research, 95 per cent. said that expanding Heathrow would not provide any benefits for their business. Despite Frankfurt’s extra runways, London has captured a dominant share of financial services business over recent years, and a simplistic comparison between Heathrow and airports such as Charles de Gaulle and Schiphol completely ignores the fact that London is served by a total of five busy airports. The south-east system of airports collectively offers a wider choice of flights to more destinations than either CDG or Schiphol.

Mrs. Ellman
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. Does she recognise the importance of Heathrow as our only international hub airport, and does she also recognise that it is used by businesses and that they are urging that it should run better, which means it should have more capacity so that our economy can grow in our very difficult economic circumstances?

Mrs. Villiers
Of course I recognise the importance of Heathrow and that business wants Heathrow to be better, but businesses are divided over the third runway issue. I hope I can assure all businesses that, as I will explain, we have concrete and credible plans to make Heathrow better by delivering a top-class high-speed rail link connecting the terminals directly with the European high-speed rail network and thereby providing a high-speed rail alternative to short-haul flights. As the hon. Lady will know, it has been demonstrated in the rest of Europe that there is a clear opportunity for high-speed rail to provide a viable alternative to short-haul flights. By providing that alternative, we would relieve overcrowding at Heathrow and make it a much better airport for both businesses and passengers.

Mr. Greg Hands (Hammersmith and Fulham) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend share my belief that the fact that this Government have failed to do anything on high-speed rail after 11 years in charge, while at the same time we have seen expanding networks in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, is a shocking indictment of their record on this issue?

Mrs. Villiers
Yes, and I was very concerned that when just a year or so ago the Government published their 30-year strategy for the railways, it had no place at all for high-speed rail.

Hugh Bayley (City of York) (Lab)
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
Possibly later.

Both the OEF study and the Government’s entire approach are fundamentally flawed by a refusal to give serious consideration to alternative ways of dealing with the problems that passengers all too often experience at Heathrow. That is the essential thrust of early-day motion 2344 and the motion before the House this afternoon.

Ruth Kelly
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
Not at the moment.

Much of the travel misery that so many people experience at Heathrow has more to do with poor customer service than with a shortage of runway space. The most notorious example of such poor service is the fiasco that accompanied the opening of terminal 5. Breaking up BAA’s monopoly over so much airport capacity in the south-east and allowing passengers to vote with their feet and choose an airport run by a different operator should help drive improvements in service quality across all of London’s airports.

The Government’s approach to Heathrow underestimates the potential that regional airports have to relieve pressure on capacity at airports in the south-east. Giving people a wider choice of destinations from their home airport has advantages in terms of passenger convenience and the regional balance of our economy. A switch to more direct flights from regional airports reduces emissions by cutting out the interim leg and relieves the road congestion caused by people having to drive to the south-east’s airports. Sensible and proportionate expansion of regional airports on a case-by-case basis, with full regard to local and environmental planning concerns, should be an important part of any strategy to relieve overcrowding problems at Heathrow.

In proposing a new high-speed rail line connecting Heathrow terminals directly with Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and the channel tunnel link to Paris and Brussels, we have found a further means of relieving Heathrow’s overcrowding problems and one that does not inflict—[Interruption.] I hear comments about Scotland. I believe what we are proposing would be an excellent foundation for a high-speed network that one day would stretch across the country and up to Scotland. We have made a firm commitment to going as far as Manchester and Leeds, whereas the Government are talking only in vague terms about possibly going as far as Manchester.

Hugh Bayley
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. Like her, I have a strong interest in railways. She seems to have forgotten that we do have one high-speed line—the line from London to the channel tunnel. It was designed as a private line by a former Conservative Government, but that collapsed and Government had to intervene. How would the high-speed rail link that she is proposing be financed?

Mrs. Villiers
We have set out detailed plans for the costings of our high-speed rail line.

In our proposal for a high-speed rail link, we believe we have found a means of relieving Heathrow’s overcrowding problems in a way that does not inflict the damage that would clearly come with runway 3. Evidence from Europe clearly shows that high-speed rail provides a viable and attractive alternative to competing flights.

Mr. Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
The hon. Lady mentioned the high-speed rail links, which we in Scotland would be very keen to see, but I understand that at present Conservative policy is to go only as far as Leeds. Can she give us an idea of what the policy would be for extending these lines to Scotland? Given the cost estimate of £44 billion, what time scale can she give for these important links, which would cut out the need for much air travel from the central belt?

Mrs. Villiers
I recognise the advantages of taking a line all the way to Scotland, but we have to be realistic about what we can promise, and we have to build such systems in stages. The history of our transport system demonstrates that we cannot deliver the whole lot all in one go. It is clear that constructing, and committing to, the link that we have proposed will be a major step along the road to delivering that wider-scale network, one day including, I very much hope, a full link between Scotland and London.

Mr. Hoon
The hon. Lady has conceded that under a Conservative Government there could be some expansion in the south-east. Will she tell the House the level of carbon emission she would permit before taking any such decision on expansion?

Mrs. Villiers
Today’s debate is about Heathrow. It is about the Government’s reckless decision to proceed with a third runway, which would significantly undermine this country’s ability to meet its target of cutting carbon emissions by 80 per cent. by 2050. No matter what they say, the Government cannot get around that problem.

Whether it is Paris-Brussels, Paris-Marseille or Madrid-Malaga, the arrival of high-speed rail as an alternative to the plane has had a dramatic downward impact on flight numbers. BAA’s own figures confirm that there were about 63,200 flights between Heathrow and Manchester, Leeds, Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam and Rotterdam in 2007—all journeys where it is realistic for high-speed rail to replace flying. Freeing up that many slots would provide space at Heathrow equivalent to about a third of the full capacity of a third runway, and more than half the 125,000 uplift that the Government now say should be the maximum permitted usage of runway 3. With the last gap in the high-speed link between Brussels and Cologne about to be plugged, which opens up easier rail travel to German destinations, and with interconnections and through-ticketing improving every day on the European high-speed network, the potential for air-to-rail switching is clearly going to increase even further in the future.

It is clear that high-speed rail is a much less carbon-intensive way to travel than flying. The climate change differential between the two forms of transport will widen with the expected decarbonisation of electricity generation.

Hugh Bayley
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Villiers
Sorry, but no.

Furthermore, the Conservative party believes that as a nation we can no longer put off the decision to start building a high-speed rail network in this country. Our proposal on high-speed rail would bring major advantages for rail users suffering from chronic levels of overcrowding. The boost for jobs would be felt right across the country, but the impact would be particularly strong in the midlands and the north.

The Secretary of State’s apparent conversion to high-speed rail was welcome, but unlike in our proposals, there is no firm commitment, no timeline and no attempt to get a new line past Birmingham. The new rail hub that the Government are considering for Heathrow will apparently be located at Old Oak Common, but a station more than 9 miles away from the airport, at Wormwood Scrubs, simply will not yield the benefits of the innovative proposal we have backed to connect Heathrow terminals directly with the main rail network to the west and the European high-speed network. What the Secretary of State still just does not get is the fact that high-speed rail could be an alternative to a third runway, not a sweetener for it.

In conclusion, I make the following appeal to Members of all political parties. A third runway is not inevitable: there is a better way; there are credible alternatives. To all those who signed early-day motion 2344, I say that this is an important opportunity to ask the Government to listen to the millions of people who care about climate change and the dissenting voices on their own Back Benches, and to drop their plans for a third runway, which could cause such devastating damage to our environment and our quality of life in this country.

13:10:00

The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Geoffrey Hoon)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:

“notes the Government’s commitment in the 2003 Aviation White Paper to limit noise impacts and to be confident both that statutory air quality limits will be met and that public transport will be improved before expansion is permitted at Heathrow; welcomes the Government’s new enforceable target to reduce UK aviation carbon dioxide emissions below 2005 levels by 2050, and the commitment that increases in capacity at Heathrow, beyond the additional 125,000 movements a year already agreed, will only be approved after a review in 2020 by the Committee on Climate Change of whether the UK is on track to meet this independently monitored target; notes that development at Heathrow will be conditional both on requirements that the size of the 57 decibel noise contour will not increase compared with 2002 and on adherence to the requirements of the European Air Quality Directive; notes the decision not to proceed with mixed mode, thereby ensuring that neighbouring residents will have predictable respite from aircraft noise; welcomes the proposal that new slots at Heathrow should be ‘green slots’ using the most efficient planes; recognises the economic and social importance of Heathrow; and welcomes proposals on ultra-low carbon vehicles and new rail links to the west of Heathrow and new high-speed services from London to the Midlands, the North and Scotland linked to Heathrow, to the benefit of the UK as a whole.”

I set out clearly in my statement on 15 January the key decisions that the Government had reached on the future of Britain’s transport infrastructure, including Heathrow. I do not intend to go over that ground again, although I want to address the main points raised by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers). The fact remains—the Conservative party needs to face up to this—that despite her refusal and perhaps inability to answer some very basic questions, she has put forward a policy that lacks coherence, is founded on no clear principles and will do serious damage to Britain’s jobs and economy.

The hon. Lady simply cannot come here and tell Members that the Conservative party would not go ahead with a major project such as the expansion of Heathrow and fail to set out the basis on which that decision has been reached—without being able to set out the criteria for that decision, her argument has no credibility. As long ago as 2003, the Government set out in a White Paper clear criteria for such expansion. On each issue that she cited as one of the reasons for her decision—air pollution, road congestion, noise and climate change—I asked her, I invited her, I implored her to tell this House and the country the basis on which she has taken any decision, but she could not do it. She has not done any basic homework on the matter, and that leads to the clear conclusion—anybody witnessing the hon. Lady’s woeful performance would know that this is the case—that the Conservative party’s decision is dictated by political opportunism of the lowest kind. The Conservative party’s decision, on which she admitted that she has changed her mind, was determined by Conservative central office. It was not taken on the basis of any kind of principle; it represents the worst kind of expedient. Unless she can answer basic questions on the subject, she has no right to represent her party or the country.

Mrs. Villiers
I shall tell the right hon. Gentleman the basis of our decision—it was what I set out in my speech: that a third runway would inflict huge damage on the quality of life of millions of people who are already suffering because of aircraft noise and on the quality of life of many people who are already suffering direct health problems as a result of the expansion of Heathrow. We believe that it is deeply reckless and irresponsible to press ahead with a course of conduct that would be so incredibly damaging for our environment and for our quality of life. That is why we oppose a third runway at Heathrow.

Mr. Hoon
Those comments would have some credibility if the hon. Lady could set out the basis on which those assertions are made. She and her Front-Bench team are desperate to get into government, to sit on the Government Benches and to take decisions such as on the third runway, but unless they can set out the basis on which their decisions are taken, whatever they say on these issues simply does not carry any weight. She cannot argue that jobs and this country’s economy should be put at risk by failing to go ahead with the project without being able to give the reasons for that decision. Unless she can set them out—I am about to give her another opportunity to do so—she has no credibility.

Mrs. Villiers
If there is no credibility in opposing a third runway—if there is no basis or justification for opposing it—why did 57 of the right hon. Gentleman’s own colleagues sign early-day motion 2344 and why has he lost a member of the Government only this morning over this issue?

Mr. Hoon
If the hon. Lady is not worried about jobs and the economy—[Interruption.] Well, the position of the Conservative Front-Bench team—I heard some sedentary comments—appears to be that a list of environmental and other organisations will be cited as a reason for not taking a decision on the runway. If that is the policy of the Conservatives, they should articulate it, instead of blustering as the hon. Lady has done.

Let us consider the impact of the go-ahead decision on jobs and the economy of this country, because hon. Members should not simply take my word for how important this decision is for the country’s economic well-being. They should listen to David Frost, of the British Chambers of Commerce, who has said:

“This sends a strong message to the world that we are a nation open for business.”

Brendan Barber, of the TUC, has said:

“Aviation is key to the UK economy and will support the creation of many more quality jobs.”

Miles Templeman, of the Institute of Directors, has said:

“A third runway is vital to maintaining the UK’s economic competitiveness, and will put us in a good position to win business from the key markets such as India and China when the upturn comes.”

I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) is not here, because I really wonder what he must think as he looks across his party—a party that was once capable of taking economically serious decisions. He is a man who sat in Conservative Cabinets with Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and who is supposed to speak up for business and jobs inside the Conservative party. He now apparently finds himself, as do the entire Conservative Front-Bench team, at odds with representatives of both employers and employees. It cannot often be said, so let me repeat that the CBI, the TUC, the Institute of Directors and Unite are all on exactly the same side of the argument—they are united in favour of the action necessary to support British jobs and the British economy. That is something that the Conservative party is giving up on.

No responsible Government can ignore the importance of Heathrow to our international connections, to the 100,000 jobs that it supports directly or indirectly and to the ability of London and the UK’s nations and regions to compete for business and commerce. Every great trading nation needs access to the growth markets of the future. Unlike any of the other UK airports, Heathrow serves destinations such as Mumbai and Beijing and it provides more frequent services to key international destinations. In these times of economic slowdown, those links become even more crucial in supporting British jobs and helping to revitalise our economy. What does it say about the Tories’ economic policy that they will today turn their backs on 100,000 jobs at Heathrow airport?

Mr. John Randall (Uxbridge) (Con)
If the Secretary of State is so convinced on the rightness of his argument, why is it that when we invited him to come to our constituencies to meet the people most affected by this, the offer we received was that three people—that is all—to be nominated by an MP and from each of the affected constituencies, could come to this place to discuss the matter with Ministers and civil servants?

Mr. Hoon
I would have been delighted to make such visits, but unfortunately, and unusually for me, I found my presence in such demand in so many different places that it was necessary to find a means by which such discussions could take place. I would be delighted to meet the hon. Gentleman and representatives of his community, but as I say, I could not spend the next year touring west London, much as I would have been delighted to do so.

May I deal directly with the motion? I listened carefully to the comments that the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet made, but I still do not understand how her party’s policy addresses the difficult questions that have been raised by the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) and others on her own Conservative Benches. I simply do not know how she answers those questions about noise and the impact on local communities, and neither does the House nor the country. [Interruption.] It is no good Conservative Members saying that we do not know, because those answers have been set out in a detailed White Paper. I invite those hon. Members who clearly have not read it to have a look at the criteria, because if they were to do so, they would see that a process has been followed for taking the decision—a process that the hon. Lady has completely failed to set out.

Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Ind)
I am not going to ask the right hon. Gentleman to come to meet my constituents, but will he give them comfort that the Government will not reconsider the Thames estuary airport option, which is being promoted by a number of senior Tories?

Mr. Hoon
I will be dealing with that in due course, but the hon. Gentleman can take it that we will not be reconsidering that particular option.

May I, again, tempt the hon. Lady to answer some basic questions about her proposals?

Several hon. Members
rose—

Mr. Hoon
I shall give way in a moment.

First, does the hon. Lady recognise that our constituents and British businesses demand that they should be able to travel by air and that there is growing demand from our constituents and from British business for such services? Her own leader, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), made that point quite clearly in 2007, when he said:

“It’s unrealistic to think aviation is not going to grow. Business requires a huge amount of travel and we live in a world in which people enjoy going on holiday. As people get richer there is going to be growth in aviation”.

Does she accept that argument? She says that she does.

John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend mentioned the decision-making process. My constituents are not particularly interested in party political knockabout; we want absolute clarity about the process that will be used to make the decision. I would welcome the opportunity to come back to the matter just to get the clarity. My understanding is that it will be dealt with by the new Infrastructure Planning Commission. If that is the case, it will require a new national policy statement. Will he explain the process of arriving at that new national policy statement given that the aviation White Paper is now six years out of date? If we could get clarity on that today, it would be incredibly helpful.

Mr. Hoon
My hon. Friend makes a fair point. Of course, the process will be governed by the Planning Act 2008, which will set out the process that he has at least in part described. I anticipate that the Government would want to bring forward a new aviation White Paper that would set out the up-to-date position, given the history since 2003. It is important that we acknowledge something that the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet and her colleagues on the Conservative Front Bench seem to have failed to realise—I am sorry that the shadow Chief Whip is not in his place, because he will have to deal with these problems in the unfortunate eventuality of his becoming the Government Chief Whip. The Opposition—I would be delighted to give way again on this point—appeared to suggest that every major planning infrastructure decision would be subject to a vote on the Floor of this House, but that specific provision was rejected in the course of the Planning Bill.

If every major planning decision were not to be subject to a vote on the Floor of the House, then, once again, I must accuse the Conservative party of political opportunism. It is simply picking out those particular policies on which it thinks it might have some success, rather than being consistent and acknowledging that it is necessary as a governing party to adopt a consistent process governing how decisions are taken.

Mrs. Villiers
In tabling the motion, we were simply responding to the passionate demands from both sides of the House that the people who represented constituencies that would be blighted by the Government’s plans should have the opportunity to speak and vote on the issue.

Mr. Hoon
I am sorry that I gave way to the hon. Lady, because she clearly did not listen to the question. The question is straightforward. If a Government take a decision, they have to take similar decisions according to a consistent process. They cannot pick and choose for political reasons the kinds of decisions that they would like to be subject to votes on the Floor of the House. Until she understands that, she will not be fit to be in government.

Several hon. Members
rose—

Mr. Hoon
I am going to make a little progress. What is important is that we should—

John McDonnell
Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Hoon
I have given way to my hon. Friend. I shall give way in a second.

As the Opposition have accepted that there is a requirement for some increase in capacity, where will that increased capacity be made available? The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet appears to have ruled out in the past any extra capacity at any of the airports in the south. Today, I was not quite so sure what her position would be. Let us consider the policy recommended to the Conservative party by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), whose economic competitiveness policy group was set up and reported in 2007. It was set up, as far as I recall, by the leader of the Conservative party. The report said:

“The primary issue for UK air transport is the lack of airport capacity to meet the relentless demand…We recommend that an incoming Conservative government’s priority should be the strengthening of London’s, and Britain’s, main air transport hub at Heathrow”.

That was the policy outlined by senior figures in the Conservative party. The policy was articulated as recently as last year by the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) when he appeared on “Any Questions?” in Hounslow. He said:

“I’m afraid there is an economic need for more airport capacity somewhere—somewhere in the South East”.

He also said that

“no responsible party can simply say that we can put up the shutters and there’s not going to be any more runways anywhere in the South East”.

That was what was said by a member of the shadow Cabinet, speaking as recently as last year. That is precisely what the Conservative party is trying to do—to put up the shutters and to do nothing. That has been its policy since it changed its position on Heathrow.

I will give the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet credit—she has acknowledged that the policy has changed. She has acknowledged that the Opposition have changed their mind. What she is not able to tell the House or the country is why that policy has changed for any reason other than grubbing after votes in some cheap exercise in political opportunism.

Mrs. Villiers
We have provided a viable way to make Heathrow a much better airport, by providing a viable high-speed rail alternative to the thousands of short-haul flights that are clogging up the airport and contributing to its overcrowding problems.

Mr. Hoon
Unless the hon. Lady is able to provide the criteria by which that decision has been taken, she cannot be taken seriously.

Several hon. Members
rose—

Mr. Hoon
I have already given way to my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Joan Walley).

Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent, North) (Lab)
May I take my right hon. Friend back to what he just said about the process by which the decision will be considered and the role of the new planning agency? Will he tell the House what account will be taken of the work of the Committee on Climate Change? It has already said:

“Whilst aviation and shipping emissions are today both relatively small as a percent of total global emissions they are likely, if unconstrained, to grow to much larger shares.”

That will have a huge effect on other industries, which will need to have carbon allowances. Will he tell the House what part the Committee on Climate Change will play in the process governing how any decision will be made?

Mr. Hoon
I made it clear in my statement to the House that any further expansion beyond that which was permitted would require a new process by which any new slots would be made available. That process would depend critically on the views of the Committee on Climate Change, which would have to report to the Government, and therefore indirectly to the House, that we were on track—that is, that we were taking the right decisions—to meet our ambition of ensuring that there would be no more carbon emissions through aviation in 2050 than in 2005. That is a clear commitment to take account not only of the advice of the committee but to ensure that it will advise the Government on the necessary steps to meet that ambition.

Colin Challen
I agree with my right hon. Friend that the Opposition’s opportunism is to be deprecated. However, wrong-headedness is also to be deprecated. I am disappointed that my right hon. Friend has begun his speech on the premise that we should bow to the market forces first and put climate change somewhere down the ladder. That appears to be the case. The industry’s own sustainable aviation road map predicts that by 2020 there will be a sizeable increase in aviation emissions in this country and seems to deny that there is such a thing as radiative forcing, which is something that the Government recognise. Are we putting too much of our future into the hands of an industry that seems to have a golden inheritance while other industries have to pay the price—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. We must be careful with interventions. There is a 10-minute limit on speeches because Back Benchers want to make a speech and interventions should not be as long as the one that we just heard.

Mr. Hoon
I do not accept the way in which my hon. Friend has made his point, not least because I took great pains to set out in my statement the week before last that such decisions are necessarily a matter of balance between the requirement to allow more flights and to allow more people to travel on those flights, and the consequences for the local environment and the people affected by Heathrow as well as our international position in securing international agreements on reducing carbon. We have led the way in ensuring that we adopt strict standards and pass them into law. We will implement them. I hope that he will accept that, and I shall deal with it in more detail in a few moments.

Several hon. Members
rose—

Mr. Hoon
I am going to make some progress, in the light of Mr. Speaker’s observation.

One suggestion set out in the motion tabled by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet is that we should

“give full consideration to alternative solutions”.

I have no idea—and I am none the wiser from her speech—what that would mean in relation to her previously stated opposition to expansion at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. She has opposed expansion at each one of those airports without saying why she is against it. Perhaps she is now considering the option of a new four-runway airport in the Thames estuary, which I know that the Mayor of London and some Members of this House favour. At the weekend, I read about the Mayor’s plans for runways and train tunnels in the sea, which were described by others as something out of “Thunderbirds”—Boris island rather than Tracy island.

Some 400 alternative sites were considered before the 2003 White Paper, many of which were in and around the estuary. I have said repeatedly why we do not believe that they are feasible or practical. The recent incident in New York, in which a plane was forced to land in the Hudson river, should demonstrate the consequences of a bird strike and make hon. Members think about the implications. Anyone who believes that such a proposal is non-controversial should note the words of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which said:

“‘Boris Island’…has been conclusively proven to be a complete non-starter ecologically, environmentally and economically. To revisit the issue is a complete waste of everyone’s time and energy.”

Mr. Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
The Secretary of State has made much of the White Paper. When I raised the issue of Manston airport with his predecessor at the time—now Chancellor of the Exchequer—he indicated clearly that it was too far from London. The hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), who will defend a 600 majority—is trying to promote Manston. Does the Secretary of State agree with his predecessor or does he accept that Manston, which is 50 miles from so-called Boris island—has a role to play?

Mr. Hoon
I have visited Manston airport, and I can see the argument for its expansion and I recognise that it has a part to play. Indeed, several airports in and around London could help in relieving the expansion capacity problems that we face. However, no one is seriously suggesting that one of those 400 sites could be a substitute hub airport. The hon. Gentleman knows enough about aviation to recognise that we are talking about Heathrow, which is a hub airport and an international gateway very different from the airport that he mentions.

Mr. Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
Will my right hon. Friend recognise that the proposal for a Thames estuary airport is currently being evaluated by Douglas Oakervee, the project director of the Hong Kong airport, which was built in the sea, and chairman of Crossrail? He is one of the most respected civil engineers in the country, and is employed by the Department on that major rail project. Will my right hon. Friend accept Douglas Oakervee’s judgment that this proposal is a serious alternative that needs to be evaluated?

Mr. Hoon
My right hon. Friend is right to say that Mr. Oakervee is employed by the Department, and in that capacity I have met him. I am delighted by his judgment, because it is that it will never be built. That was his conclusion.

The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet suggests that increased competition will somehow provide a solution. I welcome the work that the Competition Commission has done and I believe passengers will see some real benefits from the changes outlined. But to suggest that competition on its own can solve the capacity problems we face just is not credible. Let me quote Oliver Dowden, recently installed as the Conservative party’s director of political operations. Last summer he said:

“No matter how much competition you inject into the UK airport market, the fundamental problem remains the same. The projected growth in demand for air travel continues to exceed the projected growth in supply. The way to rectify this is by building more airports and runways. Approving such expansion requires real political will”.

Perhaps in his new position he will instil real political will into the Conservative party, and he should start with the hon. Lady.

Even with all the evidence of the need for expansion for economic and social reasons, this was not a decision to be taken lightly. I know that the decision to support a third runway at Heathrow will have a significant impact, especially on those who live in the surrounding area, and that that understandably arouses strong feelings. That is why I have always been clear that while there is a strong case for expansion, it could be supported only if strict conditions on noise, air quality and public transport were met.

Last week I announced my decision that those conditions could be met. A key part of that statement was that there will be a limit on the initial use of the expanded airport, so that the increase in aircraft movements is only around half the level on which we consulted. The modelling carried out showed that the critical noise and air quality tests could both be met in 2020, with the airport operating at that level; that the 57 dB noise contour would be no larger than it was in 2002; and that no residential properties would be in areas of nitrogen dioxide exceedances. However, to ensure that we are basing our decisions on facts, not modelling, we have provided added reassurance by committing to a legally binding mechanism that will ensure that additional capacity will be released only when an independent assessment shows that the limits have already been met and will not be compromised by additional flights.

We will legislate to ensure that, in the event that air quality or noise limits could be breached, the independent regulators would have a legal duty and the necessary powers to take action. Modern aircraft are quieter and less polluting than older aircraft. Modern designs have helped to deliver a reduction in the number of people around Heathrow affected by average levels of noise at or above 57 dB. That was some 2 million people in 1974, but had fallen to 258,000 people by 2002, as the result of significant improvements in aircraft technology. Those improvements in technology will continue, ensuring that aircraft are quieter, more fuel efficient and less polluting. To reinforce that trend we intend to make new capacity at Heathrow subject to a green slot principle to incentivise the use of the most modern aircraft. My decision also included responding to many concerns about the loss of runway alternation if we had agreed to options for mixed mode on the existing runways. I announced my decision not to support mixed mode ahead of a third runway. That means that people living under the existing flight paths will continue to enjoy the predictable periods of relief from aircraft noise that many local residents told us they value highly.

Graham Stringer (Manchester, Blackley) (Lab)
I agree with the essence of my right hon. Friend’s arguments that there is simply no economic alternative to a third runway at Heathrow if this country is to continue to compete internationally. However, I was worried by the analysis by Ben Webster on page 3 of The Times today, which claimed that keeping within the 2005 limits on CO2 would place unnecessary restrictions on regional airports. I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend could assure the House that that is not the case.

Mr. Hoon
That is simply not the case. Unfortunately, The Times seems to have confused the projections for carbon and not taken into account the kinds of policy changes that have been agreed. The pressure will be on the airlines to use more efficient aircraft, so that they are not required to buy permits under the emissions trading scheme, to reduce their emissions and fuel consumption. That is a much more likely approach by a rational airline that is acting economically.

In 1990, some 18 different regional airports had services into Heathrow. Because of capacity constraints, now only nine do so. In fact, the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet might like to reflect on the fact that Schiphol serves 21 UK destinations. If that is not an example of the Conservative party’s policy exporting jobs, I cannot think of one.

Tom Levitt (High Peak) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that perhaps the most polluting and wasteful practice by Heathrow is stacking, in which aeroplanes have to wait to come into land? That is because the runways are used at 99 per cent. capacity, which causes problems with the reliability of services. Is it not the case that the first impact of a third runway would be to reduce carbon emissions through the reduction and even abolition of stacking?

Mr. Hoon
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and one that was completely ignored by the hon. Lady. At any given time, there can be as many as four stacks of aircraft waiting to land. The average delay at Heathrow—caused by the capacity problems—is some 19 minutes, and some aircraft are delayed for far longer. Therefore it is necessary to address the question of capacity, in carbon terms as much as for any other reason.

We have been criticised by the hon. Lady for failing to progress longer-term options for transport infrastructure, which is why I set out clearly our ambition to ensure the development of a new high-speed line to the north, approaching London via a Heathrow international station on the Great Western line. That could provide a four-way interchange between the airport, the new north-south line, existing Great Western rail services and Crossrail, with a 15-minute service into the centre of London. But I reject the idea that that could somehow be an alternative to much needed runway capacity at Heathrow. The Conservative figures on which the hon. Lady relies assume that every single domestic passenger would transfer to high-speed rail. That would include all passengers flying from the remaining nine British airports served by Heathrow. Incidentally, that includes Belfast. The hon. Lady has failed to explain how a rail link would help our friends in Northern Ireland.

A great many people simply do not believe the hon. Lady’s argument. Richard Lambert of the CBI does not, and he said that

“a high speed rail link would have a lot going for it, but I don’t think for a minute that it will solve the capacity problems at Heathrow.”

The Conservative Mayor of London does not believe it. He said:

“High speed rail should certainly be part of the mix, but it is not enough on its own.”

Even Conservative Back Benchers do not believe it. Only this week, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) said:

“Those who believe new rail links mean fewer flights are wrong.”

The beneficiaries of the Opposition’s policy are clear—they would be the Dutch, the French and the Germans. Indeed, on Monday night the director of airport development at Schiphol said on the BBC London news:

“If I am honest, I must say Heathrow needs a third runway to stay as a major important hub in Europe and to connect London with all the other cities in the world. But for us it would be the best if they wouldn’t get the third runway at all.”

Now, despite the reincarnation of the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe, I do not believe for a moment that those on the Opposition Front Bench have suddenly seen the light and become overwhelmed by enthusiasm for all things European. What their policy would do, however, is give a real boost to continental employment and growth by exporting British jobs.

The reality is that, by encouraging our European competitors to expand at our expense, the Opposition’s policy would damage us economically without saving a single gram of carbon. The sorry truth is that, in their opportunist drive to secure short-term headlines, the Opposition are sacrificing the country’s longer-term interests.

Norman Baker (Lewes) (LD)
The Secretary of State is very keen about not exporting jobs to Schiphol, but is he aware that in the last hour that airport has announced a 25 per cent. reduction in its work force, due to a decline in traffic?

Mr. Hoon
The Liberal Democrat party may be the last party on the planet to notice that we are in the middle of a global economic slow-down. I regret that slow-down and I am very sorry that businesses around the world are having to reduce costs. I know that the Liberal Democrat party is not the most economically literate party, but I should have thought that even the hon. Gentleman would have noticed that there are some economic problems out there in the real world—although I know that that is not a world that he inhabits very often.

Robert Key (Salisbury) (Con)
May we come down to earth for a minute? So far, the Secretary of State has completely failed to talk about the impact of a third runway on any of the local people, but they are not the only ones who would regret the arrival of the bulldozers. He will recall that the construction of terminal 5 took more than a decade, and that it posed a danger to some of the most important archaeological sites in the area. The Thames gravels will be equally affected by a third runway. It took up to 100 archaeologists working over 10 years to rescue what was left of that great part of Britain’s heritage. What plans does he have to rescue Britain’s heritage from the wanton destruction caused by the third runway?

Mr. Hoon
I am not entirely clear how the issue that the hon. Gentleman raises is relevant to the third runway, as he prefaced his question with a reference to terminal 5 which, when I last looked, was in a different place. Even so, I am perfectly willing to follow through the logic of his argument. Is he really saying that national projects such as this have to be decided on the Floor of this House only in the light of the views of local people, or those conducting an archaeological dig?

Robert Key
Of course not.

Mr. Hoon
The hon. Gentleman says, “Of course not.” I invite him to go back and look at the careful statement that I made to the House. If he does so, he will accept that I carefully weighed the impact on local people. I set out very detailed criteria for noise and pollution—

Robert Key
indicated dissent.

Mr. Hoon
The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but I hope that he will give me some credit for setting out those criteria, as that is something that those on the Opposition Front Bench have singularly failed to do today. The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet has given us no evidence at all about how the Opposition would weigh local people’s interests against our national interest, our economic interest, and our interest in preserving jobs in this country. We want to promote opportunities for British people to get jobs, and it is a difficult balance that requires judgment. However, it also requires fundamental criteria, and I think that the hon. Gentleman should address his remarks to those on his own Front Bench rather than to me, because the Government have set out the relevant principles.

Mr. Angus MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I have been listening to what the Secretary of State has been saying about jobs, opportunities, Schiphol, Heathrow, and the many flights that go from other airports to those destinations. Can he give any guarantees about whether a third runway would enable places such as Aberdeen and Inverness to have guaranteed slots, morning and evening?

Mr. Hoon
The guarantee that I can give is that that can never happen without expansion and more capacity at Heathrow. As I set out, the history of Heathrow since 1990 has been that the number of different destinations served has fallen from 227 to 180, and it is precisely the regional airports that have suffered most. Essentially, what has happened is that, because of the scarcity of slots at Heathrow, airlines have consistently substituted shorter routes for long-distance ones. Therefore, I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the guarantee that he seeks; all I can guarantee is that there will be no change without expansion.

I turn now to the question of climate change, which various hon. Friends have mentioned. I recognise that Heathrow does not raise only local environmental issues: quite rightly, people also want to understand how the Government’s support for a third runway can be reconciled with our climate change commitments.

As a result of the measures that we have set out, we now have a set of proposals that give the UK the toughest climate change regime for aviation of any country in the world. There will be a new target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from UK aviation in 2050 to below 2005 levels. That provides clear assurance that our strategy for aviation is consistent with our wider climate change goals.

There will be a limit on the initial use of Heathrow’s third runway so that the increase in the annual number of flights is no more than 125,000 a year. That is almost half the additional capacity that we consulted on. In addition, there will be no future capacity increases at Heathrow beyond that figure without Government approval, and following a review by the Committee on Climate Change in 2020 as to whether we are on track to achieve our new aviation carbon dioxide target. The Committee on Climate Change has also been asked to advise on the best basis for measuring that target.

The Government are also at the forefront of international efforts to include aviation in a global deal on climate change that would build on the UK’s leadership in securing the inclusion of aviation in the European Union emissions trading scheme. As a result of the agreement reached by European Ministers last year, aviation will join the ETS in 2012. From that point, net carbon dioxide emissions from aviation in Europe will be capped at 97 per cent. of average 2004-2006 levels, with the cap tightening to 95 per cent. from 2013 onwards. Any increase in emissions above those levels would need to be matched by equal reductions in other sectors in the scheme.

In addition, we are arguing for progressively stricter limits on carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft, similar to those already in place for new cars within the EU. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), proposed that idea at a G8 meeting very recently and we plan to develop it further with our international partners. That is why I can say with confidence that the United Kingdom will have the toughest climate change regime for aviation of any country in the world.

Mrs. Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)
One of the issues relevant to increased capacity and the impact of a third runway on local residents that the Secretary of State has failed to address is night flights, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers). I asked him about the number of night flights last November, and he replied:

“We have not consulted on that matter, and it is not a decision that we have to take.”—[Official Report, 11 November 2008; Vol. 482, c. 650.]

However, we now know that BAA is predicting a 30 per cent. increase in the number of night flights. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm whether the Government are going to abide by the current night flight quotas? Will there be an increase in night flights under his plans, or not?

Mr. Hoon
As I set out to the House, there will be no change in the basis on which night flight arrangements operate.

Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
The third runway at Heathrow is an important issue for people in Northern Ireland because, as the Secretary of State has pointed out, no high-speed rail link will help domestic flights from Northern Ireland. However, there is real concern that slots from Belfast could be lost if a third runway is not built. Will he give an assurance that any planning agreement for a third runway would contain some guarantees about flights from regional airports into Heathrow?

Mr. Hoon
The hon. Gentleman makes a very strong case on behalf of our regional airports. It is a matter of great regret, as far as I am concerned, that we have seen a reduction in the number of flights that serve our regional airports over very many years, precisely because of capacity straits, and it is vital that we maintain sufficient capacity to allow that diversity, including flights to Belfast, to continue.

Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South) (Lab)
On night flights, does not the decisions that my right hon. Friend is making on terminal 6 and a third runway offer an opportunity to make the permission to build conditional on the removal of the remaining night flights? The number is not large; they could be easily rescheduled, as a result of the extra capacity that will come on track.

Mr. Hoon
I set out very clearly the basis of the decision on night flights in the decision that I announced to the House, and I have indicated to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) that there is no change in that basis.

The fact remains that this country faces a fundamental choice: we can follow the Conservative party’s approach, which would duck the most difficult decisions, slash transport investment in the midst of a downturn, export British jobs and undermine this country’s long-term prosperity; or we can help people through the difficult times and take the long-term decisions on investment and climate change that prepare the United Kingdom for the future. For those reasons, I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to support the Government’s amendment to reject the cynical political opportunism that is so manifestly reflected in the motion tabled by the Leader of the Opposition.

13:51:00

Norman Baker (Lewes) (LD)
I regret very much the tone that the Secretary of State for Transport adopted in his responses this afternoon. There was really no need to be gratuitously unpleasant and offensive, as he seemed to wish to be. Far be it from me to defend the Conservative party, but he seemed to decide that attack is the best form of defence. He decided to do that because he has an unconvincing case to put forward. Let us remember that when he was Defence Secretary he was the man who gave us the dodgy dossier, and now, as Transport Secretary, he wants to give us a dodgy runway—the extra runway that has more and more flights, yet somehow the Government’s target of an 80 per cent. cut in carbon emissions is met, where the EU limits will apparently be respected and somehow met, with lots more flights and lots more cars turning up at the airport. The environmental damage will be acceptable, but Sipson will be wiped off the face of the map. That is the dodgy runway that he wants to give us.

Mr. Gummer
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the debate would be more instructive if the Secretary of State had met the fundamental climate change issue about which most of his colleagues are concerned, rather than trying to make odd points against both Opposition parties, which have a principled reason—I could not possibly have a constituency reason—for saying, “If you really care about climate change, you cannot have this extension and expect Ministers to go to Copenhagen with any credibility”?

Norman Baker
I entirely agree with that. The right hon. Gentleman has a long record on this issue. Let me make it absolutely clear that, although we have a number of reasons for objecting to a third runway, our principal reason is climate change. Therefore, the people whom I feel most sorry for are the two who have been corralled on to the Front Bench today: the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. The Cabinet has been leaking like a colander in recent weeks, and we know that those two Secretaries of State have had genuine difficulties—quite rightly, from their perspective, given their Cabinet positions—and that they have been wheeled out today to sit on the Front Bench to give the impression that all has mended and that all is unity.

I look forward to hearing the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change sum up tonight, when he can tell us how a massive increase in the number of flights, with no technological solutions on the horizon, will contribute to his target of an 80 per cent. cut in carbon emissions. I do not know whether he ever took part in university debates where people have to argue the opposite of what they believe, but he will have to practise that this evening.

The reality is that this is a very serious issue in climate change terms and for the constituents of those hon. Members who are affected. The House needs to address those two serious issues. I am afraid the Government have got themselves on the wrong side of the argument. The Secretary of State for Transport, who spent his time attacking other people rather than defending his own case, must recognise that there is now overwhelming opposition to the proposed third runway, even in his own party.

I am happy to say that the Liberal Democrats were the first party in the House to oppose a third runway. In April, we introduced such a motion in the House. We are now being joined by the Conservatives and others: 57 Labour MPs signed the motion tabled by the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan). I am glad that the independent spirit has not been entirely extinguished on the Government Benches and that the lure of becoming a Parliamentary Private Secretary has not taken away entirely the need to vote the right way when issues come before the House.

I draw the House’s attention to the article in The Times that has been referred to; colleagues in the nationalist parties and in Northern Ireland need to be aware that, far from guaranteeing any extra traffic for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, a third runway at Heathrow

“could bring expansion at all other airports to a halt.”

Mr. Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman, but from a Scottish point of view, we want transport links that will take us to Europe. High-speed rail may be the answer, but I asked the Conservative spokesperson about the time scale and payment for high-speed rail and did not get an answer. Can the hon. Gentleman give me an answer on when high-speed rail will reach Scotland to stand in for flights from Edinburgh and Glasgow airports?

Norman Baker
I am very happy to try to respond to that point. We have made a firm commitment that high-speed rail will start immediately after the next election if we are in the lucky position to be in government or, indeed, part of the Government, which may be a possibility. That is not a 2015 plan; it is not a 2027 plan; it starts right away. We have also said how we will pay for it—partly by a £30 per person surcharge on domestic flights, other than lifeline flights to the highlands and islands, for example, and that money will go towards the construction of a high-speed rail network. We are deadly serious about that, and we are determined that the benefits of high-speed rail are not simply for the west midlands but will benefit the whole country.

Graham Stringer
As ever, I listen carefully to the case that the hon. Gentleman puts, which seems to be based on the fact that, if there is not a third runway, there will be fewer flights. But surely, without a third runway, people will not stop flying to Japan or elsewhere; they will just leave this country and go to a European hub, so there will be two flights and more, not less, CO2.

Norman Baker
I have not made the case that stopping the third runway would end up with fewer flights. I have made the case that the Government have accepted for roads. The Government have accepted that, if more road capacity is built, it becomes filled with vehicles, making journeys that would not have been made. However, the Government do not want to accept the case on aviation that, if more airports and runways are supplied, there are more flights. Why do they not accept that argument? I fail to understand the logic that the Government adopt.

Sammy Wilson
Of course, there is real concern about the impact that any decision on Heathrow may have on regional airports, especially those in Northern Ireland, but does the hon. Gentleman accept that, without a hub airport in London, people who leave Northern Ireland and want to fly elsewhere are likely to have to fly to Europe? Those flights are longer, so carbon emissions would be greater. Total carbon emissions are then likely to have an impact on any decision made about regional airports. So it would be far better to have an effective hub airport in the south-east of England, rather than in Germany, France or elsewhere.

Norman Baker
I agree, but we have an effective hub airport at Heathrow already. More people are already using London’s airports than those in Germany or France—London is first in the list—so I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no question of Heathrow ceasing to exist. It will continue to serve Belfast and the other regional airports that are fitted into it. In fact, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) mentions, we want guarantees that slots and flights from places such as Belfast, the north of Scotland and so on will be protected, because they have to feed into Heathrow—there is no alternative—to get elsewhere outside the UK.

The Government have adopted a dangerous political position, and are out of line not just with the House, but with the country at large. With the Government 15 per cent. behind in the opinion polls, I question whether they really want to go to the wall over the issue. Is it really the issue that they want to go down fighting on? Have Labour MPs lost their survival instinct? It seems so.

Mr. Tom Harris
Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that because of opinion polls, the Government should change their position and adopt a populist approach? Is that what the Liberal Democrats are suggesting?

Norman Baker
I am saying that the Government are muddle-headed and have the wrong policy. The opinion polls should concentrate their mind. If the Government were to concentrate their mind and examine the facts, they would reach a different conclusion.

Susan Kramer (Richmond Park) (LD)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, as he has come to a pause. The Secretary of State for Transport just made a comment about night flights that he needs to check with his officials. I believe that under current legislation, the cap on night flights ends in 2012. There is no cap on the number of flights—there is only a general noise commitment—beyond that date. The House is possibly being misled. Perhaps that point could be addressed, at least in the summing up.

Norman Baker
That is an important point, and my understanding is that my hon. Friend is correct on that matter. When the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), replies at the end of the debate, he ought to answer that point in full and clarify the Government’s position on that matter.

As I mentioned, we have long been concerned about the impact of aviation on climate change. That is the primary, but not the only, reason why we oppose a third runway at Heathrow. According to Government figures, aviation accounted for 13 per cent. of total UK climate change damage in 2005—that is all gases, not just CO2. That takes account of departing flights only. If the calculation were based on return flights by UK citizens, the figure would be nearer 20 per cent., according to the Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise. Emissions from air travel are due to rise by 83 per cent. from 2002 levels by 2020, and could amount to a quarter of the UK’s carbon emissions by 2038.

That is the direction of travel that the Government wish to support by allowing the construction of a third runway at Heathrow. They have to get real. I give them credit for putting targets in their Climate Change Act 2008; we are the first country in the world to have a climate change Act. We fully supported it, while others in the House did not. The Government have to realise that they will have to deliver on their climate change targets. They cannot have a target only for some Government to say, 20 years hence, “We cannot possibly meet it.” We must know now how we will meet it, and building a third runway at Heathrow does not help in any shape or form.

Mr. Randall
I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree with me on this point. We are using a sort of shorthand when we talk about a third runway. He is of course aware that we are talking about not just a runway, but something the size of another Gatwick airport, including a sixth terminal, which, as he knows, was not even in the original consultation.

Norman Baker
The hon. Gentleman is quite right. While we are talking about Gatwick, let me make it absolutely clear that we Liberal Democrat Members are totally opposed to any further expansion of airport capacity in the south-east, and in the term “south-east” I include Gatwick, Stansted and Heathrow.

The Government waved away the comments of Chris Smith—Lord Smith, who is now chairman of the Environment Agency. He was of course a former Labour party spokesman on the environment, and was well respected in that capacity. He said on 27 January—not very long ago—that Heathrow expansion is “a mistake”. He said that there was “a very big chance” that the project would stall owing to the threat of legal action from campaigners and resistance from Opposition parties. I can confirm that the last part of that point is certainly true. He also said:

“I think the likelihood is that engines will get cleaner, whether they will get cleaner as rapidly as the government projects I have my doubts.”

He made sensible objections, on behalf of the Environment Agency, to the Government’s policy on a third runway. Will the Government formally respond to the Environment Agency, or does that advisory body matter only when it is in line with Government policy, and is it to be discarded and ignored when it is out of line with it? That appears to be the Government’s attitude.

Rob Marris (Wolverhampton, South-West) (Lab)
I know that it is the hon. Gentleman’s policy to be against all expansion of aviation capacity in the south-east—[Interruption.] That is his party’s policy; he just said so. Many projections show that demand will increase. If supply is restricted, the price of the item will go up. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that poor people—working people—will not be allowed to fly?

Norman Baker
Not be allowed to fly? I do not know where on earth the hon. Gentleman got that from. If he is saying that aviation is underpriced, well, frankly it is. It is underpriced in terms of the carbon damage it does. It sometimes costs less to fly to Manchester or Newcastle than to take the train, and that is wrong. We increasingly need to base our economy on carbon emissions, and we need to put the price next to the carbon emissions. We have to recognise that aviation is underpriced. I have been frank with the House today, and have said that we should have a £30 surcharge on domestic flights to help pay for the construction of high-speed rail.

Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey) (LD)
May I make the absolutely obvious point that most constituents in constituencies such as mine may use transport, including public transport—they may use the bus, the tube and the train—but there are very few people from constituencies with high numbers of people on low incomes who fly around Britain to take part in the economy? Often, the people who fly the most are in the business sector, which ought to set a good example.

Norman Baker
Yes, that is perfectly true, and analysis of travel patterns shows that disproportionate numbers of those who take cheaper flights are middle class or well off, and are not the people referred to in the intervention by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris).

Let me ask the Secretary of State for Transport to address the issue of safety. I do not wish to say that the proposal for a third runway is unsafe; I just want to raise the issue, and be given an assurance at the end of the debate. The Civil Aviation Authority said:

“Were all…southeastern airport development plans to come to fruition, CAA and NATS are of the view that there would not be sufficient airspace to accommodate the scale of predicted growth”—

that is, traffic growth—

“on the basis of current and predicted technology.”

I raised the matter with the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town, last March, as he may recall. He said:

“The CAA has examined our White Paper proposals and believes that the necessary airspace capacity can be provided safely.”—[Official Report, 4 March 2008; Vol. 472, c. 1589.]

NATS said, in a letter to me:

“NATS has not yet carried out detailed work as there has been no requirement for us to do so. We are not therefore able to advise at this stage on any specific airspace changes that may be required in support of any…Government policy to permit expansion of Heathrow.”

It is a serious issue. It may be that expansion can be handled safely; I do not wish to start hares running needlessly, but it is important that it be put on the record that any expansion at Heathrow can be handled safely under the current air traffic regime. I shall be grateful for such an assurance from the Minister when he replies.

John Barrett (Edinburgh, West) (LD)
Does my hon. Friend agree that if there is any question about airspace capacity safety, the issue could be dealt with by the introduction of a high-speed rail link? About 50 per cent. of all flights that leave Edinburgh go to other UK cities that people could easily access by alternative means.

Norman Baker
That is perfectly true. The issue is not simply about getting to other cities in the UK—this may partly relate to the Belfast point; it is also about getting to other cities in near Europe. The potential for high-speed traffic to take us to Amsterdam and other towns and cities in near Europe is significant. The Government have not given that point full weight. There are still too many short-haul flights. There are 24 flights today from London to Manchester; I checked this morning. There is no need for flights from London to Manchester. Paris-Brussels flights have effectively been eliminated by a good rail link. There is considerable potential for transfer of traffic from air to rail. There are still a large number of flights to Paris, although Eurostar offers a good service.

Why is there such a rush to get the third runway approved? It is partly because BAA and its friends know that if there is a change of Government at the next election, whatever the outcome—no matter whether there is a Conservative majority or a hung Parliament—it is much less likely that Heathrow expansion will be progressed with. By the way, I tell civil servants in the Department for Transport not to waste their time on working out an aviation statement; they will not need it. It will be rewritten after the next election.

The majority shareholder in the Department for Transport, BAA, is keen that we should move forward with the expansion as soon as possible. It knows that high-speed rail is a real alternative. It knows that in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, there has been a massive transfer from air to rail on key corridors. It knows that that will happen in this country, too, and that is why it is so desperate to get permission for the third runway before high-speed rail kicks in and the whole case vanishes from under its feet. That is what the game is about, and that is why it is so determined to push the change through. It is just a pity that the Government are determined to aid it in that proposal. It is a great shame.

Mr. Nick Hurd (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern at the lecture that the Opposition received from the Secretary of State on due decision-making processes, when the Government commissioned a business case in partnership with the very industry that is set to benefit most from the expansion of Heathrow airport?

Norman Baker
Yes, I do. There was a lot wrong with the consultation period and with the whole Government process leading up to this point. If the Government had identified a proper way forward, they might have had a stronger case than they have. Unfortunately, they did not do so.

I return briefly to the subject of carbon. The Eurostar figures, which have been provided to all Members of the House and which the Government have not queried, show that rail journeys by Eurostar to equivalent destinations would emit only 10 per cent. of the carbon per passenger. That is an enormous saving. If we are aiming for an 80 per cent. saving on carbon, there we are—there is a 90 per cent. saving on that journey right away. Even if we allow for different energy modes—Eurostar has nuclear generation—the figures from the all-party sustainable aviation group show that the emissions per passenger per kilometre in grams of CO2 will be 58 for rail and 227 for domestic air. Even on that normal energy mix, there is three quarters more for domestic air than for rail.

The Government set much store by the economic case, which has been rather overstated. We seem to be told that the expansion of the runway at Heathrow would have massive economic benefits for London and the south-east. In fact, London has been doing quite well in the past 10 years, even with the terribly constrained Heathrow that we apparently have. In my intervention on the Secretary of State, who has left his seat, I mentioned the loss of jobs at Schiphol, but perhaps a Minister ought to reflect on the survey carried out by the Institute of Directors in January. Only 1 per cent. of IOD members think that air should be the Government’s top priority for increasing capacity, and 52 per cent. said rail.

A survey conducted by the London chamber of commerce in 2006 said that 78 per cent. of London firms opposed Heathrow expansion. Tim Jeans, the managing director of Monarch Airlines, said that the expansion of Heathrow would have a detrimental impact on the lives of millions of people living in west London and prevent the aviation industry from being taken seriously on environmental issues. He also said that the Government’s reliance on new technology to reduce emissions was “highly optimistic”. That is the aviation industry speaking.

Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that during the public consultation exhibitions there was a board stating that 95 per cent. of businesses had said that Heathrow was very important or vital? What was not mentioned was that that was 95 per cent. of the 164 that responded, out of the 3,000 businesses that had been asked. In other words, less than 2 per cent. of businesses asked about Heathrow’s importance said that it was very important or vital.

Norman Baker
That is absolutely right, and it shows that there was a dodgy consultation to back up a dodgy runway.

Simon Hughes
I remind my hon. Friend and the House that there is, at last, progress on Crossrail, which will produce jobs and better train services, and progress on Thameslink, which presents some constituency problems for me but is a welcome north-south rail link; there is an East London line extension; there are plans for a cross-river tram; and there are further plans for light rail. There are many transport schemes that will add to carbon-efficient, non-harmful transport in and around London and provide many jobs in the process.

Norman Baker
Yes. Part of the objective of dealing with the present difficult economic conditions is to move forward in a way that not only encourages jobs, but does so in a green way. There is no point in creating jobs that are unsustainable in environmental terms.

Mr. Gummer
Has the hon. Gentleman also noticed that major companies and small companies alike have used the opportunity of the downturn to learn to do a great deal of international business without travelling from place to place? Does he think that after the downturn is changed, those habits of sensible behaviour and unwasteful use of money will continue?

Norman Baker
The right hon. Gentleman is right. He may have seen a recent study that came out in the past few days and confirmed that. It said that it was not only economically sensible but environmentally sensible to try to do much more business by, for example, video link. It is often unnecessary to fly around the world to do business and it is inefficient to do so—except for Government Ministers, who like to travel round the world frequently.

The economic case has been overstated. It does not take into account the huge subsidy that aviation gets from the fact that it pays no tax on its fuel, unlike other modes of transport. Lastly on the economic point, I draw attention to a poll carried out in December 2008 covering 500 businesses, not the one or two referred to by the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening). Only 4 per cent. believed that they would benefit from an expanded Heathrow, whereas 95 per cent. said that that would make little or no difference. However, 23 per cent. of businesses thought they would be helped by a new high-speed rail line to the north. When asked which one they would choose, 27 per cent. chose the rail link and only 4 per cent. chose Heathrow. That is the voice of business.

Political support is vanishing from under the Minister’s feet, as is business support. We are told that the Heathrow expansion will help tourism. Foreign visitors arriving by air in 2004 spent £11 billion in this country, but UK citizens going abroad that year spent £26 billion, so if we increase Heathrow’s capacity, there is also an issue about whether we should allow more money to flow out of the country and suck less in. That seems not to have been factored in. I do not know whether the British Tourist Authority is in favour of a third runway at Heathrow. I would have thought that it was rather dodgy, if I were considering the future of tourism in this country.

I am conscious of the time that I am taking. I have not mentioned local factors, which are very important. I remember powerfully the intervention and comments of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) the last time we debated the matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) has a close constituency interest. I hope she will catch the Deputy Speaker’s eye and be able to speak on those matters. Seven hundred homes demolished, 1,600 people evicted, and Sipson wiped off the map is not something that the House of Commons should be proud of.

We must ask ourselves the reasons for the Government’s policy. It is electorally unpopular, economically it does not make sense and it is environmentally damaging, so what is the policy for? The Department for Transport seems to have been influenced far too much in recent times by BAA, which seems to decide the Government’s aviation policy. Let us not forget that BAA half-wrote the consultation, set up a joint body, the Heathrow Delivery Group, to steer the plans through the consultation process, and provided the data for calculations of noise and pollution that formed the premises of the consultation document. Opposition groups were not permitted to challenge the data. The Department for Transport and BAA set up a risk list, a list of threats to the building of the third runway, which includes the 2M campaign representing 2 million people.

I will not bore the House by elaborating on the revolving door, but there are a huge number of people in government who find themselves connected with BAA, and a huge number of people connected with BAA who find themselves rather close to Government. That explains why the Government have got their position completely wrong on the matter.

I appeal to the House today to leave aside the charge of political opportunism. Whether hon. Members believe that or not, it is not relevant. What is relevant is that the Government have studiously avoided giving the House of Commons the opportunity of a vote on Heathrow, which is a disgrace.

We on the two Opposition Front Benches have done the best we can to try to make sure that there is a vote in the House. It is the only vote that we are likely to get before the next general election, so I ask Labour MPs to think very carefully about how they will vote this evening. If they go through the Lobby with the Government, which is the easy way of dealing with the matter, the way of least resistance, they will have to answer to their consciences. They will have to answer for the inconsistencies with the Climate Change Act 2008, and they will have to answer mostly to their constituents if they happen to live anywhere near London or the flight path.

This is the one opportunity that we all have to get it right. I ask Labour Members to think about the environmental impact of a third runway, and about the local impact. If they cannot do that, I ask them to think about their own political prospects. If they think of those three things, they will vote to reject a third runway at Heathrow. It does not really matter what the Government do; I think the third runway is dead in the water and it will not go ahead.

Several hon. Members
rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord)
Order. Before I call the next hon. Member to speak, I should remind the House that Mr. Speaker has placed a 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches. That applies from now on.

14:19:00

Alan Keen (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
I was going to make a joke about new jobs for archaeologists, but that would not have gone down very well with my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), to whom I pay tribute. His constituents are lucky to be represented by him, and many Members, including Opposition Members, have worked with him under his chairmanship of the Project Heathrow Watch committee. We have worked on a non-party political basis.

My hon. Friend now has to face constituents who are going to suffer, including those who will lose their homes. I promise, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I will not praise my hon. Friend for picking up the Mace, but had the Secretary of State not said in his statement the week before last that he was going to bar mixed mode, I would not, in my hon. Friend’s place, have been able to put the Mace down in as gentle and gentlemanly a way as he did. I would have been too angry.

I say straight away that I am going to vote against the Opposition motion on the grounds that it is, without any doubt, party politicking. I shall tell you why, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I recall the joy that I felt when the Secretary of State barred mixed mode. I shall tell hon. Members what mixed mode is; obviously, many people do not understand it, although some do because we have sat on a committee and talked about it. We know how serious it is. Aircraft bound for both runways come over my constituency. Because of the prevailing winds, the aeroplanes get on to the two flight paths 70 to 75 per cent. of the time, which in the end—[Interruption.] The shadow Secretary of State looks puzzled. I should tell her that planes for both runways start to land over my constituents. At 3 o’clock in the afternoon my constituents get a break, because of alternation.

The shadow Secretary of State said a lot about wanting us to have a chance to vote, but it is a shame that she ignored mixed mode; I do not know why she did that. The barring of mixed mode is the best thing that could have been done. BAA wanted to introduce mixed mode immediately.

Mrs. Villiers
I reiterate that we strongly opposed mixed mode, and that we welcome the Government’s retreat on mixed mode. The issue did not feature centrally in what I had to say to the House today because I was hoping that that victory had been won. If the hon. Gentleman has no confidence that the Government will stick to their promise to scrap their plans for mixed mode, I will be concerned. However, he should make no mistake: the Opposition oppose mixed mode.

Alan Keen
I was sitting in the second row here in the Chamber when the Secretary of State announced the barring of mixed mode. I looked at the faces of Conservative Members whom I have often regarded as colleagues during my years of opposing the third runway, and there was not a smile on any of their faces. That is how I know that the motion is party politicking; there is no doubt about that. What is more, they know it.

The shadow Secretary of State has just mentioned the issue reluctantly, and then asked whether the promise would be kept. BAA wants mixed mode immediately, because it would relieve the pressure on Heathrow, but the Secretary of State has barred it. The only Opposition Member who acknowledged the issue during my right hon. Friend’s statement was the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer), and she did not quite manage to raise a smile. None of the others who opposed it on the committee with us managed to show any—

Justine Greening
The reason why there were not many smiles on this side is that we get the same old story. No promise on Heathrow expansion has ever been followed through. Every statement about Heathrow has always gone something like, “We’re going to get on with this expansion, and that will mean that we won’t need that other expansion.” The Secretary of State’s statement took the same form as every previous announcement. When we were told that there would be a fourth terminal, there was supposed not to be a fifth terminal; when we were told that there would be a fifth terminal, there was supposed not to be a third runway—and when we are told that there will be a third runway, that is supposed to mean that there will not be mixed mode. Is it any wonder that people are sceptical and think that if there is another Labour Government after the election we will get mixed mode—just as we got a third runway, even though we were told that it would not go ahead without environmental constraints?

Alan Keen
Just a few moments ago, an Opposition Member mentioned the bar on increases in night flights until 2012. That was the first concession that any Government had ever given on Heathrow airport—the first time they had ever opposed anything that British Airways or BAA wanted. My hon., and special, Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ann Keen) and I met the Chancellor of the Exchequer and then Secretary of State for Transport, and he agreed not to oppose the House of Lords amendment on the expansion of night flights. He agreed to allow the amendment to come through. People were delighted. That was the first concession ever made by any Government against BAA’s wishes. That is not a mammoth example, but it was the first one, and a good sign.

The barring of mixed mode will make a tremendous difference. [Interruption.] People are pulling faces again, but they cannot have felt the relief that I felt. My constituents live very close to Heathrow—right up to the fence—and the noise is appalling. They have had to put up with that noise for many years. We are now arguing about the third runway, which I opposed, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington. However, mixed mode would affect my constituents; runway No. 3 would bring a little more surface transport.

At no meeting that I have attended to plead for a bar on mixed mode have I ever done anything other than say at the outset that I supported my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington and his constituents in protesting against runway No. 3. However, that runway will hardly affect my constituents at all. The barring of mixed mode will not only save people who would not have been able to use their own gardens with any pleasure ever again; it will also prevent the damage to education in schools in my constituency. Knowing on which days the noise will start at 3 pm and on which days there will be noise until 3 pm makes a tremendous difference. As Opposition Members know, their motion is party politicking. That is why I shall vote against it, despite my opposition to expansion outside the current boundaries.

Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
The Opposition motion that we are debating today is based on an early-day motion. Will the hon. Gentleman tell us whether he signed that EDM?

Alan Keen
I did sign the EDM. The Opposition told us today that they wanted to give us the chance to debate and vote on Heathrow expansion, but they conveniently ignored the fact that mixed mode has been barred. There is no comparison. Obviously, the media favour talking about whether there should be a third runway or not. However, my constituents fear having to put up with aircraft noise and air pollution all day long, instead of having the half-day’s break, and there is no comparison with people in north Chiswick, for example, who will have a flight path across them in 10 years’ time. The issue is serious. I know that there is party politicking, and that is why I do not come to the Chamber as often as I might, although I always enjoy it when I do. Again, I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington and all the effort that he has put in.

Finally, on 3 April 2008, the Liberal Democrats, led by the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), tabled a motion saying that runway alternation would bring more noise and air pollution; it should have said that the ending of runway alternation would bring more noise and pollution. I noticed that the Liberal Democrat website reports that that motion said that any runway alternation would bring more noise. They actually changed the motion on which the House of Commons decided that day; they altered it for their own purposes. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would agree that it would have been better if the website had said that a mistake had been made and that the motion had meant to say that the ending of alternation would cause more noise. However, they chose not to include the mistake, and I am sure that my hon. Friends will not be surprised about that.

14:29:00

Mr. Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
I recognise the need for the United Kingdom to remain competitive in aviation terms. Throughout the 1980s I supported the development of Stansted in competition with Schiphol, because it was clear that jobs would go either to Schiphol or to Stansted. I did not make myself popular with my right hon. Friend the Chairman of Ways and Means, but I believed that it was the right decision for this country. I also recognise that Heathrow is the world No. 1 hub airport, and in the interests of United Kingdom Ltd. must remain so.

However, I do not accept that that is dependent on the building of a third runway. Gatwick will never be a hub airport, and neither will Luton, Stansted or Manston in Kent—but there are alternatives, some of which were put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers); Conservative party policy is very clear. High-speed rail can take some of the pressure off Heathrow, and must do so—that is in the interests of this country—but there are alternatives. The other regional airports in the south-east—Manston is one of them and Southend is another—can take some of the pressure, not directly off Heathrow but off Gatwick, which can then take further pressure off Heathrow. Those alternatives have not been thought through.

The Secretary of State made much of the aviation White Paper. When that was published, I challenged the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, South-West (Mr. Darling) as to why he had omitted Manston. With, I suppose, the sense of geography that one might expect from somebody who represents a seat north of Hadrian’s wall, he said that Manston was too far from London to be of any use. Just for the record, Manston is about 77 miles from London; in train journey times, that should be not more than an hour from St. Pancras. There is every reason to suppose that Manston airport could take significant amounts of traffic currently using Gatwick, and that in turn would release capacity. It can be done.

Incidentally, I am not a fan of “Boris island”. I do not think that it would work. The Mayor of London—or perhaps it is his advisers—appears to have overlooked the fact that he wants to site it directly on top of a brand-new wind farm, which would have to be demolished, with all the investment involved in that. There is also the small matter of several hundred thousand migratory birds that would need to be told that they have to go somewhere else, as well as the minor issue of the redirection of all the traffic using the Thames estuary. Apart from that, the Mayor of London is right at least to take a passing look at the idea; I trust that it will not be much more than that.

Fifty miles from where Boris wants to put his island is Manston. Manston has one of the longest runways in the country, and its take-offs and landings are currently, and will remain, over the sea. My colleague Mrs. Laura Sandys, who represents the Conservative interest in South Thanet and will, I trust, be its next Member of Parliament, and I oppose the creation of a hub airport—a London airport—at Manston; let me make that absolutely plain before it gets turned into a “Focus” leaflet. However, we believe that as a regional airport Manston has a great deal to offer the south-east, via Gatwick to Heathrow, and to the wider United Kingdom. We see the potential within the next three years for creating London’s Olympic airport. We have the opportunity, if we choose to seize it now—and it must be now—to ring-fence Manston. It is potentially the most secure airfield in the country. It would offer a complete, secure package for the coming and going of all those taking part in the Olympics and those who wish to watch them, and it is on the right side of London.

That can be done. What is needed is investment in the fast rail link. At the moment the link effectively stops at Ashford. The trains go on to Ramsgate, but from Ashford to Ramsgate they run slowly. The rail link could be upgraded for a fraction of the money that the Government are considering spending on a third runway at Heathrow. That would give us a one-hour journey time from central London—if one regards St. Pancras as being central London—right through to a parkway station at Manston. The opportunity is there; it should not be disregarded, and I urge the Minister to seize it.

14:34:00

Ruth Kelly (Bolton, West) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure for me to be able to take part in this debate on an issue that I have dealt with in the past. I want to support the position of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who has taken decisions that have been incredibly brave but also vital for our nation’s economic future.

Aviation in general, not just the question whether to have a third runway at Heathrow, has had a terrible press in recent months and years, particularly from the green lobby, which has put the case that it is not possible for us to meet our climate change obligations if the number of planes leaving Britain continues to grow. I note that that is the position taken by the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker). If that were true, I would not hesitate to change my position immediately, and neither would, I hope, my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary and the Government. Others, such as the Mayor of London, argue that aviation is vital to Britain’s future but that Heathrow, whose location no one would suggest is ideal, is unable to support a third runway because of the impact that it would have on the local community and west London residents.

Of course, we should all be concerned about any disruptive impact on the people who live locally. These are incredibly emotive issues. Nevertheless, I personally think that the impact on the local environment and on local people can be managed through the framework that my right hon. Friend has set down. Planes become quieter and greener over time, as they have done over the past 10, 20 or 30 years. We would naturally expect that to continue in future, and the safeguards that he has proposed are important in ensuring that the local impact is managed.

I want particularly to address the question of the impact on climate change. Until today, I thought that that was the principle underlying the Opposition’s opposition to Heathrow. In fact, they have been through many changes of position over the past 12 months. When I started looking at this issue, the position taken by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) was that Heathrow expansion should go ahead provided that the local environmental conditions were met. She argued that it was difficult to see how they could be met—a respectable position but not one that I happen to agree with—but suggested that were that to happen the expansion of Heathrow could proceed given the economic case for it. Then she made a massive U-turn and said that there should be no aviation expansion in the south-east at all. Today, I was genuinely shocked to read the motion, which suggests that we have not fully examined provisions to improve high-speed rail, which I would dispute,

“along with the potential of other UK airports to handle more long-haul flights”.

The hon. Lady was clear today that the Opposition would now consider an expansion in aviation in the south-east.

Mr. Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I am following the right hon. Lady’s remarks closely. Is not the logical position of her own Government that if a third runway is built, and if they are serious about reducing carbon emissions, the development of regional airports will be stymied or indeed stopped in its tracks, with implications across the whole United Kingdom for regeneration and employment in those areas, including our own area of Greater Manchester?

Ruth Kelly
I do not agree with that for one second. In fact, regional economic growth would be hampered massively if runway capacity at Heathrow were rationed and constrained in future.

I am seriously concerned about the impact on climate change.

Mr. Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)
Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Ruth Kelly
No: I have only a very short space of time to make my case, and I would like to proceed.

People who argue on climate change grounds that we should not expand Heathrow miss two essential points. The first is the social value of flying—something to which we all, as individuals, attach enormous importance. Travelling improves our lives. It enables us to visit places and understand cultures in a way that we could not possibly do if they were seen through a video link. It enables us to keep in touch with loved ones and families and to come together at important times in our lives. Most people, if they had a choice, would be prepared to make much greater sacrifices in other areas of their lives to tackle climate change if that meant being able to continue to use international flights.

Norman Baker
Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Ruth Kelly
I give way to the hon. Gentleman, who I know has made this environmental case in the past.

Norman Baker
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady, with whom I had many dealings when she was in office. Does she agree that the cost of travel, whether by rail, air or road, should in future be more closely related to the carbon emissions from the relevant mode of transport? If so, does that not mean that the cost of flying needs to go up?

Ruth Kelly
I agree that the cost of flying should reflect its full environmental and social costs, and I shall develop that point in a moment.

The economic value of flying is another point that people often misunderstand. This country is a global hub of finance, trade and culture, and its competitiveness is supported by aviation in a real and direct way. Fast, effective connections to international markets are essential to our country’s future economic success. Having a global aviation hub helps the economy not just in London, but in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and all the regions of the UK.

Mr. Tyrie
Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Ruth Kelly
No, I will not.

The transfer business is often derided by the Opposition and by sceptics in the press. That business is sometimes generated by short-haul flights from within the UK and sometimes by flights passing through London on their way from, say, the United States to Singapore, which enable people to board a direct flight from the UK to their destination. People in London and elsewhere in the UK therefore benefit from a wide choice of direct flights to international destinations.

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, in recent years the number of destinations served by Heathrow, particularly domestic destinations, has fallen sharply. At the same time, the number of destinations served by Schiphol and Charles de Gaulle has been on a relentlessly upward path. In other words those airports, with four or five runways each, are benefiting at Heathrow’s expense. In fact, since 1990 the number of domestic destinations from Heathrow has fallen by 50 per cent., as those are the least profitable routes and the first to be squeezed by any rationing of capacity. The number of international destinations has also fallen, which means that any growing international business choosing where to locate its headquarters will think twice about locating in London rather than in mainland Europe.

Mr. Hands
Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Ruth Kelly
I will not.

Of course, access to a hub airport is not the only consideration that such businesses will take into account. There is also the use of the English language, the time zone—

Justine Greening
Tax.

Ruth Kelly
There is also tax, and there are all sorts of other issues for those businesses to consider. However, access to a hub airport is clearly an important one. If a company depends on growing business in India or China, having to conduct business via a hub airport in mainland Europe or the far east will add several hours to each journey and cause huge inconvenience, not to mention the impact on carbon emissions of having to take two flights instead of one. That suggests to me that we need a very ambitious solution that will allow aviation to grow sustainably while maintaining our position as a country with an internationally competitive global hub. If there are ways of meeting our climate change goals without rationing aviation capacity, we should seek them out first.

The most efficient way of doing that is, of course, through carbon trading. If aviation emissions are appropriately priced—the hon. Member for Lewes made that point well—so that people are paying the full social and environmental costs of travelling by air, they could pay for every household across Europe to switch to low-carbon light bulbs or for energy-intensive industries in other parts of Europe to create a step change in their carbon performance. In fact, people who fly will be paying for the transition to the low-carbon economy that we all want to see. Whether they choose to pay will depend on the personal social value that they place on taking a plane. If they are not prepared to pay the price, the number of flights will fall and we will meet our carbon goals in a different way, with less effort on the part of other carbon-intensive industries.

I shall take my argument a step further. Sir Nicholas Stern rightly argued that there would be an economic cost to tackling climate change, but that doing so now would ensure that the cost was less than if we failed to act and instead waited for the inevitable catastrophe 50 years down the line. He also said, in a less noted and less cited part of his report, that the up-front cost could be minimised and made achievable only if we tackled climate change in the most cost-effective way possible, allowing trading between different sectors of the economy. Carbon-intensive industries that could convert relatively cheaply to less carbon-intensive methods would then be funded by industries that currently do not have much choice about how much carbon to emit, such as aviation.

If a true cost is put on carbon, people in business will be faced with the true cost of their actions. Forcing polluters to buy permits would mean that emission cuts took place wherever in the economy they were most cost-effective. If we do not allow people to choose how they want to make their sacrifices, and if we force them through rationing to make fewer flights, we will face a tremendous backlash against our climate change objectives and people will not trust the Government, or any party that seeks to be in government, to take the necessary action in future.

Mr. Tyrie
Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Ruth Kelly
I have only one minute left, so I beg the hon. Gentleman to wait.

In the end, I believe that the matter comes down to an old-fashioned debate between using rationing to shape individual choices and achieving what we want by shaping outcomes through the market mechanism. If we can do that through trading, people will ultimately be much more satisfied, as they will be allowed to make the choices that they believe suit them. The proposal to bring aviation into the European trading system is therefore an absolutely vital but proportionate step in dealing with the threat of air emissions, which in future will be capped across Europe below 2005 levels. In such a system, reducing capacity at Heathrow would be equivalent to granting Schiphol or other airports a licence to expand further. That would be a real economic loss to this country, with no environmental gain whatever.

It is incumbent on our generation to make the European trading system work. It was the UK that pushed for aviation to be included in it, and the UK must continue to be at the forefront of efforts to broaden trading to other regions of the world. Ultimately, the solution has to be global—a worldwide emissions trading scheme for aviation. That is why I commend the efforts of the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who have been pressing for the inclusion of aviation emissions trading at the International Civil Aviation Organisation and elsewhere. I hope that the new President, President Obama, will hold good to his commitments to tackle climate change, too. Alongside any increase in capacity, we need an overhaul of the regulatory system to put passengers first.

14:47:00

Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)
The House will be aware that I have set out my constituents’ concerns about the expansion of Heathrow many times both in the House and outside. We feel that the consultation that the Department for Transport and Ministers went through was utterly shambolic. To that end, many Members will remember that I asked the Secretary of State to come and meet residents of my constituency and talk to them. I asked him whether he had ever met any residents who would be affected by his decision, and he said:

“I visited the area, and went carefully around the perimeter of Heathrow.”—[Official Report, 15 January 2009; Vol. 486, c. 368.]

I hardly think that that can have given him a particularly good understanding of how residents will be affected. However, he seemed to suggest that he would come to Putney. I was therefore very disappointed when we had yet another broken promise on Heathrow; I received a letter a couple of days ago telling me that the meeting would take place not in Putney but in the safe confines of Westminster. Apparently, I am allowed to bring three residents, but for every resident I bring, thousands would have relished the chance to talk directly to him.

Will the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), who is in his place, explain why the Government received legal advice that, perversely, they could not meet residents before the decision was taken? They clearly met BAA, so why not residents? That is clearly inequitable, but in the world of the DFT and this Government, somehow residents do not seem to come even remotely high up the list of people who should be talked to directly about decisions that will affect the public.

I wish to tackle the impression, which the Secretary of State gave in his statement last week, that he would somehow be able to reassure Members by making concessions. On noise, the concession was apparently that there would not be mixed mode. None of my constituents is convinced by his assurances, because not one promise on the expansion of Heathrow has ever been kept. We were promised that environmental tests would be met, and that without them no expansion would go ahead. That promise has been broken.

Adam Afriyie
There also appeared to be a commitment to cap the number of night flights, but it appears that that will no longer apply beyond 2012. Clearly, night flights are deeply concerning; an interrupted night’s sleep can ruin the entire day.

Justine Greening
My hon. Friend is right. Perhaps it is a good time to remind the House of the night flights consultation. Phase 1 asked people what they thought about night flights and everybody responded that they did not like them. In phase 2, the Government suggested that we should have more night flights. When I checked, I found that only three out of the approximately 2,500 people who responded to the consultation had asked for more night flights, yet they took precedence over everyone else.

David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Justine Greening
I am sorry, but I will not give way because of the time.

The Secretary of State talked about concessions and having only 125,000 extra flights by 2020. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is in his place, and I tell him that that is not a concession. It was always the plan, as he will see if he looks at page 136 of the consultation document. It is no concession, and it is disingenuous of the Secretary of State for Transport to suggest that.

Air quality is important, and we know that the Government will allow the UK to breach the EU air directive, which will become mandatory, and sets limits for 2010. The Government intend to ask for a derogation from it. Yet the Department’s assessment of environmental risk on air quality was high. I have a copy of the Department’s risk register, and I will use the Department’s words, not mine, in describing the perception of the risks of going ahead with the project. Risk 1.2.1 states:

“Mitigation measures identified to achieve air quality targets are too costly or impractical to implement, or politically unacceptable”.

The risk was assessed as high. The register also states:

“New modelling suggests that EU limits for NO2 in 2010 will be exceeded around Heathrow (without new development) necessitating capacity constraints”.

The inherent risk was assessed as high.

Let us consider the Department’s assessment of the risks posed by the probable 40 million extra road journeys undertaken by people getting to the airport. Risk 1.3.1 states:

“Solutions to road congestion in and around Heathrow prove difficult to deliver, politically unacceptable or airlines refused to support, threatening further expansion”.

Again, the risk was assessed as high. One of the mitigation measures proposed to tackle that was

“Constructive engagement with BAA and airlines”.

I am sure that we all have faith that that will produce some positive results. Another mitigation proposal is “a narrative” in the ironically named “condoc”, short for “consultation document”, which

“will outline the possible measures for handling exceedences in 2015 rather than details modelling”.

In other words, instead of tackling the problem, the Government want to talk it away. They do not want to provide the real facts about what will happen.

Let us consider Government policy. Risk 1.3.6 states:

“Lack of clarity in DfT over approach to exceedences on the Strategic Road Network exposes inconsistency in policies and frustrates search for solutions”.

The Government clearly admit that there is an inconsistency in their policies. Again, the inherent risk was assessed as high. Surely that has proved correct. Risk 1.3.7 deals with surface access and states:

“Surface access modelling is insufficient to demonstrate how increased passenger numbers will be accommodated”.

The inherent risk was assessed as high. Yet, in the consultation document, the Government asked us to believe that everything would be fine.

The final risk that the document assesses is whether terminal 5 will be a botch-up. That risk was assessed as low. That shows how much credence we can give to the Government’s transparency and the reliability of their facts, and to the consultation process that has just taken place.

Why is all that important? We know that not meeting air quality targets will be detrimental to public health. The Environment Agency said that the Government’s plans could increase morbidity and mortality rates around the airport. I have tried to follow that up with the Secretary of State to ascertain how on earth a responsible Government can ignore their own Environment Agency’s warnings about public health and go ahead with the project. I received a letter from him yesterday. Even he now admits that public health is at risk. The letter states:

“I note your reference to comments from the Environment Agency about possible increases in mortality and morbidity rates. However, the work done by AEA Energy & Environment, a respected organisation”—

as if the Environment Agency were not—

“that works alongside Defra on air quality matters, suggests that such fears have been greatly exaggerated.”

The risk register, from which I have quoted, suggests that that is not correct. The letter continues by saying that the statistics and scenarios that were

“published alongside the recent announcement”

show

“that there are only marginal physical health impacts of an expanded airport in 2020.”

If one’s family is suffering from the physical impacts of an expanded Heathrow, that is not marginal. It is not marginal to the possibly thousands of people who will be affected. It is the first time that the Department has admitted that there are genuine public health impacts.

The Government have spent more than three years modelling noise and air quality effects. They will not release the detailed data—that is why the Environment Agency is concerned about morbidity and mortality. The Government have not convinced residents and Ministers will not even come to the affected areas and meet people. Why is the Department so secretive? Clearly, hon. Members of all parties are worried about the impact of the plan, so why not allow access to data that would set people’s minds at rest?

Much of what I have said comes down to democracy. Ministers have said that we should not vote on such matters. We had a vote on Iraq, because that was viewed as exceptional. Many hon. Members feel that the third runway has such profound consequences for the day-to-day lives of their constituents that they view it as similarly important. We have had a consultation, to which residents have responded overwhelmingly by saying that they do not want the plan to go ahead. Despite all those points, Ministers still seek to override people’s will. That is deeply worrying. I am sure that Ministers will not change their minds. They are wrong not to be concerned about public health and wrong to avoid being clear about the risks. They are so out of touch with people and their concerns that it will take an election to get some sanity into Government policy on Heathrow.

14:57:00

Mr. Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
The debate has been curious. I do not support the expansion of Heathrow, but I was disappointed in the speech of the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers), which failed to rise to the occasion and showed that the Opposition still face a steep learning curve on aviation and transport policy.

I applaud Labour Front Benchers’ efforts to mitigate the consequences of Heathrow expansion. I applaud their efforts to set limits and restrictions, especially focusing on climate change concerns, to try to square the circle of environmental objectives and the interests of the economy and aviation. However, I do not believe that their position is tenable long term. The location of Heathrow means an inherent conflict between quality of life and environmental objectives, about which many hon. Members feel deeply, and the interests of the economy and aviation. I fully endorse the Secretary of State’s view that we cannot sacrifice the latter without losing competitiveness to other countries. We must address the issue of how we can provide some additional capacity for aviation—which I believe is necessary—in a genuinely sustainable way.

I listened with great care to the admirable speech that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Ruth Kelly) made. She focused in a very intelligent way on the importance of international measures, particularly the introduction of a system of carbon trading that could be applied to aviation in order to achieve the necessary effect. That is part of the answer, but it cannot address the other tensions that are inherent at Heathrow, including the problem of its location in the middle of a densely populated area of west London in which hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people live under the flight paths and are subjected to intolerable noise pressures.

Nor can such a measure deal with the problem of a highly congested road network that is responsible for many of the air quality problems that the Government are trying to address. However effectively we reduce the emissions from aircraft, the emissions from motor traffic around Heathrow will remain a crucial constraint. Furthermore, as one or two hon. Members have said, there remains the separate but equally important issue of the impact on the people of Sipson and the surrounding areas, whose homes will be demolished to make way for this expansion. I do not believe that it is tenable to set that aside and not treat it as a serious issue.

The question ultimately must be whether Heathrow is the only site on which we can achieve the maintenance of a hub airport capacity—which I believe is necessary and important to our economy—while meeting our environmental objectives. The answer is that I do not believe that Heathrow holds out that possibility, and that we have to look at the alternatives.

Last Friday, I had the good fortune to travel to the Thames estuary, in the company of the Mayor of London and Douglas Oakervee, to explore a site that is the focus of a study being undertaken by Doug Oakervee into the feasibility of an estuary airport. In absolutely filthy weather conditions, we embarked on a barge from Sheerness and travelled to an extremely remote site some 8 miles out into the estuary. It was the site not of a wind farm but of a world war two anti-aircraft battery that had been placed there to defend London from a different type of aviation in the 1940s. Interestingly, it is still there today.

We could not have been given a clearer message that the site should be considered for an airport, if that were feasible. It is several miles from either shore, and therefore very remote. Also, aircraft would be able to take off and land over water, which would avoid the degree of conflict that is caused by noise problems in surrounding communities. That would give it a huge advantage over Heathrow. Furthermore, the river is relatively shallow at that point. The very fact that anti-aircraft batteries could be located there is living proof of that.

As I said in an intervention on the Secretary of State earlier, Doug Oakervee was the chief engineer and project director responsible for the Hong Kong airport, and he is now the chairman of Crossrail. He is an extremely distinguished engineer, and he made it quite clear that, in engineering terms, it was a feasible option. He also believes that it would probably be feasible financially. It would be very expensive—no question—particularly because of the need for all the ancillary infrastructure, including the high-speed rail links and other links, necessary to make it work.

Stephen Pound (Ealing, North) (Lab)
I am sure that the whole House will join me in congratulating my right hon. Friend on his birthday, although he appears to have had his birthday treat a few days ago. As a result of his maritime exploration of the estuary, is he suggesting that the new airport could totally replace Heathrow? Or could it enable Heathrow to retain its present position without further expansion?

Mr. Raynsford
I will await the full results of Doug Oakervee’s study before reaching a fully informed view, but my present view is that, if the new airport were located in the estuary, it would be able to provide the basis for a hub. However, it would take a while before that function could come into operation, during which time there would be a need for joint operation between Heathrow and the estuary airport, just as, in Germany, the two hub airports at Frankfurt and Munich operate in parallel. I believe that that option is a possibility.

I certainly do not see the possibility of the closure of Heathrow, for which some people have argued, in the foreseeable future. That is neither desirable nor feasible. It would be possible, however, to ensure that the most damaging kind of aviation going into Heathrow—particularly night flights—was immediately relocated to a site in the estuary, where, because of its location, there would be no problem about a 24-hour operation.

All these matters will have to be looked at much more thoroughly by people who are experts in all the operational aspects involved. Nevertheless, following my visit on Friday, my conclusion was that this is definitely a possibility that needs to be explored. It also needs to be explored because it is entirely sympathetic with the Government’s wider objective of developing the Thames Gateway in order to rebalance the economy of south-east England. One reason for the problems around Heathrow is that there is enormous pressure for people to live, work, build offices and operate in that densely occupied area.

Mr. Tyrie
The right hon. Gentleman appears to support the view that we must do nothing to impede the expansion of aviation. That point was also made by the right hon. Member for Bolton, West (Ruth Kelly), on whom I tried to intervene earlier in order to support her. She spoke a lot of sense. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will feel able to join me in the Lobby to support the motion in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, because all that it asks is that we

“give full consideration to alternative solutions”,

which must be a sensible course of action.

Mr. Raynsford
I give the hon. Gentleman an undertaking that I will respond to his comment at the end of my speech.

First, I want to say a little more about the feasibility of the estuary site. I have mentioned the fact that the depth of the river at that point is such that the engineering would be feasible. There are important hydrological issues, which Doug Oakervee is looking at very closely, and they will be crucial in determining the compatibility of an airport with the existing maritime use of the area. Shellhaven port is now being developed on the north side of the river, a little further inland, and the two would clearly need to be able to operate together.

There is also scope for some highly environmentally desirable energy generation— Doug Oakervee has explored this possibility—in tandem with an estuary airport site, thanks to the power of the tides and the scope for tidal generation. In the longer term, there could well be a case for the site being associated with the barrage that might be necessary in about 90 years’ time, when London’s defences will require strengthening beyond the existing barrage. These are all long-term, complex issues, but the crucial point is that they should be looked at seriously and properly. I believe that the study that Doug Oakervee is undertaking will allow that to happen.

I was disappointed by the 2003 aviation White Paper. It put up an Aunt Sally, in the form of a proposal for an estuary airport at Cliffe. That proposal was defective in almost every way—it was the wrong site, and it would not have brought the kind of environmental benefits that an offshore island airport could bring. Not surprisingly, the Government rejected it. However, that should not be a reason for rejecting the option of an offshore airport that is now being examined.

Given the inherent tension that exists at Heathrow, any proposal to expand it will inevitably result in massive opposition, because of the people living around the airport, the road traffic congestion, and so on. All those factors mean that, every time there is a further proposal for expansion, commitments have to be given on limits and mitigating measures to try to restrain the damage. Each time, those commitments are given and then broken. I am not the only person who regards it as quite disgraceful that, at the time of the terminal 5 inquiry, BAA should have given a pledge that, if it received permission to build terminal 5, it would not proceed with an application for a third runway. BAA has, disgracefully, broken that pledge.

If the House supports the Government’s policy tonight, if we proceed with a third runway at Heathrow, and if it proves impossible to meet the various conditions that my right hon. Friends have rightly tried to put in place to mitigate the environmental impact, I fear that there will be pressure on them to say, “Well, we tried, but it wasn’t possible. We have to leave those commitments behind and accept the greater economic case for the expansion of the airport.” That problem is inherent in Heathrow. If we take the decision in favour of its expansion tonight, we will be committing our successors to exactly the same scenario as the one that we are wrestling with now, as we try to reconcile the irreconcilable.

I believe that it is time to take stock. The Opposition motion calls for a look at alternatives. I have expressed my disappointment at the quality of the Opposition’s case and at the grasp of transport issues displayed by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet, but I will vote with the Opposition tonight, because I believe that we must look at alternatives and we cannot proceed as we have up to now with an untenable airport at Heathrow.

15:10:00

Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal) (Con)
I speak as someone who has changed his mind on Heathrow. I have done so because, although I understand the importance of the competitiveness of British industry, I am convinced that if we go ahead with the proposal, it will make it impossible to meet reasonable climate change requirements. That is why I want to address the issue in a rather more measured way than that of the Secretary of State.

I have no wish to claim any constituency interest in Heathrow, except to say that it will be better for my constituency if Heathrow is expanded, because it will make it less likely that Stansted will be expanded. I am not biased in that sense. We must take the problem seriously and ask how we deal with it in a way that meets the requirements of the Climate Change Act 2008 and climate change demands. We cannot turn round and say that there is a balance and that we are going down on this or that side of it. I say that there is no balance: we have to meet the demands of dealing with climate change, so there is a need for an alternative policy to achieve that. I wish I could go along with the argument for Heathrow, but when I look at the facts and figures, I do not think that they stack up.

It has been suggested by the former Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Bolton, West (Ruth Kelly), that everything will be all right because of the European emissions trading system. I am a fan of that system, but there is no way that the price of those certificates will outweigh some of the economic incentives for unnecessary airline flights. It will not happen; the figures quite clearly prove it.

It just happens to be economically advantageous to fly flights to Manchester, even though that is not a sensible thing to do, particularly if we replace the present railway line with a much faster alternative. The truth is that the flights going to Manchester show just how wrong it is to argue that there is somehow a scarcity of slots. The truth is that if we did not have the unnecessary flights, we would have the slots to the north of Ireland that are necessary, if that is the argument. The first thing we need to do, then, is to get rid of the flights that are not necessary and replace them with such additional air transport as may be needed.

There is also the argument about stacking. One can deal with stacking very simply and remove 11 per cent. of emissions by having a sensible European-wide air traffic control instead of the present divided system. That would mean planes would not take off from Madrid unless there was a point at which they could land. That is a sensible way forward.

I am not going to argue the geographical case against Heathrow, as that is for others to do. In any case, I am in favour of replacing Heathrow for such air traffic as we need—a considerable amount—with a new airport, simply because the Hudson river example demonstrates the exact opposite of what the Secretary of State has suggested. The fact is that it shows just how dangerous it is to fly large numbers of flights over extremely densely populated areas. That also leads me on to say that to rely on arguments in the aviation White Paper of 2003 when we have moved on so far in climate change terms shows how difficult it is to resolve the problem.

There are four things that I want to put to Ministers. First, it is very difficult to take the Government’s assurances on a number of these issues seriously when the Environment Agency—the Government’s own agency—which has not shown itself previously to be enthusiastically opposed on these issues, tells us that the Heathrow expansion should not go ahead.

Secondly, I must request that we should not ask for a derogation from EU rules on low-level emissions because if we go ahead with that, it makes the whole argument about credibility very difficult to defend. The Government need to tell us that we are going to meet the EU requirements, not have a derogation and show that we can achieve what we say in a manner that any environmentally supportive Government would do.

Those are local issues about the local environment, but the biggest issue of all comes back to the question of climate change. Here I want to address the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in particular. Britain needs to lead Europe and Europe needs to lead the world on this issue. President Obama represents a remarkable and wonderful change, but he will have his own internal difficulties, which will build up as the honeymoon period inevitably diminishes, so we have to put ourselves into the strongest possible position.

I know that the Secretary of State feels that he has gained enough in this whole argument to put forward the case that we can both lead on climate change and have a third runway at London airport. I put it to him that that will not be possible, because at some point we have to draw the line and say that we cannot go on with the expansion of aviation at its current rate as well as realistically meet our climate change targets without putting so heavy a burden on the rest of industry that it will lose the very jobs that Heathrow is supposed to provide.

Rob Marris
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the official Opposition’s motion partly contradicts the position that he has consistently put forward on climate change? The motion calls for an exploration of

“the potential of other UK airports to handle more long-haul flights”.

Will not that contradiction within the motion present a dilemma for him?

Mr. Gummer
The difficulty is that the Government would not allow the vote in Government time that we should have had, so the Opposition’s only opportunity to present the case as impartially as they can is to take the words of a Cross Bencher’s motion. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman, who I know rather agrees with me on this issue, that it is perfectly proper in a democratic framework for the Opposition to ask the Government for a proper vote. I shall say more about that before I finish, but let me return to climate change.

I believe that if we do not embark down the road of restricting the growth of aviation, the weight on the rest of British industry that will result from trying to meet our climate change requirements will be far too great. How do we restrict the growth of aviation without restricting our ability to trade and to take leisure? The answer, of course, is high-speed rail. What worries me—I am sure that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change can be exempted from this criticism—is that we heard nothing about high-speed rail proposals from the Government until they became the official policy of the Opposition. I happen to know this to be true, as the Government would be prepared to bring forward high-speed rail proposals now in order to overcome the downturn—they are looking for ways of dealing with it. Why can they not bring such proposals forward? It is because the right hon. Member for Bolton, West did not do the work on them. That serious criticism can be levelled at previous Ministers.

Mr. Tom Harris
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Gummer
I will, and I will answer him in a much less party political way than he ever answered any of my questions.

Mr. Tom Harris
To come to the defence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Ruth Kelly), who is no longer in her place, there was a commitment in the Labour party manifesto to look at high-speed rail, and in 2006, when the report to which she referred was published, there was a commitment by the Government at that stage—long before the Conservative party came up with any proposals on high-speed rail—that we would continue investigating the possibility of high-speed rail. At that point, that was a far greater commitment than the Conservative party had ever come up with.

Mr. Gummer
A commitment to investigate by a Government who have had more taskforce investigations, commissions and the like is a meaningless commitment, and we all know it. The truth of the matter is that there was no intention at all to push this forward until it was seen that this was a realistic and reasonable alternative, and that we could make the present Heathrow work better by having a hub there, along the lines of the Ove Arup suggestion.

So there is an alternative, and it is one that delivers for both the needs of British industry and for our climate change policy. I should point out in British industry’s defence that more and more businesses are seeing that we travel much more than we need to, and we will come out of this downturn with many more people taking seriously this part of their commitment to sustainability. So I find it difficult to argue at this moment that we need to have the particular answer that has been put forward.

I do not believe that we can meet this requirement in this curious, two-handed way—a new runway, and our support for the Committee on Climate Change—above all because someone has to say “Stop.” The European Union is not going to carry forward a policy in which we restrict airport expansion in Europe as a whole as part of its climate change programme if the country that puts it forward is the one that has just done the last development. That is precisely the way to make nobody follow us. That is why we have to take the brave step of being the leader.

I know that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has a difficult role to play. Instinctively, he knows what a difficult balance it is. He has come down on one side, after a great deal of argument, and I respect him in this because at least he believes in climate change. I have to say that, to judge from the speeches of the Secretary of State for Transport, I am beginning to wonder whether he really has that commitment to the belief that climate change is happening. He does not really take it seriously—at least, that seriousness has not come through in his speeches. Perhaps a little tutoring over the years will make him better at feigning, at least, some sort of enthusiasm.

I want to make the time spent by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in Copenhagen the most productive it could be. I want to make him the man who made the difference in the European Union, and the EU the body that made the difference to save this world from the effects of climate change. This issue hampers him—it makes it almost impossible to take this Government seriously, and because I believe that climate change is the biggest physical threat to the world, I believe that we should not have a third runway.

15:23:00

Martin Salter (Reading, West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), as I did in the debate that we had on 11 November. The fact that the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers), who speaks for the Opposition on these matters, did not make one of her finest speeches today does not make the Government’s case any stronger for forcing through a third runway at Heathrow airport.

My starting point is the 2003 aviation White Paper, “The Future of Air Transport”, which contains commitments that I and every other Labour MP were elected on. It is worth reminding the House what it said about air quality, noise and surface access—three of the key tests for all of us who represent constituencies under the Heathrow flight path. It was fairly clear:

“To tackle local impacts around airports, the White Paper prescribes a range of measures to be applied nationally and locally. These include new legislation and economic instruments as well as improved technology and stringent planning conditions attached to airport development. The Government’s under-pinning objectives are to limit”—

to limit—

“and, where possible, reduce noise impacts over time”.

I welcome the announcement on mixed mode—that was not limiting noise impacts; it was not making them worse immediately, which is an entirely different thing. The White Paper continues with the phrase,

“to ensure air quality and other environmental standards are met, and to minimise other local environmental impacts.”

On surface access—these issues are linked—the White Paper was again clear. Paragraph 4.55, on access to and from airports, states:

“Ensuring easy and reliable access for passengers, which minimises environmental, congestion and other local impacts, is a key factor in considering any proposal for new airport capacity. All such proposals must be accompanied by clear proposals on surface access which meet these criteria.

Increasing the proportion of passengers who get to airports by public transport can help reduce road congestion and air pollution. We expect airport operators to share this objective, and to demonstrate how they will achieve it in putting forward their proposals for developing new capacity”.

We have heard from the contributions today that BAA’s management do not accept that responsibility—in fact, they butted it back. It is “not their problem”. BAA’s problem is to provide landing and take-off slots. Its problem is to run an airport; it is not interested in the chaos that it causes around the airport. Its track record and believability, for any of us who represent constituencies around Heathrow airport, is shredded. It lied. It lied to the people of this country, to this House, to the Government. It said whatever it had to say to get terminal 5, and now it has the bare face to admit that it was deceitful all the way through. And we are supposed to believe the assurances that it is going to give us.

Mr. Gummer
Could the hon. Gentleman tell me of a single occasion on which a solemn promise made by BAA has actually been carried forward—except those where it has not had time to break them?

Martin Salter
I do not think I need detain the House in racking my brains for an instance when BAA may have kept a promise. The whole House knows the thrust of the right hon. Gentleman’s argument and my argument, and I concur entirely with what he is saying.

So we have a solemn commitment to do something about air quality, which was pretty bad in 2003 and is a lot worse now. Air quality is the big one—certainly for me, representing a Thames valley constituency. The Thames valley suffers from very high levels of asthma among its children and young people, which is an issue that I will return to.

We know that, in common with nine other European Union countries, we are about to be in breach of the European air quality directive. That is why the Government are about to apply for a derogation, which can last for only five years. I have to tell the House that there is no guarantee that that derogation will be successful. I have been passed a letter from the Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas, which makes the situation clear. Article 4 of the directive

“sets a limit value of 40 micrograms/m3 for NO2 and requires this limit to be achieved by 1 January 2010.”

The letter says that it is possible to derogate, but

“States wishing to do so must notify the Commission and bear the burden of proof to demonstrate that the conditions for the postponement are met. If the Commission decides that the conditions for a postponement or an exemption have not been met, it may raise objections within nine months of receipt of the notification.”

Susan Kramer
rose—

Martin Salter
What that means, effectively, is that if a Government have good reason and need time to establish measures to improve air quality, a derogation may follow. Building a third runway moves in exactly the opposite direction: a child of three could see that. Now I give way to the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer).

Susan Kramer
I thank the hon. Gentleman, but it was precisely that point that I wanted to underscore.

Martin Salter
You can have too much of a Liberal Democrat. I am sorry; that was uncalled for.

What is causing the problems for people living around Heathrow and under the flight path? I know the area well. I was brought up in Bedfont, moved to Ashford and now represent Reading, and all those communities are under the Heathrow flight path. To some extent, they benefit from the economic activity generated by the airport; let us make no mistake about that. Let us also be under no misapprehension about the fact that the economic case presented for a third runway is predicated on increasing airport capacity across the piece. It is not predicated on increasing airport capacity in the very place where it is causing the maximum damage: that is where the analysis falls down.

In the time that remains to me, I want to focus on the damage caused by nitrogen dioxide, a lethal pollutant which causes much of the high incidence of asthma and other respiratory diseases in my constituency. During the debate on 11 November, the Secretary of State dismissed concerns about nitrogen dioxide. Perhaps “dismissed” is too strong a word, but he certainly appeared not to give those concerns the emphasis that we felt they should be given. He claimed—it is on the record—that the prime cause of nitrogen dioxide emissions was vehicle exhaust fumes, and that only 20 to 25 per cent. of such emissions were caused by the movement of aircraft.

That does not justify building a third runway. If nitrogen dioxide is indeed a problem, it certainly does not justify increasing the appalling gridlock and traffic congestion that exists in the area, primarily because Heathrow is already operating at capacity. The envisaged increase in the number of flights per year from 480,000 to 605,000 raises the prospect of millions of extra vehicle journeys, with more gridlock, more pollution, more nitrogen dioxide and more young people put at risk of asthma.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) both on her research and on her speech, in which she demolished the Department’s plans by citing its own figures. Her analysis was devastating, reflecting my concerns and many of the concerns of my constituents.

I worry about how the House is ever likely to be taken seriously on the issue of climate change, and on broader environmental issues. There is a real problem with issues such as the third runway, which has become a totemic issue. We can do good things in this House. We can present good legislation, we can use the levers and mechanisms available to us to encourage councils to recycle more, and we can introduce landfill levies. We can change human behaviour. We can lead on an issue about which many of us care passionately, and which was identified and evaluated so effectively in the Stern report, which I think all parties welcomed. But we have to walk the talk. I cannot stand up in front of audiences of, in particular, young people and say, “We are taking your future seriously: we do care about the future of your planet,” if our fingerprints are on this decision.

When moments such as this happen in Parliament, people ask, “Are you prepared to go into the Lobby with the Opposition?” Normally I am not. I detest the Conservative party as much as anyone on these Benches does. I have spent my life fighting the Conservative party. However, no one political party has a monopoly on truth, and no one political party is always right.

What makes this occasion different is that what is actually before us is a House of Commons motion, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) and signed by 57 or 58 Labour Members. It is a sensible, bipartisan motion. I would rather the Opposition had picked the one that I tabled a few weeks later, but as it praised the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I understand their reluctance to do so. This is not a Tory motion; it is a motion calling for a rethink, raising important arguments and recognising that we need a new aviation statement.

David Taylor
My hon. Friend is referring to early-day motion 2344, which was tabled in the last Session. There is no doubt that it is a bipartisan motion, but does my hon. Friend not realise that some of those 57 or 58 will not be in the Lobby with us tonight—for I plan to be in the same Lobby as my hon. Friend—because of the charge of political opportunism?

When the Conservatives were last in power pre-1997, they were even closer to the aviation industry than the present Government are. They were in bed with the industry, and refused to implement reasonable and decent environmental frameworks at airports such as East Midlands airport in my constituency, which has more night flights than Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick put together. Their track record—

Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal)
Order. That is a very lengthy intervention.

Martin Salter
I think I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.

At the end of the day, we cannot look the parents of a young child with breathing problems in the eye and say, “When I had an opportunity to do something about this, I walked away from it; I didn’t walk into the Lobby because my political opponents were in that Lobby.” There comes a point when such an argument carries very little credibility.

I agree that on these issues we in this House are all on a journey. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal understood the climate change issue before many of us. A lot of us have been slow to wake up to the dire predictions that were being made, but we know that climate change is happening and that we in this House have a leadership role to play. Frankly, I do not think I would have credibility in the job I seek to do if I was—

Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman’s time is up.

I have now to announce the result of a Division deferred from a previous day. On the Question relating to section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993, the Ayes were 261 and the Noes were 214, so the Ayes have it.

[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]

15:36:00

Mr. John Randall (Uxbridge) (Con)
I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) on his contribution. It is a privilege to follow him. I do not think I will very often say that he speaks a lot of common sense—I certainly would not do so publicly—but I have to say that on this occasion he got it absolutely right. I should add that, as is common in these particular debates, as the discussion moves forward the arguments are made in a very sensible manner.

Before the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) leaves his place, I should like to add the following. Shortly after I first entered the House, I served on the Committee of the Greater London Authority Bill—I think several other Members who served on it are still here. The right hon. Gentleman was the responsible Minister at the time, and although I disagreed with probably most of what he said, I was impressed by the persuasive way that he expressed his arguments, and I am still impressed by that today. On the current occasion, moreover, I agree with much of what he has said. I am most grateful to be able to be present to listen to such contributions.

I feel so passionately about the matter under discussion that I regret that I did not spend more time learning oratory. Later tonight, I will probably sit down somewhere and think of the speech I should have made—of the wonderful points, and the glorious acclaim from all around—but I am unable to make such a speech because I get overawed when I stand up here, particularly when I am following such excellent contributions. The speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) was a model of what an excellent speech should be, and he has been completely right on climate change from the early days.

There are many issues, but I will not reiterate them. Instead I will speak on behalf of my constituents and my neighbours—those people with whom I have lived all my life—because that is what I feel most strongly about. We know the arguments. We have heard about climate change, which is very important, and pollution, which will greatly affect my constituents. I cannot understand how in this age we can so lightly consider the removal of entire communities. I understand that sometimes in national projects some people will have to move—their houses will have to be taken over. However, we are talking about 700 families at least, if not more—a whole community. I have asked the Department time and again what plans they have in respect of where those people can go. Anyone who knows this part of west London—or Middlesex, as I prefer to call it—will know that there is no space. When reference is made to all the jobs that allegedly will be created, I will say, “Where are the people who do those jobs going to live, because there’s no capacity for more houses there?” The plan is to move 700 people from Sipson, and thus to destroy them completely. They are to be dispersed all around; the Government are not going to build another Sipson somewhere else. They are just going to give those people their blood money and let them go.

This will not just happen to Sipson; it will happen to other villages, where people will not fall within the compulsory purchase area. Such people will have their lives blighted, because they will be living at the end of a runway, but they will not be able to get any compensation. I know of somebody—I believe he has been in The Sunday Times—who has farmed in that area for generations. His name is Roy Barwick and he used to be a constituent of mine; he has moved but his farms are there, and his family have lived there for ages. If one thing upsets me more than anything else, it is when people who are telling me about the third runway say, “But those people knew what they were getting into when they moved there.” These people have lived in the area for generations. I am from only the second generation to live in my particular house, but my grandmother moved to the area in 1929, when there was no Heathrow airport—market gardening took place then. Do hon. Members think that anyone said, even to the people who have moved in lately, “While you are here, it is only fair to tell you that BAA will want your homes, your houses, your schools, your churches and your cemeteries, because it needs them for another runway”? Nobody said that, and why not? Because BAA plc consistently said that it did not want anything else. So people who have put up with Heathrow in their back garden will now find it in their sitting room, and that is not acceptable in the 21st century.

People might accuse me of being anti-aviation, but I am not. I am also not anti-Heathrow. In fact, I have always been very proud of Heathrow being where we live; when I am abroad and people ask me where I come from, I tell them I am from Uxbridge, but unless they have served in the RAF they probably do not know it so I tell them, “That’s Heathrow.” Heathrow is a vital part of our local economy, but it is not going to be allowed to take over utterly and destroy people’s lives. Although I understand the difficulties that Labour Members have, that is why I am glad my Conservative colleagues chose this issue for the motion, which was also signed by the Liberal Democrats in order to try to make it as consensual as possible. This is not a party political matter; it is something on which our constituents, wherever we may represent, would expect us to take a decision—and not on party lines.

I hope that if the boot were on the other foot, I would do as I hope Labour Members will do tonight. This is important, and at a time when Parliament is not held in the highest respect in this land, it is at exactly these moments that our constituents can look at us and say, “This is what Parliament should be about.” It should be about MPs speaking up for what we believe. I understand that the Government have a decision to make, but I regret that the Secretary of State adopts a certain tone every time—it is his particular style. I observe Members of Parliament as they make speeches and I am aware that we all have our own style. His particular style tends to be hectoring and badgering. It is better suited to the Whips Office, where I know he served admirably.

Martin Salter
He is here.

Mr. Randall
I know he is here; I see him in a place in which I would not expect to see him—on the Back Benches. I was just wondering whether the Prime Minister heard his speech and decided that he ought to revert to the Back Benches and let more consensual politics take over, but I do not think that was the case. I think that the Secretary of State is merely having a word with one of his Labour colleagues.

This issue is about leadership for our country. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal said, if we want to be taken seriously in Europe and around the world on climate change, this is the moment to say, “No; here is a line in the sand. There must be other alternatives. We cannot go ahead with this particular proposal because if we were to do so, no one would ever take us seriously again.”

15:44:00

Mr. Michael Meacher (Oldham, West and Royton) (Lab)
I support the motion, because it is identical to early-day motion 3244, tabled in the last Session by my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), which I signed, and in which I believe. I am grateful for this solitary opportunity for Members to vote on this key issue.

I oppose the third runway, not only for social and environmental reasons, but because I believe that the economic case that the Government have made for the expansion of Heathrow simply does not stack up. Moreover, the social and environmental arguments against a third runway—the serious worsening of noise, air pollution, climate change emissions and quality of life for the 2 million long-suffering residents of west London—are overwhelming in their own right.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was acutely aware of those arguments when he made his statement a fortnight ago, and he offered three sweeteners to soften the pill. The third runway would initially operate at only half capacity when opened, aircraft using the third runway would have to meet strict greenhouse gas emissions standards, and CO2 emissions from UK aviation in 2050 would be limited to 2005 levels—a point that he repeated today. Those concessions, welcome as they are, do not carry very much weight when looked at closely.

A promise to limit the runway to half its potential would last only a very short time, and is hardly credible when, as hon. Members have repeatedly pointed out in this debate, Governments of both parties have four times in the past 30 years given firm pledges that there would be no further expansion and a cap on flight numbers. Every time, those promises have been quickly broken.

Martin Salter
I applaud the contribution made by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in mitigating the worst aspects of the proposal, but does my right hon. Friend agree that it beggars belief to claim that an organisation with a track record like that of BAA will tolerate a situation in which it builds a runway but cannot use it? That is nonsense.

Mr. Meacher
I completely agree. The second promise was to limit capacity, under the so-called green slot principle, to more modern aircraft. That is also welcome, but it is no serious constraint on noise, air pollution or emissions. The most important commitment is the one to limit aviation emissions in 2050 to no more than the level in 2005, when they were 37.5 million tonnes. That artfully conceals the fact that if the Government make the 80 per cent. reduction in climate-changing emissions to which they are committed, that level of emissions will be 30 per cent. of total UK emissions in 2050—and that is not acceptable.

Mr. Gummer
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is difficult to take seriously promises made for 2050, when the people who make them—with the possible exception of the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change—are unlikely to be here to answer for them?

Mr. Meacher
I agree. It is easy to make commitments for five years’ time, but those for 50 years’ time are not very serious, unless there is evidence in the short term that we are systematically making progress towards them.

The whole thrust of the Government’s case in the statement made on 15 January is that whatever the environmental downsides—and the Secretary of State did acknowledge those—the economic case for expansion was overriding. We are told that the third runway is essential for the business economy and Britain’s future competitiveness. That case has been far too widely taken at face value, and it needs far more scrutiny.

First of all, the aviation industry ranks only 26th in this country; it is half the size of the computer industry. Far from aviation being key to the balance of payments, as the airline industry constantly likes to argue—of course using only one side of the equation: the expenditure of incoming travellers to the UK—both sides of the equation show a deficit of £17 billion a year. That is the amount by which what British tourists spend abroad exceeds what incoming foreign tourists spend here.

The UK airline industry is heavily subsidised by the taxpayer: £10 billion is spent a year, roughly, on VAT-free tickets and planes and tax-free fuel. That is taxpayers’ money that could be far better spent on sustainable transport systems, and particularly on substitutes for domestic short-haul flights. Indeed, the respected industrial consultants that I have quoted before, CE Delft, argued that the official figures greatly exaggerate both the number of jobs that the runway would generate and the value brought to Britain by extra business travellers.

In addition, in a video-conferencing age—to take on the point made by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) about business practices changing in the economic downturn—the number of business flights that are absolutely essential to the British economy are, I suspect, comparatively few. No less than 87 per cent. of international passengers are in the leisure and tourism category, and even at Heathrow only a third of travellers are travelling on business. I suspect that much even of that travel is probably perks—a conference or a holiday on expenses.

The hub argument that is repeatedly used, and is so beloved of the industry, is not any more persuasive. Indeed, Bob Ayling, the former BA chief executive, recently said that transfer passengers spend little or no money in London and offer no external benefits, except to airline profits. The biggest growth in air travel has actually been in non-hub cheap flights, as we know.

There is also the argument about capacity constraint, but the industry does not actually believe that. Table C1 on page 205 of the recent Department for Transport Heathrow consultation document, which by chance I have with me, shows BAA’s forecast for Heathrow, with the 480,000 maximum movement limit still in place for the period between 2000 and 2030. BAA sees a growth from 67 million passengers in 2006 to 85 million in 2015 and 95 million by 2030—a 30 per cent. increase. Why is there a capacity constraint? Why will that increase happen? The movement limit will rightly force airlines to fly larger and larger aircraft per flight, increasing passenger numbers per movement. That clearly shows that even the industry does not anticipate that Heathrow is in any sense in decline. The industry has a very optimistic forecast, even under the current capacity-controlled regime.

There is also the argument that Schiphol and Charles de Gaulle have more runways than Heathrow, which of course they do. For competitiveness reasons, it is argued, Heathrow must be allowed to expand. However, that misrepresents the configuration of airports in Britain. In south-east England we have not one airport but five—Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City—each catering for a different sector of the air transport marketplace. The south-east transport system as a whole—that is the only way of regarding it—will always collectively offer more choices of flights to more destinations at a greater range of prices and times, with greater convenience and with more airlines, than Charles de Gaulle and Schiphol put together. Added together, London’s airports handle 137 million passengers a year. That number is set to grow within current planning limits to about 210 million passengers by 2030. In comparison, Charles de Gaulle airport handles 59 million passengers, Frankfurt 54 million, Madrid 52 million and Schiphol just 46 million. So Heathrow’s so-called continental competitors lag a long way behind, and they will continue to do so as our five-airport system develops.

The business case for the third runway at Heathrow is clearly much weaker than has been made out, and I have to say that what does not fit it has been massaged. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the treatment of the noise, air pollution and climate change impacts of the proposed Heathrow expansion.

Last March The Sunday Times published devastating evidence that the Department for Transport and BAA knew perfectly well even then—and, in fact, a long time before that—that a third runway at Heathrow would immediately breach mandatory EU noise and pollution limits, especially on nitrogen oxide. That would mean that it could never be built, and they therefore colluded in re-engineering the figures to fit the limits.

In his statement a fortnight ago, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said:

“Immediately around Heathrow, action will be necessary to ensure that we meet the air quality limits by 2015. Our forecasts predict that, in any event, we will be meeting the limits by 2020 even with airport expansion.”—[Official Report, 15 January 2009; Vol. 486, c. 358.]

On the latter point, it is not good enough to say that the EU mandatory limits will be met by 2020, because they kick in on 1 January 2015. On the former point, I hope that my right hon. Friend will understand me when I say—slightly delicately—that it is all very well to be assured that action will be necessary to meet the targets by 2020, but that commitments have been given and broken repeatedly by successive Governments. We need to be told transparently exactly what mechanisms will bring the UK into compliance with the EU limits, because it is very difficult to place much credibility in vague promises.

The fact is that we are already well over the permitted EU nitrogen oxide levels around Heathrow. The problem will be worse by 2015, and worse still by 2020. Therefore, I ask again: what precisely are the mechanisms that will ensure that we meet the limits that the EU will force on us? If the Secretary of State cannot tell the House precisely what they are, I do not see how he can responsibly approve the expansion of Heathrow, nor how this House can responsibly vote in support of that proposal.

For all the reasons that I have set out, and although I understand what others have said, I regret to say that I support the motion and intend to vote for it tonight.

15:57:00

Susan Kramer (Richmond Park) (LD)
I want to speak in two capacities today. As a local MP whose constituency is under the flight path, I need to say a few words about how the third runway will significantly exacerbate the quality of life problems that people in my area already suffer as a result of the existing Heathrow operation. I also want to speak about two much more fundamental and overarching issues.

The first of those is climate change. Hon. Members of all parties agree now that it has a stature and importance that matches any issue to do with the economy or the future of the UK, because if we do not have a sustainable future, we do not have a future.

The second fundamental issue that I want to raise is that of democracy in this House. I am shattered that a decision of this magnitude—it has been called “totemic”, and I think that it easily has that status—should not be subject to a vote. Regardless of whether hon. Members would vote for or against a third runway at Heathrow, this is an issue on which the House should decide. It should not be masked within a paper on aviation policy that, essentially, was drafted six years ago, and which does not concern itself with all the knowledge and understanding that we have gathered since, both from across the House and from our constituents. There is a real question as to whether this House matters—and it is the question of who decides that is at stake today.

I shall speak first as a local MP. I want to do so in the spirit of reaching across the Chamber, because it was a huge relief to my constituents to hear that the Secretary of State had decided not to proceed with mixed mode. Frankly, it would be Chinese water torture for my constituents to live with flights overhead all day. I have some hope that that will be a true and genuinely kept commitment, but I can tell the Government that one of the reasons why the decision not to proceed with mixed mode was taken is that, if a third runway is built, mixed mode cannot be operated on runways 1 and 2. Runway 3 could operate mixed mode, but that could not be done on runways 1 and 2, or planes would crash into one another. I hope that if, for some reason, the third runways does not proceed—and I hope it will not—the commitment that has been given to the House will not be discarded, and mixed mode will not suddenly come back on to the agenda because the third runway has been demonstrated to be impossible and undesirable, and is rejected. That is crucial.

Mr. Mullin
The hon. Lady is quite right to draw attention to that possibility, and she can be absolutely sure that BAA and the airlines will seek to undermine the Secretary of State for Transport’s decision, perhaps from the very day that he first mentioned that that was what he intended to do. She is quite right to alert the House and her constituents to that possibility.

Susan Kramer
The hon. Gentleman gives a very wise warning, and I am glad that that observation is coming from hon. Members in many parts of the House, because it matters.

For my constituents, the third runway means planes overhead every 60 seconds rather than every 90 seconds, and our air will be more polluted. Traffic and access issues are sometimes considered as something to look at later, as though there is bound to be a way to deal with them. I invite the Secretary of State for Transport to come with me to see what it is like on the M4 and all the surrounding roads that feed off it, and the impact that that has on my constituency at peak hours of airport use. There is no easy answer.

BAA has proposed what it thinks is a wonderful idea of increasing rail transport with the Airtrack proposal—wonderful if it was a proper and real proposal. For my constituents, it would be a transport route from Heathrow via Richmond to Waterloo, but it comes without updating signalling to 21st-century standards and without changing the stations. Consequently, because my constituency contains four level crossings, about 30,000 people will be marooned between a railway on one side and the river on the other, unable to get across the couple of congested bridges and completely unable to cross the railway line, because there are only two points where the level crossing barriers will not be down for 45 minutes in the hour. There has been no thought, no planning and no sincerity concerning the public transport option on offer. I would love it to be turned into something, but the BAA case is not convincing when it is presented in that unthought-out, undeveloped and unsustainable form.

My constituents have been very clear that although there are local issues, they are taking a stand in this matter for broader reasons. Many of them have asked me to say today that they stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Sipson, where the community will be eliminated. People in Sipson face the elimination of an ancient community, but there are no arrangements for them to remain together as a community. It is regarded as simply a matter of paying compensation, but there are questions about how adequate the compensation will be. Those people simply have to find somewhere else to live. Given the difficulty of finding a home anywhere in the outer London area, this is a really serious issue: 700 families are suddenly trying to find a new place to live and a way to build a new community. That issue has been given very little thought: no attention has been paid to it, or effort made to deal with it. The people of Harmondsworth will be essentially marooned within an airport. What kind of life is that? What kind of commitment is there to people in south-west London when that is what this project offers?

Climate change is obviously one of the underlying issues. I will not reiterate what has been said, because brilliant speeches have been made by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) and others who have gone through the climate change issue. I simply say that my party thinks that people must change the way in which they think about aviation and other transport. The Government seem to focus on making some marginal changes, thinking that they will constrain things until they meet a benchmark before going ahead. But we need to think outside the box. Climate change fundamentally adjusts the way in which we have to look at how we develop in future. Sustainability has to become absolutely core. That whole way of thinking has not been brought into the transport planning that underpins the decision to proceed with a third runway. Like many others, I believe that that completely destroys the credibility of the Government’s argument.

I am running out of time, so I need to move quickly. I will briefly raise two last issues. One of them is the economic argument, which is always presented in discussion on Heathrow. One would think that Heathrow was disappearing, instead of having more passengers than any other airport in Europe. It has 69 million passengers; there are 59 million at Charles de Gaulle and 54 million at Frankfurt. Heathrow is by far the largest airport. As others have said, if we think about all five London airports, the aviation option available to people who base themselves in London for business or leisure is completely out of scale.

People say, “There are so many runways at other airports.” They will be conscious, as I am sure the Secretary of State for Transport is, that at any one point in time, those airports cannot use their full selection of runways. The typical number that they can use is two. There may be four runways at Charles de Gaulle, but only two can operate at any one time, so although there is slightly more runway capacity there, the reality is not significantly different. We never hear that point made in discussion.

Often, when the business case is presented to the House, it is as though there had been some sort of major, serious study to enable us to understand the dynamic between aviation options and business in London. None of that work has ever been done. There is the occasional survey, but when one digs down into them, one finds that they were answered by only a couple of hundred people, and that 700 or 800 people refused even to bother with them. When people are offered the rail option, they choose it over aviation. The point is that if decision makers were serious, they would go around businesses across London finding out in detail what their needs were, where they needed to go, and what the constraints were. We would build the economic case from the ground up—but that fundamental, simple work has never been done.

Businesses need sufficient flights to key destinations. They do not need to go absolutely everywhere, and they do not need to buy into the idea that there have to be ever more flights. People may say, “We’ve got capacity constraints,” but how many Heathrow flights use relatively medium-sized or small planes? The answer is: a significant proportion. I read today that the Aviation Environment Federation estimates that we could increase the number of passengers by about 30 per cent. just by reordering the flight make-up at Heathrow, so there are a whole lot of possibilities.

Let me finish on the issue of democracy, because I think that it matters. I have constituents here today, and constituents of mine have come to these debates before. They are utterly disillusioned with the Government, and they are becoming disillusioned with Parliament. They say to me, “This is only the beginning of the fight for us. We’re not going to lie down.” I say to the Secretary of State and others that if they will not allow MPs to speak on the Floor of the House, and go through the Lobbies, in Government time, and with a clear opportunity to say yes or no to the third runway, they will drive people to direct action—possibly sometimes illegal action, but never, I hope, damaging action. The Government will drive people to that if they do not allow democracy on an issue that is central to people’s understanding of a sustainable future for their communities and for this country.

16:08:00

John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I was not completely sure how to attract your attention, Madam Deputy Speaker. [Laughter.]

For some of my constituents, last week’s statement was heartbreaking. Most of them, faced with the loss of their homes, schools, places of worship and whole community, found it devastating. For most of them, it brought about a stronger sense of community, and absolute determination to fight on to ensure that this disastrous proposal does not go ahead.

My forced absence from Parliament over the past week meant that I held a number of meetings across the constituency, and the Mayor of London held his question time there, too. As a result, I spoke to more than 1,000 constituents that week. The message that they want me to convey to the House, and to the Government, is: “We will not be moved. We will not allow this to happen. We will not allow our communities to be bulldozed in this way.”

I heard the Secretary of State say that he has “carefully weighed” the interests of local people. My constituents and those of the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) and other local MPs would be more convinced of that if, over the past decade, a single Secretary of State had come to our area to meet local residents. Ministers have been to the area plenty of times to meet the aviation businesses, but not one Secretary of State at any invitation has come and met the local people. I find that appalling. I issue the invitation again today, not to meet hand-picked delegations of one or two, but to come and meet the people whose homes they are threatening to demolish.

I do not expect Members to know every detail of the decision. That is not the way of things. No one can know everything about every debate and every decision, but because it affects the lives of so many people, I expect Members to look at some of the information available to us. I have pored over the published documents associated with last week’s statement. They are voluminous, but it is worth time and attention to study them. When the Government make the decision, we need to know what the economic arguments are, the implications for local communities, the environmental impact and what people feel about it.

I jotted down some of the arguments that we have heard today. My right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) set out the alternative economic case. Heathrow is not failing. It is expanding. There will be another 30 million passengers in the coming planning period. The argument that it is failing as an aviation resource is laughable when one considers the intensity of the development that is taking place and the number of passengers that we are moving.

Comparison has been made with our international competitors. We are moving across London and the south-east nearly three times the number of passengers that other capital cities are moving. Reference was made to a hub. It was pointed out that we have five airports, or six, including Northolt. Each one is providing a specialist service for the area. What we need to do now is connect them so that they become a collective hub, allowing people to fly into London through any airport and to fly wherever they want.

That is the future for aviation in this country. The reason that it has not happened—let us be honest about it—is the strength of lobbying by BAA and BA, self-interestedly trying to develop solely Heathrow as their own airport to maximise the profits from BAA’s ownership of Gatwick and Heathrow. We need to cut through that self-interested lobbying and develop the future of aviation in this country, so that it will be sustainable and have a collective, co-ordinated hub linked by high-speed rail.

Members need to read the documentation about the social impacts of the development. We know about the 700 houses in Sipson because that is in the documentation, but there is no mention of Harmondsworth, Harlington, Cranford, South Hayes and all the rest. It is like Brigadoon. It is almost as though they had disappeared off the face of the earth.

When Sir John Egan, the chief executive of BAA, wrote to my constituents at the time of the building of the fifth terminal, he said that BAA would not go for a third runway because of the destruction of 3,300 homes. There are now 4,000 homes in that area, which means that people in Harmondsworth, Harlington, Cranford Cross and Longford—this is particularly so as a result of the scrapping of the Cranford agreement—will live in homes that will eventually be bulldozed or in areas where they are breathing poisoned air and which have been rendered unliveable by noise and air pollution.

The House, without a vote, is determining the forced movement of 10,000 people. Let us recognise that. It is not mentioned in the documentation. It is not just a matter of 700 homes. At one of my meetings, one of the people from Sipson got up and said, “We’re the lucky ones. Others face the lingering death of their communities around the area.”

The health implications for my constituents and others have been mentioned. We have been asking for a health impact assessment around the airport for almost 15 years. I took evidence to the terminal 5 inquiry about the respiratory conditions in our area. We did a survey. We asked the Government to make a health impact assessment before they made any decision, but none was forthcoming. My local primary care trust has just written to the Secretary of State saying that it would carry out the assessment but that it needed the necessary funding. How can we go forward with a decision such as this without even assessing the health consequences for my community?

The economic arguments in the document are almost laughable. I say to hon. Members from other parts of the country that the costs are unsustainable. Grupo Ferrovial, the Spanish company involved, will pay for the building of the runway and the terminal itself, but we taxpayers will pay all the ancillary costs. For the next decade, that will squeeze out of this country’s transport budget any potential for transport improvements across the country. Basically, we are committing taxpayers’ resources to subsidise the profits of a Spanish company that has just taken over the British Airports Authority for speculative gain.

Let me go back to the conditions. It has been said time and again in the House that the conditions will not stick. There is almost consensus on it; no one believes that they will do so. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) asked what single commitment BAA had given that it had adhered to, or that any Government had adhered to. We are told that the conditions will be legally binding, but we have been here so many times before.

I am grateful for the lobbying done by some Secretaries of State in Cabinet, but to be frank, some of the commitments and conditions imposed do not stack up. The argument that there will be green slots on the runway, for aeroplanes that do not yet even exist, is farcical. People should look at some of the statistics in the paperwork published last week. There is even one analysis that says that in 2002 more than 7,500 homes were located in areas suffering from air pollution above the European Union limits, and that in 2015 there will be none. How will that miracle be brought about—on the basis of the assessment provided by BAA about non-polluting, non-noise making aeroplanes that will run off the new runway that will be developed by the company itself for profits? Nobody is given credible reassurances.

I turn to the process itself. I am still unclear about how the decision will be made. We were assured that if there was to be a national policy statement in advance of the decision, it would be consulted on and there would be parliamentary approval in some form. I want that commitment today. I want there to be a vote in the House. The hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) quoted back to the Prime Minister something that he said when people were on the roof of the Chamber; I almost got the blame for that one as well. The Prime Minister said that the decision would be made not on the roof, but in this Chamber. I expect him to adhere to that commitment.

I expect any national policy statement that will inform the Infrastructure Planning Commission to be debated and decided on the Floor of the House. What is wrong with debating infrastructure projects here? We have just spent the past two years debating Crossrail, which will have a major impact. Actually, I opposed that project in the early ’90s, but as a result of the debate on the legislation we have improved it, and as a result of democratic discussion and a vote in the House, there was consensus across all political parties. Why can that not happen on the most significant aviation infrastructure project in a generation, which at this rate will be decided by the Government?

Finally, I find it unseemly how lobbyists have been able to permeate Government decision making on this issue. There has been exposure of a revolving door of lobbyists, and a Member of the House of Lords is paid full time to lobby on the issue on behalf of the aviation industry. The measure will not be credible without a vote of this House.

16:19:00

Mr. Nick Hurd (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow two speeches by my senior and southern Hillingdon neighbours. They made great speeches on behalf of their communities.

I should like to salute two brave speeches in this debate. The first was that of my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Transport, who had the courage to go to the Dispatch Box and say that she had thought things through a little harder and come to a different view. She was met with derision from the opposing Benches, where a lot more people should have done exactly the same thing. I salute my hon. Friend. The other brave speech was from the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter), who is not in his place, so I will not shower him with praise. He appears, for today at least, to have overcome a lifelong loathing of the Conservative party so as to do the right thing. Those were brave speeches.

The least courageous speech this afternoon came from the Secretary of State. He came here with a stinker of a speech on 11 November, and he has followed it with an even worse one today. He did not even have the courage to make a case to the House for his decision. I wish that he had been in the Beck theatre in the constituency of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) at a public debate facilitated by Boris Johnson. An empty chair was left up on the stage for a member of the Government to participate, but no one appeared. We had a fantastic debate. If he had turned up, he would have heard, as one would expect, genuine anger from local people whose houses are going to be demolished and who are going to have to dig up their relatives in the cemetery. He might then have come to the House in more sensitive mode. He should have been particularly concerned about the expression of a complete breakdown of public trust in how this process has been conducted and in the democratic process of decision making in this country.

The public have lost faith. They know what has happened in this process. They know that there has been a steady stream of broken promises or lies by BAA, and they can see a Government who have got far too close to that organisation. The Secretary of State’s speech included lots of new announcements on additions to rail capacity in the Heathrow area that were not part of the original consultation process, which is now invalidated. People see a really bad decision-making process and ask why we are doing this, because they can see the facts. They can see that this decision will materially affect the quality of life of millions of people in west London living under the flight path. They can see that it will destroy communities, and they care about that. They can see that it will increase emissions. A lot of people care passionately about that and do not understand why a Government who take pride in leadership in this area are driving a coach and horses through their own climate change strategy with this one decision. They can see the impact on air quality in the Thames valley. They can see all these things, and they ask why we are doing it. The answer from the Government is no more than a series of assertions—that Heathrow is full, that the concept of the hub is a sacred cow that cannot be questioned, that it is inevitable that Heathrow will decline and that that carries mortal consequences for the state of the British economy, and that we therefore have to take this enormous decision in the national interest.

What is shocking is the lack of rigour in testing those assertions. As the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) powerfully observed, how can Heathrow be full when the Government and the Department accept the data in BAA’s own consultation document about an enormous increase in passenger flows through Heathrow over the next 20 years because the market will respond to capacity constraint by flying bigger planes? Those are not the statistics of an airport in decline, so why is decline considered inevitable? Heathrow has not declined over the past 10 years. While other airports have expanded, has London suffered any loss of prosperity? No, because decisions on where people invest and do business are not restricted to the quality of the airport. Everyone knows that Heathrow is shockingly bad as a passenger experience, but people still come and do business here. A host of other factors determine business decisions. What I hear from business people is not, “I can’t get to place A from Heathrow”, but “This is a shockingly bad experience, and what are you going to do about it?” They want a better Heathrow, not a bigger Heathrow.

As other speakers have said, we have enormous airport capacity around London. London has five airports. We move many more people than our so-called European competitors. We have the best connections in Europe, and that will be the case for the foreseeable future. The Government talk sombrely about the decline of the hub model, but where is the modelling to support that assertion? Where are the data? Where is the research? Where is anything on which we can pin evidence to test this assertion? There is nothing—just really lazy decision making by a Government who were content merely to jointly commission with the industry research that underpins a business case that has been exposed over time to be entirely inadequate.

Where is the debate about the future of the hub as the sacred cow of the industry? Is it conceivable that consumers might want a different experience in future, and that they might want to fly direct to places? They might not want to spend hours wandering around huge, impersonal airports. The consumer and the industry might change, but we are nailing our colours to the mast and signing up to BAA’s game of “My airport is bigger than your airport.”

That seems to be the limit of the Government’s vision, but will not our European competitors be subject to exactly the same constraints as we are in a carbon-constrained world? As my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) said, now is exactly the time to show genuine leadership in Europe and to say that this game is unsustainable. We should take a lead in saying, “Pause and rethink.” Have the Government engaged with those matters at all? No. There has been absolute silence, and they have bought the BAA argument hook, line and sinker.

The truth is that for the foreseeable future, London will have the best air connections in the world. Surely the trick is now to think much more cleverly about what will change in the future and, as the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said, to consider how we can connect the five London airports more effectively. We must consider the 25 or 30 per cent. of Heathrow’s capacity that could be served by rail and give passengers a genuinely compelling alternative. We must consider how to harness the new technology that is coming on stream to give people a better alternative to flying, or to accelerate the industry’s progress in finding more environmentally friendly methods. Those are the big policy questions, and we should not adopt a passive, predict-and-provide approach in tame submission to an extremely effective corporate lobby.

Now is the time for real leadership. I will be interested to hear what the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has to say. I simply cannot see how a third runway at Heathrow is compatible with achieving an 80 per cent. emissions cut by 2050. He has placed only one policy chip on the table, which is emissions trading, despite the fact that it has been proven only as a concept and a theory. It has not been proven in practice to reduce emissions, because cap and trade schemes are only as good as the cap that is set, and caps are set by politicians who, as we well know, are subject to intense corporate lobbying to make them as soft as possible. The caps that he has set up are no more than aspirations, and the debate has only just started. We have no guarantee at all that they will be effective in reducing emissions on a scale compatible with our target of an 80 per cent. drop by 2050.

A really big Government, a Government who genuinely took the tough decisions, would say, “We may have got this wrong. We have listened to the people who share our concerns about climate change—the Environment Agency, the millions of residents, the businesses that are thoughtful about the matter—and we recognise that we may have got this wrong.” This Government will not do that, because they are not that sort of Government. The matter will therefore be decided at the next general election.

It is perhaps worth my ending by echoing the voices of two of my constituents. One of them wrote to the Prime Minister, and is a Labour supporter—some still exist in Northwood, the Secretary of State will be encouraged to hear. He wrote:

“If the government is serious about lowering the UK’s emissions why is this proposal even being considered?...There’s no denying that Heathrow is an important airport for the UK but I do urge you to look again at the planned expansion proposals from a humanitarian (traditionally Labour) perspective and ask again whether the UK can live without this expansion. I and many other Labour supporters believe it can.”

Another constituent wrote to me:

“I trust that when the Conservatives win the next election the Conservative Government will rescind this awful decision and bury this scheme forever. Perhaps I will then start to believe again that I am still living in a democracy.”

16:28:00

Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South) (Lab)
I believe that I am right in saying that so far this afternoon, no Member of any party, apart from the Secretary of State, has spoken in favour of the expansion. [Interruption.] I beg your pardon; there was also a former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Ruth Kelly). She has the privilege of being the only Member who has spoken from the Back Benches in favour of a bigger Heathrow.

My view is the same as that of most Members who have spoken—that, as the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) said, the expansion drives a coach and horses through the Government’s emissions policy, and that it is a mistake. I welcome the decision by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to resist the demand for mixed mode, but giving the go-ahead for a new runway is a surrender to one of the mightiest lobbies in the UK, which has plans, if it is unconstrained, for unlimited expansion, regardless of environmental or any other factors.

John McDonnell
We should try to get clarity about mixed mode on the record. Mixed mode is not going ahead because of the CAA’s advice about the air traffic problems that it would cause. However, whenever BAA has been questioned about the future expansion of Heathrow beyond a third runway and a sixth terminal, it has refused to deny that it has further plans. If it got that expansion, it would be to accommodate its mixed mode.

Mr. Mullin
I am sure that my hon. Friend is right and that the relevant vested interests will be back for more. As I said to the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer), lawyers and lobbyists are probably working to undermine the decision on mixed mode even as we speak.

For 18 undistinguished months, I was a Minister in the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and I had some responsibility for aviation. I learned that the aviation lobby wants more of everything—terminals, runways, you name it. When we were elected in 1997, the only change that it made to its demands was to insert the word “sustainable” in the opening paragraph. All the same demands appeared underneath.

The decision to go ahead with a third runway marks the triumph of predict and provide, which we have forsworn—at least we say we have—for new motorways, over rational planning. From listening to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, predict and provide is exactly what we are doing in this case.

As others have said, the decision will make it difficult, if not impossible, for the UK to meet its emissions targets. On past form, the aviation industry will not accept any constraints placed on it, whether legally binding or not. I have no doubt that, for the time being, the industry will sign up to whatever limits the Government see fit to impose and, when they are reached, a way around them will be found.

As others have said, a third runway will result in a huge increase in overflights across central London. They start at 4.30, disrupting the sleep of millions and blighting, as we have heard, much of west London. When I went to the DETR as a Minister, I thought that, although I would not achieve much in my tenure, perhaps we could sort out the 16—I do not know how many there are now—night flights that came in between 4.30 and 6 am. I tried to convene a meeting between Members of Parliament for the constituencies that were most blighted by the night flights and representatives of BAA and the aviation industry. Officials advised me that the latter would not even bother to turn up. That initially proved to be the case, but then I got my immediate superior, Lord Macdonald, to put his thumb print on an invitation, and they duly turned up in a rather surly fashion. We were considering only rescheduling 16 flights after 6 o’clock, yet we were given a long list of reasons for doing nothing about anything. The most ludicrous was wind speeds over China.

I do not accept the arguments for unlimited expansion. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) said, comparisons with Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt and Schiphol are not right because they are made on the basis of Heathrow being the only London airport, when there are at least another four.

I also do not accept that cheap air travel is a basic human right, which takes precedence over all other considerations. The quality of life of the millions who live under the flight paths, not to mention environmental considerations, is more important.

I do not buy the economic argument either. Some, including my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter), have made the point that the economy in the south-east is grossly overheated, and that many of the new jobs generated by the expansion of the airport are, in any case, being done by foreigners because there are not enough local people available to do them. Pollution, congestion, noise and unaffordable housing are all bigger issues in the Thames valley than the effect on the economy. Also, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West and Royton said, it is at least arguable that the economic argument is invalid anyway, and that the losses are greater than the gains.

We do, however, need economic expansion in the regions, and aviation has a part to play in that. The Government are right to encourage the expansion of regional airports such as Newcastle, Manchester and Edinburgh, provided that such expansion is conditional on access to public transport. That makes perfect sense, and it is an aspect of the Government’s policy that I support.

I allege no impropriety, but I have felt for a long time that the relationship between the Government and the aviation lobby is far too cosy. I was surprised to find, during my tenure at the former DETR, that some representatives of the airlines and of BAA had passes to this building. It has to be said that I had to ask how many such passes had been granted to the industry about half a dozen times before I got an answer. “What are you implying, Minister?” “I’m not implying anything. I just wish to know the answer to this interesting question.” In due course, I got it. I think that the figure was about 10 at that time; I do not know whether that still obtains, or whether any other parts of the private sector enjoy such privileged access to Government Departments.

The aviation section of the former Department used to engage endlessly in research, the outcome of which was always known in advance. It seemed to me to be a complete waste of time. On one occasion, some very expensive research was conducted, and most people replied to the wrong question, saying that they did not like night flights. The research was invalidated and put aside, because that had not been the question that they had been asked.

In my last week in the Department, I was asked to authorise a plan for about £1.5 million worth of research and I refused because it was a complete waste of public money, and no one would take the slightest notice of the outcome anyway. The following week, I was reshuffled—sideways, incidentally, not downwards—and I left a note for my successor, saying that that matter would be back in his in-tray the moment I was out of the door. And it was. I believe that he shaved a little off the amount, however.

Finally, I should like to say to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change that I know that he has done his best, and that he is absolutely sincere. He has actually made progress on issues such as mixed mode; I acknowledge that. However, I do not believe for a moment that the mighty vested interests concerned will abide by any of the restrictions that the Government impose on them. As I have said, their lawyers and lobbyists will make short work of them, whether they are legally binding or not. Nor, eventually, will they be satisfied with a third runway and a sixth terminal. They will want a seventh terminal, and an eighth, to say nothing of their plans for the expansion of Stansted, Gatwick and elsewhere. This will go on until politicians pluck up the courage to say no. I think that this is the moment to do so.

16:38:00

Mr. Greg Hands (Hammersmith and Fulham) (Con)
As I said in our last debate on Heathrow in November, I have always considered myself a pragmatist on this issue. I try to look at the net environmental benefits or disbenefits of any proposed changes, and, alongside that, to weigh the economic case, which will typically be made in favour of expansion. For the past 11 years or so—for as long as I have been an elected politician in west London—that has been my position. I am not necessarily against the expansion of Heathrow, but I am absolutely set against this particular proposal for expansion.

We need to look at the balance involved, and my constituency represents some of that balance. Many of the staff who work at Heathrow and for the airlines live in my constituency. In fact, a senior person from British Airways, whose job is neither in lobbying nor public affairs, came to see me yesterday to give his own personal case as to why Heathrow expansion should go ahead. I used to be an admirer of BAA as a company, not least because when I lived in the United States, I saw the appalling condition of US airports in the early 1990s. At that point, Heathrow was comparatively a very good airport in very good condition, but I am afraid to say that those glory days for BAA have long gone. The fading grandeur of Heathrow is apparent, as the same graphics and infrastructure of the early ’90s are still there today.

I am still an admirer of British Airways as a business and I think it is part of our role in the House to stick up for important British businesses. However, on the proposal to build a third runway at Heathrow, I believe that the case against it is overwhelming. I say that partly due to my own local considerations, but I genuinely believe that the third runway will be detrimental to the UK.

Let me first examine the hub argument. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) developed some interesting arguments and a couple of other hon. Members started to consider the hub case. For me, the hub argument does not stack up. I am not convinced that London needs an aviation hub of the same size as that required by Amsterdam or Frankfurt. The hub argument is important, but I believe that it has been overdone in this case.

London is itself a destination large enough to provide airport capacity sufficient for almost all the destinations we need. Last week, I flew to Skopje in Macedonia to give a presentation for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. Incredibly rarely, Skopje cannot be accessed directly from any of London’s five airports. It was most surprising to find how rarely that is the case for a European capital city destination.

If we look at the population figures of the various competing hubs that we have heard about, London has a population of 8 million, Frankfurt of only 670,000 and Amsterdam of only 750,000. It is quite clear to me that Frankfurt and Amsterdam need to become hubs in order to become viable as international aviation destinations at which people will change planes because there is simply not enough local demand to be able to do that. London is very different.

Let us look at the example of the United States. New York City is not a hub airport; neither is Los Angeles; virtually all the US hubs are located in the middle of the continent—in places such as Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Houston. The geography of London does not seem to suggest that we should be Europe’s largest hub: we are at the edge of the continent.

The loss of hub status can, however, be quite traumatic. St. Louis in the 1990s is an interesting example. After TWA was bought by American Airlines, St. Louis lost its hub airport—the famous Lambert Field airport. St. Louis was the home town of Charles Lindberg and has an incredible aviation history. When it lost its airport, it had a significant negative impact on the city’s economy in the early to mid-90s, but it is worth remembering that St. Louis has a population of only about 600,000. The disproportionate impact of the loss of the airport on the economy of St. Louis was far greater than the impact that any individual hub airport would have on London.

I am not necessarily against London Heathrow being a hub, but we need to get it in perspective, because I think that the hub argument has been overdone. British Airways, however, desperately needs London Heathrow to be a hub. I am not someone speaking in a “bash British Airways” mood: as I said earlier, it is important for us to support some of our companies. British Airways employs 43,000 people. I am not sure whether it still is a FTSE 100 company, but it certainly was and may still be so. However, this is not the same argument as saying that it is essential for London to have a hub airport to compete with Frankfurt or Amsterdam.

Does a hub provide business? I guess it does, but we have to keep it in perspective. When people change planes, it provides some business; there is a boost to the economy if people stop to eat, shop or just to have a coffee. Again, however, we have to get the balance right between this obsession with the hub airport on the one hand, and the deep economic impact and degradation that it is causing across west London and in areas beyond, including in my constituency.

The other argument, which is being put out by the Future Heathrow group, is the supposed loss of Heathrow’s status in terms of the number of destinations that it serves. If I am not mistaken, there is a table showing that Heathrow has fallen in that regard from No. 2 in Europe in the 1990s to No. 5 now. That might be a compelling argument, were it not for the fact that, with its five airports, London serves massively more destinations today than it did 15 years ago, when that table was first drawn up. Who would have thought 15 years ago that people could fly to Rzeszów, to Bydgoszcz, and to Bialystok, in Poland? Fifteen years ago, the only Polish destination people could fly to from Heathrow was Warsaw. Now, greater diversity is available, thanks to a much better use of our five airports around London.

Some people might say that that change has happened only because of the end of the cold war, but let us look at France. I might be wrong, but I think that some 20 years ago, people could fly only to Paris, Lille and Marseilles from Heathrow. Today, they can fly to an incredible wealth of destinations from London airports. Much of the reason why Heathrow has declined in importance is not a lack of investment or of expansion; rather, it is the relative success of airlines such as easyJet and Ryanair. Let us face it—that is a very important factor that has not been brought out in this debate. So I do not think that a hub should be seen as essential in itself. It is helpful for London to have an important hub airport, but it is not vital. Again, I refer Members to the example of New York city, which seems to cope perfectly well without having a US hub airport.

In the brief time available, I want to cover a little of the thinking on the geography of the flight path for the third runway, because this is very important. The Government have said that the eventual package will include an initial cap on additional flights from the new runway at 125,000 in a year, and a Government pledge that any new slots after that point would be “green slots” allocated only to airlines that use the newest, least polluting aircraft. I am not sure that that will satisfy anybody in my constituency. The flight path for the third runway takes in north Westminster, north Kensington, Hammersmith, south Acton, north Chiswick and so on. These are all new communities that, although not totally untouched, were largely untouched directly by aircraft noise. They will now be directly impacted on. That is a lot of people living under that flight path.

Let us think about the people living under the existing flight paths, as well. The implication is that none of the environmentally friendly aircraft will fly over their heads; instead, people in places such as Fulham, in my constituency, will have the noisiest, most polluting aircraft flying over them. Nobody in my constituency, either in Hammersmith or in Fulham, is going to be satisfied with this solution. Obviously, we welcome the abandonment of proposals on runway alternation, but nobody is going to be satisfied with this. Who is to say that things might not change over time? I think that the Secretary of State gave a commitment earlier that there would be runway alternation on the third runway, but who is to say that that will not alter over time, and that the people of Hammersmith, on whom aircraft noise does not currently impact directly, will not have it right through the day, along with night flights?

I am not convinced by the hub argument or by many of the economic arguments. The overwhelming environmental impact on west London, and on my constituents in particular, will be horrendous, and we should vote tonight to throw out the third runway.

16:49:00

Hugh Bayley (City of York) (Lab)
I want to start by declaring an interest. My older sister lives in a mediaeval house in Harmondsworth, a village that, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) said, will be encircled by Heathrow airport if the third runway goes ahead. The house would be just a few hundred yards from the end of the runway. Because I have that interest, I will not speak about the local environmental impact of the proposal. Many other Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), have spoken eloquently about that. Over many years, he has won the respect of constituents across the political spectrum for the way in which he has dealt with this issue.

I do, however, want to speak about the economic consequences of the decision on the third runway for Yorkshire and, indeed, the north of England more generally, and about the environmental impact on the country as a whole. I am not persuaded that the Government have made the case for a third runway; nor, I should add, am I persuaded that the Conservatives have articulated a viable alternative to the Government’s proposal. It is the devil of a job to square the circle and reconcile the demand from the public for more flights with the commitments made by the House and the country to limit carbon emissions. The Government seek to do that by imposing strict environmental controls, but—as has been pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) and others—whether those commitments are met by the airline industry remains to be seen.

Let me explain my own reservations. First, I do not believe that a business case has been made. In the autumn, The Economist devoted almost an entire issue to considering the business case for Heathrow, and decided that the case had not been made. One would think that such a liberal, free-market newspaper would find a business case if there was one to be made. Secondly, I do not believe that expanding Heathrow’s capacity is the best environmental option, or that the best economic option for our country as a whole is to concentrate more flights and more economic development in the south-east of England rather than, by means of airport policy, spreading it across the country as a whole.

Every plane that flies from London to north America flies over the north of England. If, instead of taking off from London, those planes took off from Manchester, they would save some 400 miles’ worth of fuel and pollution on a round trip, and about half an hour of travel time. Passengers landing at Manchester, or at one of the other northern or midlands airports, could be in London in the same time if we built a 200-mph fast rail link. I have advanced that argument for a number of years, and many more people are advancing it now.

For the rail link to be viable, it would have to be affordable. The fare could not be £100; it would have to be, say, £30. I believe that that is possible, however, because many airlines would bulk-buy seats on the trains. They would sell Newark to Manchester and Manchester to London as a package, and an airline buying 500 seats a day from a train operator would obviously be able to buy at a keen and affordable price.

I am not arguing that the country should have a second hub in the north of England, because I believe that we can have only one hub in the United Kingdom. Nor am I arguing that the single hub should be in the north rather than the south. However, I do believe that we need a policy that spreads the increase in flights—which is happening because of consumer demand—around the country. We should spread the economic development that results from that, and we should also spread the pollution: if all the pollution is concentrated in one area, it will clearly have a greater impact than if it is distributed more widely.

The key argument in favour of expanding the central hub is that when people transfer from one flight to another, more flights to more destinations can be provided. Some 35 per cent. of Heathrow passengers fly in on one plane and out on another: a third of the volume of flights consists of transfer flights. Concentrating more flights as a whole in London for people whose journeys originate in the south-east of England, as well as those whose journeys originate from other parts of England or from Scotland or Wales, naturally draws business from other airports and makes their business less competitive.

Manchester, for example, used to operate direct BA and British Midland flights to north America. Therefore, those airlines thought that was a viable option, but the flights have been withdrawn because at the margin they are not seen to be viable. Manchester will never compete with London in any way or form, but I think that if there were the fast rail link, that would attract enough business for there to be a few direct flights from Manchester to north America. Those living in the north of England would then get the benefits not only of those flights, but of transfer flights to destinations that are not currently served; there might be one flight a day from Manchester to Turin, for instance.

Business people in the north of England need to travel to meet their customers, business associates and suppliers in other countries just as much as do those in London and the south-east, but when travelling from Yorkshire to almost any destination it is quicker to take the train to King’s Cross, the tube or Heathrow Express to Heathrow, and then to fly from Heathrow than it is to go to a regional airport in the north of England.

I get complaints from Nestlé, whose biggest factory in the world is in York. It is extremely difficult to travel between its global headquarters near Geneva, in Vevey in Switzerland, and its York factory. There are similar complaints from Aviva Life, whose headquarters are in York, and I am sure other MPs with constituencies in the north of England get similar complaints. We must develop our transport and aircraft policies for the benefit of the country as a whole, not just for London and the south-east of England.

I have supported the case for a north-south high-speed rail link for many years. I think it would help businesses in the north of England. It would bring some additional passengers to north of England airports, but it would also make Heathrow more accessible to passengers from the north of England who need to fly. I have lobbied for that, and I am pleased to see the proposals the Government have set out in their High Speed II document.

The Government have done just enough to secure my vote tonight; that will disappoint Opposition Members. I am sure this will not be the only vote we have on Heathrow expansion, however, and whether the Government continue to secure my support depends upon how vigorously they pursue the high-speed rail argument. If there is as much determination and drive behind it as behind the Heathrow policy, they might just keep me on board.

I must confess, however, that I found it extremely difficult to decide how to vote. When I signed the early-day motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), I did, of course, register my close family interest in the third runway issue. I realise that if I were to vote for the motion tonight, I would be open to the charge that I had put a personal interest before other considerations. I do not believe that is the case, but I would not be able to disprove it, and that is one of the factors that has influenced my decision.

I congratulate both main Opposition parties on calling this debate. I regret that I cannot support them in the Lobby tonight, but I think they have done a service to the House and the country, and certainly to the communities around Heathrow airport, by calling it and focusing our attention on this issue.

16:58:00

Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
I think that, overall, the decision to build the third runway is a bad decision; it is the wrong decision for the country. Before I begin my speech, however, I must say that I thought the Secretary of State’s attitude was insensitive; he did not deal with the issue seriously, and he was brash and full of bravado. He had adopted the approach that attack was the best form of defence. He attacked my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers), and I was thinking of raising a point of order as I was so concerned by the bullying tone in which he addressed her, when she had made a clear, concise and measured statement. The Secretary of State was loud and bombastic; to paraphrase Shakespeare, his speech was full of sound and fury but it signified very little. There was not much content in what he said, other than, “We’ve made the decision and we’re going to march ahead,” and when Members asked him about the alternative, he just said, “No, we’ve ruled that out,” but there was no explanation as to why.

The thrust of what I want to say is that when the facts change, sensible, reasonable people change their minds. Several Conservative Members have done so on this issue, and, with the additional and changing evidence, I think that even one or two Liberal Democrats have taken a slightly different view—and certainly many Labour Members have changed their views. Nobody is arguing for Heathrow to close or for it to be threatened.

Mr. John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
On a point of clarification, I do not think any Liberal Democrat Member has ever been in favour of a third runway at Heathrow.

Adam Afriyie
I appreciate that, but on issues such as Cranford and mixed mode, different views have been held in different constituencies; I know that because Old Windsor, in my constituency, will be affected seriously and views have changed there over time. To be fair, what I said was not criticism—it was praise. I praise anyone who would change their mind if the facts are changing, because that is the right thing to do. What would we be doing here otherwise? Surely people must be reasonable and accept the evidence as it is and as it appears.

There is capacity at Heathrow for expansion; the Government’s own figures show that up to 85 million passengers could be accommodated just with larger aircraft and by using the airport in a slightly different way. The argument I make is not even an argument against expansion in air travel. The world has changed, as have the circumstances. In 2003, when the White Paper was developed, it contained information from two or three years earlier, so much of the information in that predict-and-provide document is now about 10 years out of date. I welcome the fact that the White Paper will be updated, because that is the right approach to take. Several of the predictions and several of the observations made in it have already not proved to be correct—that is certainly the case given the downturn in the past 12 months.

What changes are taking place at the moment? One is that we are now in a recession. A major downturn is occurring, and as NATS has said, there was an 8 per cent. reduction in flights in December compared with the previous December. That change must surely be taken into account when making this decision. We have discovered today that Schiphol has been laying off workers and reducing its operations. As 2 million or 3 million people could be unemployed over the next 12 to 24 months, surely it logically follows that the number of flights will reduce to a certain degree, especially given the reducing economic activity. I am not arguing that, in the long term, demand for air travel will not increase again, but this gives us three to five years in which we can look at the alternatives and make a decision based on that delayed time scale. The urgency came from the fact that we would be running out of capacity. If there is an international downturn and air travel does not grow as fast as predicted in the White Paper, that changes the date by which this decision must be made.

Rob Marris
Unless I am misunderstanding the hon. Gentleman, as is possible, he seems to be under the delusion that the UK Government are proposing themselves to build the third runway at Heathrow—they are not. If there is to be a third runway at Heathrow, it will presumably be built by Ferrovial or whatever private sector company owns that. Therefore, the fact that, as he rightly points out, the number of passengers has decreased in recent months will make this a commercial decision—it is not for this House to second-guess that commercial decision.

Adam Afriyie
The hon. Gentleman is right, and I am not suggesting that the Government second-guess that decision. I am simply suggesting that the national, political decision that needs to be made by this Parliament—sadly, it does not look as though it will be made by Parliament, because the Government are not going to allow an official vote—does not have to be made today, and it did not have to be made two or three months ago. It could be made two, three or possibly four years down the road—that is the observation that I am making.

Our understanding of the environment has also changed since the original White Paper was published in 2003—it was not right at the top of the agenda then, but we now understand more clearly the connection between CO2 and climate change. Surely we must address that issue and make a different decision in the light of those changes. When even the Environment Agency points out that it does not support this idea because it is not the right one, we must step back and consider it seriously.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands) made it clear that he questions the hub concept, which is an argument that I have heard for a long time. I have asked on five occasions—BAA, British Airways and two or three times in the House—for someone to show me the model of how hubs work, and the mathematical reasoning behind them. What makes a hub viable? Is it 100 destinations or 200? Nobody knows and no modelling is readily available, but that is the fundamental basis of the Government’s argument. Where is the economic evidence that a third runway at Heathrow would lead to greater prosperity? An increase in air travel and transportation will lead to greater prosperity, but why must that be at Heathrow specifically?

I should declare an interest in that I live under the flight path in Old Windsor and I met representatives of the royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead this morning. They raised many concerns, although I do not have time to go into all of them. Many things have changed locally, including those that affect people’s quality of life. The “Attitudes to Noise from Aviation Sources in England” study showed that people are now more annoyed by noise than 10 years ago. Traffic congestion on the M4 and M25, even after the widening, is greater. Pollution levels from road traffic and the airport have been rising and it is unlikely that we will meet the targets for reduction. All those changes are further reasons for the Government to reconsider their decision.

There are alternatives, some of which were not around at the time of the 2003 White Paper. We have talked about high-speed rail and I am glad the Government have now started to look at that—albeit a little late. That high-speed link was not necessarily possible 10 or 15 years ago, but it is now, and it is another reason to reconsider the decision.

Other proposals include the estuary airport and the extension of Manston airport, and some people have even suggested that Gatwick might be able to take up some of the slack. If air travel is to grow enormously over the next 20 or 30 years, we will need much more capacity than we have now, so surely now is the time to consider some of these alternatives. With modern engineering techniques and technology, they have come closer to reality.

I am acutely aware that we were elected to this House to represent our constituents and the national interest. The motion that we have tabled comes from an early-day motion signed by Members on both sides of the House, including 57 Labour Members. We chose it in an effort to be non-controversial on this issue and to give people an opportunity to have an initial vote on this issue, because the Government have ruled one out. I am fairly certain that everyone affected by the Heathrow proposals will check carefully how we all vote today, and that is right, because we are accountable to the people. I also suspect that the millions of people concerned about the environment and pollution—this issue will affect the regions and Northern Ireland—will also look closely at how we vote tonight.

I urge the Secretary of State to take this opportunity to reconsider. Even if the Government just delayed the decision, that would be welcomed by everyone. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change could apply a little more pressure and delay the decision until some of the alternatives have been considered. I ask the Prime Minister to see reason and change his mind on this issue. If the Government do not change their mind, the people will decide to change the Government. I am not bothered about that—I say bring it on—but politically, the Government would be wise to listen to the people of Britain, who are saying very clearly that they do not want this. The decision does not need to be made today. Because of the economic downturn it could be made in three or four years’ time, as I am sure the Secretary of State is aware.

17:10:00

Mr. Tom Harris (Glasgow, South) (Lab)
May I begin on what might be interpreted as something of a sour note? I am glad to see that the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) is back in his seat, because he finished his speech on a note that I think was unworthy of him, by suggesting that anybody who disagreed with his view on Heathrow and the third runway must be in the pocket of BAA. That was the clear inference of his remarks. He was referring to the Government, but I consider myself a Labour MP and I have come to the independent conclusion that a third runway is essential. I have come to that conclusion not because I am in the pocket of anyone with a vested interest, but because I have looked at the facts and reached that conclusion. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that there are occasions when individuals in the House disagree with him for entirely genuine reasons.

Norman Baker
I am happy to agree with that. I was casting no aspersions at all on the hon. Gentleman or on many of his colleagues who genuinely believe that the third runway is right. I was referring to evidence of collusion between BAA and the Department, but I fully accept that he and others have made up their minds independently on that issue.

Mr. Harris
I am grateful for that intervention.

A number of colleagues on both sides of the House have raised some criticisms of the Government for not holding a formal vote on Heathrow’s third runway in the Commons, in Government time. That issue was initially raised by the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening). I intended to intervene, but I generally try not to intervene on Back Benchers when there is a time limit on speeches.

I wanted to ask the hon. Lady whether, if the Government had brought forward a Government motion to support the proposal for a third runway and if that motion had been carried, she would have accepted that decision and walked away from the campaign. Would anyone in the Chamber who opposes a third runway respect that democratic decision? The corollary of that is to ask whether, if such a motion had been defeated, they would expect the Government to adhere to that decision. The answer, of course, would be yes. The absence of a formal Government motion on the issue makes not a jot of difference.

The hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) suggested that by taking the EDM signed by 57 Labour MPs and using it as the text for an Opposition day motion, the Conservatives were somehow extending the hand of friendship across the Chamber in an effort to build some kind of cross-party consensus. Perhaps he has not been here as long as I thought that he had, but that is a typical silly little tactic that is used only to try to embarrass colleagues who have signed an EDM by asking them afterwards, “Why didn’t you vote for it in the Lobby?” I will give to colleagues who are considering voting for the Conservative motion a good reason not to do so: it is a Conservative motion. There is all the difference in the world between words in an EDM and the same words in a Conservative Opposition motion.

Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)
I am most grateful to the typically courteous hon. Gentleman for giving way. May I remind him what the letters EDM stand for? It is “early-day motion”—a motion calling for itself to be debated. It seeks an early day for a debate in the House, and we have provided that opportunity.

Mr. Harris
If I had time I would go into another definition—that of a Conservative Opposition day motion, which is entirely different from an early-day motion.

I have no doubt that those who are speaking against the third runway, particularly those with a constituency interest, are doing so from entirely genuine motives. I thought that the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), in particular, spoke very eloquently and powerfully. He said at the start of his speech that he wished that he was more of an orator, but I thought that his speech was extremely powerful. I did not agree with him, but I understood where he was coming from.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) is not in his place at the moment, but he spoke very powerfully for his constituents’ interests. That is what we are all here to do, but in this debate I have not heard anyone stand up for the hundreds of thousands of people whose jobs depend on Heathrow. No one spoke for them, either, in the debate in October—the last time we debated this issue before the Government announced their decision.

I am talking about people whose families’ livelihoods depend on Heathrow. They do not protest, demonstrate or lobby their MPs. They do not buy up small tracts of land to obtain some public relations benefit, but they deserve to be heard in this debate. I am very proud that my trade union, Unite, stands four-square behind the campaign to save and protect those people’s jobs, and to promote a third runway.

As I have said in the past, Heathrow and its third runway are not issues just for London; they are United Kingdom issues. The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil) intervened earlier in the debate, and I am disappointed that neither he nor any of his colleagues has seen fit to listen to the rest of it.

Rob Marris
They have probably flown back to Scotland.

Mr. Harris
My hon. Friend says that they may have flown back to Scotland, but I believe that the Scottish National party is completely at odds with the Scottish business sector, and does not represent Scotland’s best interest in this issue. When the Government announced the go-ahead for the third runway, Iain Ferguson, CBI Scotland’s policy executive, said:

“There has been an increase in the number of direct flights from Scotland to foreign destinations in recent years…accessing London’s key interlinking airports, particularly Heathrow, is an absolute must for Scots firms wishing to access global markets and customers at a time when winning business abroad has become even more important.”

In addition, Liz Cameron, chief executive of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, said:

“This is good news for the United Kingdom and good news for Scotland…A third runway would ensure a better opportunity to secure domestic air links to Scotland, and expand linkages with Aberdeen and Inverness in particular.”

The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar rightly spoke about his concern about securing flight slots between regional airports, such as the one at Aberdeen, and Heathrow. In his absence, I wish to point out that no one is seriously considering a high-speed rail link any further north than Glasgow and Edinburgh, and there certainly is not one planned to go to Aberdeen. If Heathrow does not expand and is instead left to wither on the vine, the idea that slots for regional destinations other than Glasgow and Edinburgh will be secure is pie in the sky, as it were.

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State very eloquently said, high-speed rail will have an important part to play in the UK’s transport infrastructure. He was also right to point out that it simply cannot entirely replace the demand for short-haul flights in and out of Heathrow. No one—not even the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers)—believes that it can.

In her opening remarks, the hon. Lady conceded that regional airports are vital economic engines. She also claimed that the high-speed rail network proposed by her party—which apparently goes to Leeds but does not go anywhere near Scotland—would remove all need for regional flights from Heathrow. That seems to me to be something of a contradiction: so much for the economic engine that regional airports comprise, if the Conservatives’ high-speed rail network will replace the need for them!

Of course, views both for and against the third runway have been expressed in the debate. I acknowledge that the 57 of my Labour colleagues who signed the early-day motion were entirely sincere in their motivations, although I say again that I hope that they do not follow that through by voting for the Conservative motion. However, there has been less discussion of the fact that a significant number of Conservative MPs—including people on the Opposition Front Bench—oppose their party’s official position. There is astonishment among grass-roots Conservatives, and especially in this country’s traditionally Conservative-supporting business community, that the shadow Secretary of State for Transport is beginning to sound more like a Green party spokesman—or, heaven help us, a Liberal Democrat.

I want to go back briefly to the comments made by the hon. Member for Lewes. I intervened on him because he suggested that the Government should renege on their decision to approve the third runway because it was unpopular. That was a remarkable feat of wisdom and principle from the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesman—but in fact that thought process has been followed by the Conservative party. I genuinely believe that the reason why Conservative Members have arrived at their policy position, which they are trying to support with the motion tonight, is that they have licked their fingers, stuck them in the air and decided which way the political wind is blowing, and seen that they can make short-term political capital from opposing something that is widely approved of among their traditional core support. I find that the most cynical thing in a raft of cynical things that the Conservative party has done over the past three years.

I now want to make three quick points. The night flights issue has been raised. Of course, I am lucky enough not to live beneath the flight path of any major airport, and I understand why colleagues are concerned on their constituents’ behalf. However, it seems fairly obvious that the pressure to have more night flights is at least partly caused by the lack of capacity at an airport. Surely, perhaps a smidgeon of light that the Opposition can take from the proposal is that, with increased capacity at Heathrow, there will be less pressure to lift the cap on night flights.

A word of criticism for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change—I am glad to see that he has taken his seat again—is that the proposal for a high-speed rail hub at Old Oak Common is peculiar. I hope that, at this early stage in the planning process, he will look again at that proposal and decide whether that is the best location for such a hub.

The underlying presumptions in the debate are that flying per se is a bad thing, and that increased access to flying by those on lower incomes is something that can be lightly reversed. I find that completely out of touch and entirely patronising. Heathrow is a touchstone issue by which any party’s commitment to jobs, economic growth and prosperity should be judged, and by that yardstick, all the Opposition parties have been found wanting.

17:22:00

John Howell (Henley) (Con)
I wanted to speak in today’s debate because I want the Government to understand that, even 50 miles down the road to the west of London, my constituency is still one of those affected by noise from aircraft coming to and departing from Heathrow. Many of the points that have been made by Members whose constituencies adjoin mine apply to my constituency. My postbag on this subject is large, because Henley and the surrounding area is one of those places above which aircraft bank to approach Heathrow. That causes noticeable intrusion.

My constituency also contains the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty, where one of the features is tranquillity—an escape for Londoners as much as a feature for locals. We spend an enormous amount of time going to great lengths locally to preserve that on the ground with tight planning, but it would seem that we are not prepared to do that in the air.

The hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) has mentioned some of the local difficulties on the ground, rather than in the air, particularly in relation to air quality. Of course, many of those difficulties relate to and come from congestion on the roads. None of my constituents has any belief or trust at all that the measures proposed by the Government to try to relieve congestion on the M4 and the M25 will have the slightest effect. Unfortunately, they are coming to the conclusion that there will inevitably be a wall of congestion between my constituency and London, as a result of the third runway going ahead.

We need to reiterate, and understand, that being anti-third runway is not the same as being anti-Heathrow or anti-aviation industry. I am not anti-Heathrow; I am not anti-aviation industry. No hon. Member who has spoken today has seriously doubted whether Heathrow will be a major part of the south-east’s air transport network, at least for our lifetime. That is why there is such a huge need to make it better, rather than bigger. To do that, we need to understand that high-speed rail is an alternative that would take passengers out of the air, and not just make it easier for them to travel when they land. If Members do not think that attitudes and behaviours are already changing as a result of experience of high-speed rail travel, they are wrong. I give my own example: having used high-speed trains in mainland Europe, I now find it inconceivable that I would fly, except in the most dire circumstances, even between destinations as far apart as Geneva and Rome, as my experience of using high-speed rail networks to get to those places has been so positive.

There has been much mention of a number of business leaders who have claimed that the third runway is essential for the global competitiveness of the UK—or perhaps we should say the south-east. I am not surprised. It is not the first time, and I doubt that it will be the last, that many of those business leaders have been out of touch with people, partly because they, like the Government, have failed to reject the old-fashioned notion of predict and provide. If we move away from those business leaders and speak to businesses on the ground, we see that many of them have already moved away from a business-centric model of how development should take place to one in which there is a balance between a range of issues, including climate change and general environmental impact. Those issues are the lifeblood of those businesses as much as earning profits is.

I find the claims for the essential role of the expansion of Heathrow increasingly fanatical. As Members have said, that is partly due to the refusal to see Heathrow as part of a ring of airports around London. There is no proven link between the number of runways and global competitiveness. How have we lost competitiveness in the UK in the past five years, since the last major redevelopment and extension at Schiphol? There is no evidence to show that we have done so. It is even more absurd when the argument involves comparing London and Frankfurt as financial markets. We are asked to believe that the defining factor in London’s continued success as a global market is the number of runways that Heathrow has, compared with Frankfurt. That is absolute nonsense. London is a global market; Frankfurt is not. That is due to the substance of the markets with which they deal, rather than the impact of individual runways.

Two years after the last major development at Schiphol, the Corporation of London produced a report entitled “The Competitive Position of London as a Global Financial Centre”. It showed that the development had had no impact on the position at all, and the foreword states that two year afterwards, London had

“moved further ahead of Frankfurt and Paris as”

an

“international financial centre”.

The report looked into what people considered to be the defining factors in that success, and business and transport infrastructure did not even make it into the top three.

As other hon. Members have said, the most disappointing aspect of the Government’s position is the lack of serious study of alternatives, but what particularly stuck in my craw was the notion that the Government were suddenly wedded to the idea of UK plc. After all, they have spent the past 11 years demolishing the idea of UK plc through excessive regionalisation and the pitting of one region against another. I cannot fail to see that the decision on Heathrow is more a reflection of the triumph of that policy, and of the greater lobbying powers of the south-east, than of anything else.

Several hon. Members
rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker
I call Clive Efford. I announce to the House that after his speech, the time limit on Back Benchers’ speeches will be reduced to eight minutes.

17:29:00

Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Almost all the people who contacted me about today’s debate believed that it was about climate change and the impact on it that airport expansion has, not just at Heathrow, but in general. However, we are talking about an early-day motion in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) that the Conservatives adopted to entice as many hon. Members as possible to follow them into the voting Lobby. The idea was that Members would feel duty-bound to do so because they signed that early-day motion, believing that that was the right thing to do. It is a mere device not just to bring the issue to the Floor of the House, as some people have suggested was the intention, but to use it as a political football.

When I began to think about what I might say in the debate, I expected to see an Opposition motion setting out what, if anything, we should do about airport expansion and laying out the criteria by which the Opposition would measure whether they would introduce any airport expansion and where that might be, but we do not have that. What we have is a motion that is purely about the third runway at Heathrow. Many of my colleagues feel that, because of their constituency situation, they have to state their position in relation to Heathrow and support the early-day motion that has been presented as an Opposition motion today.

Adam Afriyie
I recognise some of the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about whether party politics are involved, but does he regret the fact that his Government will not give the House of Commons a vote on the third runway?

Clive Efford
I will come to that.

We heard from the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) a refusal to give any commitment at all about where we might see expansion, how she might measure expansion if she were ever a Secretary of State for Transport in future, and what criteria she would use. None of those questions was answered. She spoke about expansion at Heathrow, and expansion alone.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) asked the hon. Lady about mixed mode, however, she welcomed the statement from the Secretary of State that there would be no mixed mode at Heathrow, but when pressed about whether she would approve mixed mode across London, she refused to give a commitment that a future Conservative Government would not introduce mixed mode. If her position is that she would not introduce mixed mode given the chance, why did she not take the opportunity to refuse to introduce it? [Hon. Members: “She did.”] She did not. I challenge hon. Members to check Hansard. The hon. Lady said that she welcomed the commitment from the Secretary of State, but that she hoped he would stand by it in the future. I suggest that Conservative Members check Hansard.

Mr. Brazier
May I lay this one to rest? On several previous occasions in the House and at press conferences, my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) has made it clear that we are profoundly against allowing mixed mode.

Clive Efford
I am sure that people are listening, but they will go back and check Hansard. The hon. Lady, who opened the debate, refused to give a commitment on the issue. Last October she was asked whether she would approve a second runway at Stansted. She made an unequivocal statement then that if BAA were to pursue that option, she would advise them not to do so because a future Conservative Government would stop it in its tracks. There was no mention of Stansted today.

The motion says no to a third runway at Heathrow, but let us look at all the other options. Right across the south-east now, anyone who lives near an airport might have the Tories coming down their way to expand that airport. That is what the motion says. In the absence of any policy—[Interruption.] I am sorry if they do not like it, but they are going to have to sit there and listen to it. In the absence of any policy—

Mr. Brazier
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Clive Efford
No, I am sorry; I have given way twice.

In the absence of any policy of their own, the Conservatives have adopted an EDM in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Selby. It has fixed them now with a policy of airport expansion, potentially right across the south-east. Let us look—

Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Clive Efford
I have already given way twice and there are others who wish to speak. I am sorry if I have rattled the hon. Gentleman’s cage, but that is how it is.

Let us have a look at what the Tories are saying where they are in power. Let us look at Mayor Boris and the island, for which my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) made a powerful case. It does not represent the position of the Conservative party in the House. The Conservative party has got into a schism about airport expansion; it does not know whether to go one way or the other. The Mayor, who actually has power and influence, is pushing for a new airport in the Thames estuary. The Conservative party does not know which way to go on any airport—all it knows is that it does not want Heathrow to expand. Much as I have misgivings about airport expansion, I will not join the Conservatives in the Lobby today.

I turn to the position of the Government. Labour Members have made some reasonable requests today, most notably about the national policy statement. Heathrow is totemic in environmental terms, and it will be made so whether it is talked about in this bubble of the House of Commons or elsewhere. The matter should be brought back to the Floor of the House; let us have a vote on it in the near future. That would be a test of our commitment on climate change. We passed the Climate Change Bill, which is now an Act. There is the Committee on Climate Change, and we intend it to consider the measures that we have put in place for airport expansion. We are also going to give powers to the Civil Aviation Authority and the Environment Agency. Labour Members have questioned whether we are earnest in our commitments in relation to those measures. I believe that they should be brought back to the Floor of the House for debate so that people can question, amend and alter them if they need to be strengthened. That is an essential role that the House can play in future on the issue—an issue to which we will return, as others have said.

I want to mention the high-speed rail link before I sit down. I do not believe that it will ever be built. I support it and want it, but according to the Conservatives’ own figures it would cost £17 billion to introduce. I have always felt that we could make much more efficient use of our resources by building a dedicated freight line and taking freight off our passenger rail network. That would be cheaper and would not require all the engineering that a high-speed rail link would need. It would allow us to create more capacity and improve timetables on the existing passenger network. We could deliver it much more cheaply and, in addition, take a great deal of freight off the road. Currently, 12 per cent. of our freight goes by rail; that represents a significant increase in the past 10 years, but if we could create more freight capacity the figure would rise further. One freight train is the equivalent of 50 heavy goods vehicles; an aggregate freight train is the equivalent of 120 HGVs. Building a dedicated freight line rather than going for a high-speed rail link, which would knock off only marginal amounts of time from journeys up and down the country, would make an enormous contribution to the environment.

In conclusion, I hope that the Government are listening to what we on the Labour Benches are saying. There is great concern that past promises on Heathrow have not been adhered to. This issue is a major test of our commitment on climate change, and that means that the House, the Committee on Climate Change, the Civil Aviation Authority and the Environment Agency must have a role, to ensure that we deliver on the commitments that we have made.

17:38:00

Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
There have been some powerful speeches in this debate, especially from Members whose constituencies are affected by this proposal. Although local issues are involved, however—in Northern Ireland I have seen in another role how airport expansion and changes to airports can generate heat and anxiety in local communities—what we are discussing is not a local issue; it is about an asset of national significance and extreme importance to outlying regions of the United Kingdom.

At a time when we are going into recession and are concerned about jobs and the future of the economy, we should be aware that a project such as this can sustain many thousands of jobs and generate many additional thousands of jobs, and at the same time encourage the private sector to see that we are friendly to business in the United Kingdom. That pushes us to the conclusion that there is an economic case for the expansion of Heathrow from the point of view of the regions, such as Northern Ireland, where we are out on a limb and need good link to a central infrastructure that then radiates out to the rest of the world. It is important that those link are not only maintained but strengthened.

I listened to what the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) said in putting the Opposition’s case. A high-speed rail link, whether or not it is feasible or ever happens, will not help Northern Ireland unless we are going to build a bridge or a tunnel as well. I would welcome those links, but I suspect that that is a dream for people in Northern Ireland. It is therefore essential that we have the ability to link into Heathrow. There is already concern that because of the pressures on slots at Heathrow, and now the link-up between BMI and Lufthansa, those slots could be lost to what are regarded by the bigger airlines as more profitable flights.

Dr. William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
My hon. Friend will understand that I have Northern Ireland’s international airport in my constituency, and that BAA took those slots from Northern Ireland and gave them to flights to international destinations. Does he agree that Heathrow is therefore vital to my constituents, to the people of Northern Ireland and to the prosperity of the Province?

Sammy Wilson
It is. I hope that at the end of the debate the Government will be able to make commitments about the number of planes and kinds of planes that will use these runways. I am sure that it must be possible to give a commitment in the planning agreement that slots will be retained for flights from regional airports to the central hub.

Norman Baker
rose—

Sammy Wilson
I would love to give way, but I am restricted to eight minutes and therefore want to make my point.

Many Members have expressed concern about the impact on climate change of a third runway at Heathrow. Some, at least, have been upfront in saying that there should be a reduction in air travel and that it should be made more expensive. I do not take that view. I suppose that I might be at odds with many Members anyway, because I do not attach the same importance to reducing CO2 emissions as to doing so at the expense of sacrificing the economy, but I will not enter into that debate here. Nevertheless, there is an inconsistency in the argument. We have heard that if we are going to keep on increasing air traffic to other airports, there will be more CO2 emissions as a result. If one believes that CO2 emissions have a dramatic impact on climate, one is bound by the argument to believe that that impact will be created. If we start going down that road, we tie ourselves in the same knots as the Opposition, and some Labour Members, have done today. There have been challenges from other speakers in that regard. If air travel is expanded, there will be an impact on CO2 emissions and we have obligations on that which the Government have to live up to.

Some Members, including the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), suggest that the circle could be squared through the European emissions trading scheme. I do not believe that. Given that there is currently a surplus of those certificates and that firms could sell them and move polluting activities elsewhere, the scheme would not reduce CO2 emissions anyway. We have to question that as an alternative.

The third reason why I oppose the motion is that although there is talk of alternatives, those alternatives have not been properly explained to us or argued for. One argument is that high-speed rail links could cut out a lot of the travel from regional airports to Heathrow. As I have pointed out, that idea is probably not a runner for places such as Scotland and Northern Ireland, and even the limited high-speed rail link proposal that has been put forward will cost about £15.6 billion—a quarter of what is currently spent on subsidising the rail network. At a time when we already have economic constraints on Government spending, one must ask whether that alternative can be delivered. I suspect that it cannot. If we are relying on the private sector to deliver it, we are in even greater difficulties, as we have already seen in the case of other proposed high-speed rail links.

I do not believe that there is a credible alternative. Even if there were, and we reduced the number of flights into Heathrow by 66,000, which I think was the figure that the Opposition spokesman gave, that would not solve the problem. Heathrow is currently operating at 98.5 per cent. of its capacity, and flights are already being stacked up because of the lack of capacity. This is at an airport that has two runways, when other hub airports with far less traffic, and therefore with the capacity to compete in future, are operating with three, four or five runways. If we look at the matter from that point of view, we see the need to increase capacity at Heathrow for the sake of the whole UK, particularly the regions.

Another suggestion that has been made—I am amazed at the suggestions that are coming out of the woodwork—is that we should link all the other airports around London. I do not know how much work has been done on that, but I suspect that had it been a feasible option, it would have been considered some time ago. As the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) asked, do we want to introduce uncertainty to the communities around all those airports, in the vain hope that by linking them in some way we can deal with the demand for increased air traffic?

This is an important matter, and Members have said that the House should have had a vote on it. I do not really mind whether there is a vote in Government or in Opposition time, but even if the House were to vote, how could the result be a material consideration in a planning application? I do not believe that it could, so I do not know how much impact a vote would have on the final decision. It might once again raise hopes unnecessarily and bring the House into disrepute.

17:48:00

Emily Thornberry (Islington, South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I am profoundly against the building of a third runway at Heathrow, because of the impact of aviation on the environment. I do not believe that an extra runway should be built in the UK—not at Heathrow, not in the north of England, not on the Thames estuary. Planes not only emit CO2 but speed up global warming by emitting further damaging gases at altitude. Unless we restrict them, emissions from aviation are set to increase to five times their current levels. All that is at a time when we simply must cut our carbon emissions.

However, if the Opposition parties think that because of those firmly held beliefs I will vote for their motion this afternoon, they must be stark staring bonkers. It is based on an early-day motion that was tabled last year. When that motion urged the Government to rethink and give

“full consideration to alternative solutions”,

it meant that they should consider rail, restrictions on short internal flights and a host of other measures, but the Tories have hijacked it. The hype surrounding it led environmentalists to expect a motion today that would oppose the expansion of aviation on the basis of its effect on the environment. Well, it does not do that. It does not provide the strong, green leadership, for which many of my constituents and non-governmental organisations may have hoped. It does not deal with the question of why the rest of the world should suffer for the benefit of the few and it is not about the urgency of reducing our emissions and the challenge of realising that goal.

The motion speaks of

“full consideration of alternative solutions”

to Heathrow expansion in a week when the most powerful Tory in the land, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, sailed up the Thames on a dredger to show us two islands on which he wants to build four runways for the biggest airport in Britain. That “alternative” to Heathrow is an airport four times as big as Gatwick, which allows people to get into their Chelsea tractors, drive to the wilds of east London and catch a plane there without the hassle of the crowds at Heathrow. That is the Tory policy and I will not vote for it.

The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) told us today that she does not rule out expansion in the south-east. However, she is not prepared to state the extent of the carbon emissions that would be permissible in that expansion. She also says that she is in favour of proportionate expansion of regional airports, but she is not prepared to give us any details about that, either. Do the Tories genuinely believe that the public will not notice that?

Exactly what are the Liberal Democrats doing supporting the motion? What is their policy? I do not know. Some people might describe it as political opportunism, but I am sure that that cannot be true. I understood that they opposed aviation expansion—my local Liberals claim to oppose it—but perhaps they do not. Today, they have said that they oppose the expansion of aviation in the south-east, but the Tories are in favour of it. Both parties are held together in some unholy alliance. I will certainly not vote for the motion.

Environmentalists have been dazzled by the hype, and the Tories should apologise to the green movement, especially Greenpeace, which is based in my constituency and has been manipulated by the Conservatives into being their cheerleaders. They should apologise to the more than 6,000 people who have written to and e-mailed me, urging me to support the motion because they believed that it was anti-expansion, when it is pro-expansion.

Mr. Randall
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Emily Thornberry
No, I shall be very quick.

If the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) would like to draft such an apology, I undertake that my office will send it to all the people who made contact.

I pay tribute to the work that has been done on restricting the development of Heathrow and to the commitment to restrict the increase in carbon emissions to 2005 limits by 2050. Some people believe that those restrictions are so severe that a third runway will never be built and that it will simply not get through a planning hearing. Perhaps that is true. However, it is unfortunate that the decision, although it is surrounded by restrictions on pollution and a cap on aviation, is in danger of eclipsing all our huge achievements on the environment.

What should I do tonight? I have thought about that carefully. Although I hate the possibility of the Tories wrapping themselves in their phoney turquoise cloak and winning a vote on an opportunistic motion designed to hold together an unholy alliance, the whole purpose of which is to embarrass the Government, I will get on my bike and cycle home. I will go home because there is no motion for Members of Parliament like me who want to halt the expansion of aviation anywhere in the UK on environmental grounds. No motion allows us to express that. However, I assure hon. Members that, when I get on my bike, no car will follow me, carrying my shoes.

17:53:00

Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab)
I shall vote for the motion, which was originally tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan). I do not care who is in the Lobby with me or what contradictions they bring with them. Given that the House is not allowed to vote specifically on the Heathrow third runway, the vote this evening will be seen as a surrogate for that. I say to all those who wriggle about and pretend that it will not, that that is how it will be perceived outside.

I hope that those who live in the vicinity of Heathrow will forgive me for making next to no comments about their circumstances. That is not through lack of sympathy, but simply because I regard the matter as an overwhelmingly national and ecological issue. It is in that context that I want to address my remarks to the House.

I get most dispirited about the House when it cloaks itself in delusions, and the most consistent delusion that has paraded itself around in this debate is that, when we come out of the present global crisis, we will somehow go back to business as usual, and that we will be able to carry on with this everlasting expansion of over-production, over-consumption and over-pollution. It simply is not going to be like that.

Two years ago, the International Energy Agency issued a report that said that, by 2013, the world would face an energy supply crisis. It added the caveat that the only thing that might delay that crisis was the possibility of a global slump. It is some kind of lifeline, but that is what we are immersed in at the moment. When we come out of it, in whatever way we do so, that energy crisis will be waiting for us.

The scientists at the intergovernmental panel on climate change revise their climate change predictions forward every time they meet, in such a way that we now have a window of opportunity of probably only six to eight years in which to make profound changes to the way in which we think about the framework of the economies in which we live, and in which we hope that our children will be able to live.

I like to think that President Obama understands some of this, and that he understands the urgent need for change now. I also like to think that my own Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change understands that. He has done many inspirational things, and one of them is so inspirational that I do not think the House has a clue what it means. It is that we are committed to introducing annual carbon budgets at the end of this year. It will come as a huge shock to households, businesses and other parts of our infrastructure when they have to live within their annual carbon budget.

The delusional aspect will become apparent only when we try to hide behind the presumption that carbon budgets can be forward-projected, that we do not really have to meet them until 2050, that, in the context of aviation, they can be premised on the basis of planes that do not exist yet, and—worse still—that the emissions trading scheme will somehow get everyone off the hook. The presumption will be that we will be able to continue to pollute as we like, while paying others to clean the planet up in ways that we will not do. The emissions trading scheme is a cheats’ charter. It will not work, because everyone involved—including ourselves—is part of the cheating game. If we want to address how we should deliver our climate change targets, we need to do so in the now. That is the context in which I want to address the issue of the third runway.

Just a couple of months ago, Jim Hansen from NASA said that, if we were to survive the century, we would have to constrain climate change within 2° C. That probably means lowering the carbon thresholds to 350 parts per million, not the 450 parts per million that we are currently talking about. That would be an astonishing target for us to set ourselves. Jim Hansen is still vaguely optimistic about that, but James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia theory, has now given up on that premise. He says that, by 2050, we are likely to have had to divide the UK into three, just to survive. One third would have to accommodate the entire population of 57 million. The second third would have to be given over to intensive agriculture, and the third handed back to nature. If that happens, I suspect that not a single person who is squeezed into that space in central England will be sitting there saying, “Well, I’m glad we got that third runway. It’s certainly made a difference to the quality of our lives.” That is nonsensical.

If we are going to take carbon budgets seriously, we have to begin to budget for them now. How we reduce aviation’s contribution to carbon emissions overall is one question; how we deal with the additional emissions resulting from a third runway is quite another. The figures in the official documents state that 11.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents will be emitted as a result of the third runway, on an annualised basis. How do we translate that? If we were to offset it by something positive, it would mean that we had to deliver and install 7.2 million solar roofs in the UK. If we take out apartment blocks and everything north facing, it probably means the entirety of south-facing roofs in the UK.

If we did not offset those emissions through a positive countermeasure, we might have to reduce the carbon impact of things that we currently do. That could work out as the equivalent of taking 4.5 million cars—one in six—off the road. We might want to do that in a fairer way and say to every car owner that for two months every year their cars would be impounded—and they would just have to live with it. If we did not want to do that, we could look into reducing electricity consumption. To achieve the required offset would mean permanently disconnecting 5 million households from the electricity supply for the duration of the existence of the third runway. We might want to share the impact of that more equally, so we could say that every household could take a share of the cut—every day each of us would have to do without any electricity in our homes for four and a half hours.

Those are the real costs that we have to trade off among ourselves to live within an annualised carbon budget for the third runway—and the budget is not even static. To get to the position we need to be in by 2050 effectively means shrinking our carbon footprint on the basis of an annualised 3 per cent. reduction per year, probably right through the entirety of this century. That requires meeting transformational demands, affecting the whole way we live. I suspect that, in the future, we will live in more localised or more regionalised economies. I think we can live simpler and better lives, but I will tell you this, Mr. Deputy Speaker—whichever way we try to make this stack up, a third runway is not part of the solution, but part of the problem.

18:01:00

Mr. Andy Slaughter (Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush) (Lab)
I grew up with Heathrow, living for about 30 years under the flight path in Fulham before I moved to the gentler and quieter climate—quiet at the moment, that is—of Shepherd’s Bush. I concede to my Front-Bench team that planes were noisier and dirtier then, but like the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), I could never describe myself as an opponent of Heathrow at any stage. As he said, it is a driver of the west London economy as well as a direct employer.

I do not want to get into an auction of misery, but my constituents may not be the most at risk—perhaps unlike those of my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). I have a large constituency in Shepherd’s Bush and I have a prospective constituency in Hammersmith with a total combined population of about 160,000 people. I have done canvassing in both those areas and I can say that very few people there—almost no one—believe that Heathrow should be closed. Indeed, I believe that even the Mayor of London has resiled from that position. People hold that view despite the fact that we know that Heathrow is in the wrong place as an historical accident and despite the fact that we know that the airport potentially affects the health and safety, quality of life and convenience of people living in west London.

As with so much about living in London, people accept that this issue comes down to a balance between environmental and economic considerations. The one organisation that has never accepted that balance is BAA, which has fought time and again for expansion by any means. That is why I have spent the 25 years that I have been active in west London politics fighting against Heathrow expansion. The terminal 5 planning application is now legendary and we heard earlier about the letter that went out from BAA at that time, effectively saying, “If you give us terminal 5, we will never apply for a third runway”. That, too, has become legendary. It shows that this issue has become not just a matter of tactics but one of trust for many people living in London.

I am sorry that I have only eight minutes to talk about a matter of such complexity. I concede that these arguments are complex. If we look into the issue of noise alone, we find as many different views as there are objections. We cannot agree on a system for measuring it; we cannot agree on what level it takes effect; we cannot agree on the flight paths; we cannot agree on what changes in technology will mean. It is indeed a subjective feeling that people have: one partner of a couple might feel affected while the other did not.

Pollution, surface transport, the transport infrastructure—all these issues are hugely complicated; I accept that. I also accept what my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Energy and Climate Change and for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have done in getting mitigation of these measures. No mixed mode, what they say are stringent and binding controls, and a gradual expansion are substantial mitigating effects, but if the existing airport is in the wrong place and we accept that, that is not a reason to build what is effectively another airport in the wrong place. One has only to look at the maps—even the maps that BAA provides—to see where those flight paths go, and to ask whether a massive increase in aircraft movement across the largest conurbation in the country is sensible.

That brings me to the motion, which is a Labour motion; that is why it is so reasonably written. It sets out the environmental case and asks the Government to look again at the case for a third runway, using the planning legislation process that we agonised over so much to get in place. It is the motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), and I did feel for my right hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Ruth Kelly) when she was putting questions about the motion to the Opposition Front Benchers, who clearly have not read it. They should have asked my hon. Friend. He knows what it is in it.

It is the Tories who should have a problem voting for this motion, because as we have heard, over the course of a year they have turned from being qualified or unqualified supporters of a third runway at Heathrow into—well, what? I am not talking about the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire), who has always been consistent. I am talking about people such as the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts), part of whose peroration to the citizens of Hounslow within the last year we heard quoted. He went on to say the following about the third runway at Heathrow:

“although I recognise this will not be welcome by this audience we have to accept that…things sometimes have to happen that people don’t wish…we cannot allow, sadly, one community—however badly affected—to stop if there is a strong economic argument.”

Within the last year to 18 months, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) and the hon. Members for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) and for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) have all endorsed, even with weasel words, the third runway and expansion at Heathrow.

It is the abandonment of that position and its replacement with a policy vacuum that has allowed, where angels fear to tread, the Mayor of London to step in with his proposal, which, according to The Times last week, is now not just a policy of supporting the Thames estuary airport. It said:

“Although Johnson has described Heathrow as ‘a planning error of the 1960s’, his advisers believe it could continue to work with two runways even if the new hub is built.”

So what we have from the Tories at the moment is six runways in London. This is the party of the environment. This is the party that believes it has the answer to airport expansion in the south-east. The Tories may believe that this is clever politics and that by tabling a motion, they have successfully lured me for the first time into what they think is their Lobby—although I maintain it is a Labour motion that we are voting for. I take comfort in doing that for this reason. I believe that the third runway will never be built, because of the sheer illogicality of it and the fact that time has moved on. All that is being asked for in this motion—certainly from the Labour Benches—is for the Government to look again at the aviation and rail strategies for the south-east and the country as a whole and to come up with a better solution, which is there.

In due course, this debate will prove to be a complete figment, and I will continue, just in case I am being complacent about this, to campaign against the third runway. But the debate will also expose the vacuity and hypocrisy of the Opposition, and the fact that they are doing this for pure political advantage. It will not be clever politics; in the end it will be stupid politics, because already, and more quickly than they think, the country and opinion-formers are seeing that they will say anything. Somebody used the phrase “student politics” earlier today, and that is exactly what we have here. The Tories will do anything at all to get into power, but they cannot go on doing that; eventually, their chickens will come home to roost. These chickens will indeed come home, and if the airport is built in the Thames estuary, they may have a problem with bird flights, as well. They should think about that as they vote tonight; I will do so with a clear conscience.

18:09:00

Mr. John Grogan (Selby) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the thoughtful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Slaughter). This has become a truly cross-party occasion, with a series of Labour speakers sustaining—admittedly from different perspectives—the remains of an Opposition day.

I reflect on the fact that, although I still hope that one day the Government Whips will recognise my modest political talents—[Laughter.] The Whips have been speaking to me rather more today than they usually do on Wednesday afternoons.

Although I still live in that hope, I should be honest with myself and accept that this is probably the only occasion on which I shall be the author of a motion that will be voted on by the whole House of Commons. Before I give the reasons for which—after a great deal of reflection and consideration—I shall vote for my own motion, let me make one thing clear. Some Members have said that voting for my motion will mean voting in a Conservative Lobby. Well, long may it be remembered in this House that there are no Conservative Lobbies and no Labour Lobbies: there is an Aye Lobby and a No Lobby, and we must all make our own judgments on what it is best for us to do.

It was clearly a very exciting Cabinet meeting that decided the policy on the third runway, but those of us who were not privileged to be there could only go by what we read in the newspapers. The Daily Telegraph told us that Lord Mandelson banged his head on the table in a

“bitter Cabinet feud over Heathrow runway”.

I am a great admirer of Lord Mandelson’s political talents, but there are some on these Benches who are not so appreciative: one of them even suggested that he did not bang hard enough.

Perhaps Lord Mandelson was cruelly provoked by some of the other comments going around the Cabinet table. Another newspaper reported the Secretary of State for Transport as saying that climate change was

“a load of tree-hugging hoolah”.

Apparently, my two very distinguished right hon. Friends with Yorkshire seats—the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and the Secretary of State for  Children, Schools and Families—also became quite excited. The headline in the Daily Mail was “Balls wins as he goes Ed-to-Ed”. Apparently,

“Bruiser Balls blasted baby-faced Miliband”—

I consider both those descriptions to be desperately unfair—

“for saying there should be no increase in civil aviation and accused him of sabotaging Labour voters’ foreign holidays.”

I have always thought that one of the many contributions made by the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families to Yorkshire politics is sophisticated political argument, and that was certainly in evidence during that Cabinet meeting.

Let me very briefly—because I have only a few minutes left—rattle through a few arguments in favour of the motion. Its centrepiece is that we should think again, and take a step back. These are momentous issues involving the future of the planet and the future of transport in our country—both aviation and high-speed rail—which, presumably, is why the Government wanted a planning policy statement. That appears reasonable to me, and incidentally, it appeared reasonable to the Sustainable Development Commission, backed up by the Institute for Public Policy Research. According to the IPPR’s report, much of the aviation data is disputed, and the Government should re-examine the policy.

I make no apology for trying to secure consensus across the House. If we are to go forward as a nation, we will need consensus on aviation policy, climate change policy and high-speed rail policy. We cannot allow those policies to change every two or three years, and I think that achieving such a consensus is a noble ideal.

I feel passionately about high-speed rail, and I do not think the Government have gone nearly far enough in that regard. High-speed rail is as important to the north of England, and to Scotland, as the Olympics and Crossrail are to London. I think that, in both England and Scotland, it could be an important substitute for air travel. According to evidence from Eurostar, KLM and Air France, for goodness’ sake, are thinking of running a rail service from London to Paris, because they realise that it is a case of “If you can’t beat them, join them”.

Before the TGV came along, only about 20 per cent. of traffic on the Paris-to-Marseille route was rail traffic; the rest was air traffic. Now nearly 70 per cent. is rail traffic. Perhaps as many as 100,000 of the 470,000 flights to Heathrow could be replaced by high-speed rail. As we have already heard, particularly from my hon. Friend the Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley), once high-speed rail makes it possible to travel from London to Birmingham in 40 minutes, from London to Doncaster in about an hour and from London to Leeds in an hour and 20 minutes, Doncaster and Birmingham become as close to London as some of the five London airports are to the centre of London. For the first time, it proves possible to have some long-haul flights. It changes the economics—an issue which my hon. Friend the Member for City of York addressed in some detail.

Many Members have talked about the economic case. My hon. Friend mentioned The Economist. Its conclusion was that the Government’s case on economic grounds was

“as vapid and noxious as a jet-engine’s exhaust.”

It joins a host of newspapers—The Sun, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Observer and many others—who are all ranged against the Government’s decision.

Let us look at the Government’s economic case, as they put it forward. They say the economic boost from the third runway will be about £3.3 billion over 70 years, whereas many calculations have suggested the boost from high-speed rail would be about £30 billion. Also, the Government’s calculations are very suspect; if the price of carbon is changed to bring it more in line with the Stern report, or if oil is priced at $100 a barrel rather than $50 a barrel, that economic benefit completely disappears. As The Economist points out, there is also the Competition Commission report. BAA will be broken up, and some of the airports that will be independent might make suggestions. Since the early 1990s the number of transfer passengers at Heathrow has dramatically increased—it has gone up by almost 20 per cent.—while the number of direct routes served from Heathrow has fallen from about 230 to 180, so there is no direct link there.

A promise is a promise in politics. On the local environment and air quality, about which many hon. Members have spoken passionately, we made a promise as a party and a Government that we would not go ahead with the third runway at Heathrow if we could not guarantee that European level air quality standards and noise quality standards could be met. Our own former Minister, Lord Smith, is making it clear from his role at the Environment Agency that that cannot be done. On those grounds alone—let alone the arguments about climate change—Labour Members should have real pause for thought.

I appeal to all Members to remember that there is not a Conservative Lobby and a Labour Lobby, but an Aye Lobby and a No Lobby. There are many reasons to go into the Aye Lobby tonight—on environmental grounds, on economic grounds—that should appeal to Members in all parts of the House. I urge Labour Members to go into the Aye Lobby because this is about the heart and soul of our party as well; it is about keeping our promises—about keeping faith with the north of England, with Scotland and with the environmental movement.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst)
Order. It seemed almost cruel to stop the hon. Member who tabled the motion.

18:18:00

Rob Marris (Wolverhampton, South-West) (Lab)
I declare an interest, in that I am a member of the Transport and General Workers Union, which is now part of Unite, which I understand supports the third runway at Heathrow.

We have had a great debate today, as we often do on such controversial matters. In my brief remarks, I shall not address the issue of what I call the concrete footprint of a third runway—the destruction of the village of Sipson and other surrounding areas—as that is primarily, although not solely, a matter for the MP representing the people who live in that area. Instead, I shall focus my remarks on the environmental issues and what I regard as the mish-mash of the Conservative Opposition motion before us today.

On the three primary environmental issues relating to local residents—air quality, surface traffic and noise—I take heart from the statement that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport made to this House on 15 January. On noise, he said:

“the Government committed not to enlarge the area within which average noise exceeded 57 dB.”

He then went on to set out some safeguards, which he reiterated to the House today, in respect of the following understandable question that people ask: can these promises be relied upon, in the light of what has happened in the past in terms of Heathrow and airport expansion? He said:

“the air quality limit is already statutory, and we will also give the noise limits legal force”.

I take great heart from that.

The Secretary of State also said:

“We will give the CAA a new statutory environmental duty to ensure that it acts in the interests of the environment...and that it follows guidance from myself and my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and for Energy and Climate Change.”

He also referred to the important safeguards that

“the independent regulators would have a legal duty and the necessary powers to take the action—or require others to take it—needed to come back into compliance. In the case of noise, the matter would be for the CAA. In the case of air quality”,

the matter would be for

“the Environment Agency”.—[Official Report, 15 January 2009; Vol. 486, c. 357-358.]

I take heart from that.

On the procedures and processes that this matter involves, I take a different view from many in this Chamber, because I think that they have been putting on the Government the sorts of things that would be done by a planning inquiry. Surface transport, the overdevelopment arguments often put forward in our constituencies, and the air quality and noise arguments are very important issues, but they are also ones for the planning process. On surface traffic, the Government have not been given credit for the battle they fought in Brussels—in the European Union—to have tighter controls on emissions from passenger vehicles; this Government stood up for the 137 g per kilometre provision, which is a step forward. It will indirectly affect the air quality on the ground around Heathrow, whether or not it has a third runway, because the cars delivering people to and from Heathrow will be less polluting.

Another issue that has been mentioned today is the economics, and there are two ways of looking at that factor. The first is the economics of what the runway will do for the economy and so on—and I understand the scepticism that I have heard about the figures. The other aspect is whether it will be economic to build a third runway at Heathrow. Some hon. Members seem to be trying to substitute the decision of this Chamber for a commercial decision made by the owners of Heathrow—currently Ferrovial, a Spanish company. I think that a third runway at Heathrow will never be built, because of the following things: high-speed rail; video links; the price of oil; the opprobrium associated with flying; and the question of whether hub airports make any sense, given that, as we all know, the big expansion in recent years has been undertaken by carriers such as Ryanair and easyJet—point-to-point carriers that do not go for the hub.

I understand that from this Government and previous Governments there is no direct subsidy for Heathrow. Indirect subsidy is provided, particularly through the lack of excise duty and tax on aviation fuel. The Government ought to end that unilaterally, rather than wait until there is an agreement within the European Union. The emissions trading scheme will clamp down, and I think that, in view of the entire context, a third runway will not be built.

What I object to strongly on the part of Conservative Members is, to use an old-fashioned biblical phrase, the whited sepulchre—although in this case it is a green sepulchre: fancy on the outside, but a pile of bones on the inside. That is what this motion is, because it tries to have it both ways. With all due respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), I suspect that he never believed in his wildest dreams that this motion would be debated on the Floor of the House. It is a contradictory motion that has been adopted today by the Conservative party, particularly in respect of the environmental stuff. It is like the old Canadian saying from the first world war, when people were trying to get Quebec to decide to stay in the confederation—they said that there would be conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription. That was a great political point made by their Prime Minister at the time, and although it was pretty nonsensical, it convinced the Canadian people. The approach here is that we will clamp down on air traffic if necessary, but we will not necessarily clamp down on air traffic. That contradictory, fake position faces both ways.

The Conservative motion is also hypocritical. I suspect that many Members of this House fly moderately frequently for leisure purposes, let alone for business; they may fly to go on holiday in Iceland, to go yachting in Corfu or to go birdwatching in Paraguay. I regard it as hypocritical, and an insult to my constituents, that they are being told in terms, “We want to restrict flights so you can’t fly. We’re rich, and we’ll carry on flying.” If they were really being intellectually honest about it, they would say, “Let’s ration flying. Let’s not do it through a price mechanism so that poor people can’t fly.”

The Liberal Democrats have just as much of a hypocritical position, and they should back off it. It is the kind of position that we face in our constituencies all the time from some people—I stress the word “some”—who say, “I don’t want a mobile phone mast on my street.” When such people are asked whether they have a mobile phone, they reply that they have, and when they are asked whether they use it, they again reply yes, but they do not want a mast on their street. That is the kind of hypocrisy that we face from people who are flying around the world on their holidays. The Conservative motion is contradictory, and I urge hon. Members to vote it down.

18:24:00

Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
I agree with every word said by my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), and I will support the motion in the Lobby tonight. I agree with him about the need for consensus across all the political parties if we are truly to tackle this major global issue of climate change. We came together not so long ago and passed the Climate Change Act 2008, and only two hon. Members voted against it. We imposed on ourselves strict targets that must be met by 2050, and as a result, the Government have been able to claim global leadership in tackling climate change.

It is one thing to have targets; it is another to achieve them. We achieved our Kyoto targets, but that was on the back of a temporary phenomenon—the dash for gas and the closure of coal-fired power stations. We are, even now, contemplating building a new coal-fired power station, and we are increasing our greenhouse gas emissions in this country, as are our partner countries in Europe. So when it comes to competition between Heathrow, Paris, Schiphol and Frankfurt, we are all in this together. We will all have to take difficult decisions about whether we can continue with the predict and provide policy in aviation.

We must also consider the science. When the Climate Change Act was first considered, we had a target of 60 per cent., but that was based on out-of-date science. We then realised that we needed an 80 per cent. target, based on the report by the intergovernmental panel on climate change, which is now some four years out of date. The latest science tells us that even that target may not be sufficient. It is not even the target that we need to consider, but our trajectory, and how we meet it. We cannot put action off. The latest science tells us that we are probably already at the tipping point. Predictions show that the melting of the Arctic ocean and ocean acidification, which were not expected to take place for another 50 or so years, are taking place now. The target that we must aim for if we are to reduce the increase in global temperature to the 2° C necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change is now more like 350 parts per million—and that is the level that we are at today.

We have to take urgent action. We cannot wait one or two years: we have to start now. We cannot look just for energy efficiencies and otherwise carry on as we are. We cannot look to some technological fix, as yet undiscovered. We have technologies that will enable us to tackle climate change, and we can be optimistic, but only if we start now. That means that all sectors of our economy have to participate. As the chief scientific adviser has said, the UK’s target means that all sectors must make a major contribution and achieve step changes in past performance. That applies to the aviation industry perhaps even more than to other emitters of greenhouse gas, because its emissions are made in the atmosphere and have a greater impact than those on the ground.

It is therefore inconceivable that we will meet our climate change targets with a target for aviation that says that we will not get back to 2005 levels of emission from the aviation sector until 2050. Even if that were achievable in the scenario painted by the Government, it is still not good enough. If we do not get it right, and if we do not take a lead in this country, as is absolutely necessary if we are to reach agreement at Copenhagen, that could have an impact on unemployment and on our economy. It will also have a global impact, through the water wars that will take place and the refugee problem. What happened in the early 1990s—with the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, the consequences that followed for refugees seeking asylum, and the impact that that had here, as well as the impact that the wars in places such as Somalia and Darfur had here—will be as nothing compared with the impacts of dangerous climate change, which we are now embarking on.

If we are embarking on such change now, we cannot contemplate going ahead with a third runway at Heathrow airport. It is as simple as that. If this country wants to offer global leadership, it must not go ahead with the project, which makes a mockery of all our claims that we are serious about meeting the targets and tackling climate change.

We can tackle climate change—but what will happen if we do not? I sometimes wonder whether I did the right thing by bringing children into this world. I am from the luckiest generation. I was born in 1951, after the second world war. I had the benefit of the post-war welfare state: health care, free education and a good pension scheme from the public sector and from my current employment. When I look at our children, I see that they have a lot less opportunity and a lot less to look forward to than I had. If we are going to be true to our children, and to children all over the world, we must take climate change seriously. That means that we must not go ahead with the third runway at Heathrow.

18:32:00

Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)
It is a pleasure to respond to a debate that has been serious, heartfelt and broadly positive across the whole House. That owes much to the motion that we are debating today, tabled originally by the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), whose balanced and responsible early-day motion provided the words used. As we might expect from the hon. Gentleman, the motion is constructive rather than partisan in both its tone and effects. He made a wonderful speech that we all enjoyed, and it is a shame that we could not hear more from him.

The motion simply calls on the Government to rethink their plans for a third runway at Heathrow and to give full consideration to alternative solutions. The original early-day motion was signed by 167 Members, with support drawn almost equally from all the main parties. It is right to make a careful, cool-headed assessment, because it would be wrong to pretend that the decision does not entail difficult choices.

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change reminded me last week that some years ago I co-authored a pamphlet entitled “Free to Travel”. I am glad that he did, because I have since reread it and I was delighted to discover that I agreed with it. Not all of us can say that all the time. In it, I said:

“The growth in travel has enriched all our lives…and provided opportunities previous generations could only dream about.”

I stand by that, and that same point was made by the right hon. Member for Bolton, West (Ruth Kelly). However, I also stressed the need to

“strike a sensible balance between the undoubted and powerful attractions of further growth in opportunities to travel by air…and the need to preserve the quality of the environment from the stratosphere to the…country village.”

It is the question of where to strike that balance that we have been debating today. It is clear that considering the plans that have been proposed and given the alternatives, a sensible balance would favour thinking again, as the motion suggests.

Colin Challen
For the record, will the hon. Gentleman confirm that his party is in favour of aviation expansion?

Greg Clark
The hon. Gentleman intervened earlier with a similar question, and I shall make our position very clear. The motion that we are debating is about a third runway at Heathrow, but if he is asking whether the Opposition will say no—for ever, any time, any place or anywhere—to airport expansion, that would clearly be ludicrous. Of course we are not suggesting that.

By my assessment, 26 speeches have been made this afternoon. It is difficult to respond to each argument individually, but I believe that seven clear reasons have emerged as to why we should follow the precautionary principle. The first has to do with climate change, which featured in the speeches of my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) and the hon. Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) and for Lewes (Norman Baker). It was also referred to by the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) and the hon. Members for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer), for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), for City of York (Hugh Bayley), for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) and for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd’s Bush (Mr. Slaughter). They and others all emphasised the climate change case.

It was only last October that the House came together to pass the Climate Change Act 2008, which commits us to 80 per cent. cuts in greenhouse gases by 2050. However, passing an Act and setting a target are only the beginning of the process, not the end. If the 2008 Act is to mean anything, surely there needs to be a plan about how that target can be achieved. Decisions need to be taken that will advance us towards that target, rather than take us further away from it. As the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) said, we have to walk the talk.

It is extraordinary that, so soon after the Act was passed, almost the first decision of the Government is to approve a plan that would result in Heathrow becoming our biggest single source of CO2 emissions. By 2050, Heathrow—one single airport—would consume one fifth of the UK’s entire carbon budget. In fact, the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton said that the figure could be as high as 30 per cent. As the hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen) said, that cannot make sense, not least because emissions from aviation, as a result of the phenomenon of radiative forcing, are widely thought to do two to three times the damage that ground-based emissions do.

I turn now to the question of concessions. Ministers claim to have done a great deal to remove the third runway’s negative consequences for carbon emissions with some eleventh-hour concessions, but sadly they do not stand up to scrutiny. Many hon. Members, such as the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), pointed that out.

The first idea was that there would be an initial restriction ensuring that the runway used only half its capacity. Of course, we are not told just how “initial” that would be. It is simply absurd to imagine that private investors will pay for capacity and accept that they cannot use it.

As many hon. Members have mentioned, BAA wrote a “dear neighbour” letter in 1999 to everyone around Heathrow. It said:

“We have since repeated often that we do not want, nor shall we seek, an additional runway.”

The letter went on to say that, subject to permission being given for terminal 5,

“an additional Heathrow runway should be ruled out forever.”

There is therefore form for these assurances being overturned.

So unconvinced are the Government of their own commitment that they have already devised a scheme to allocate the additional capacity—the so-called “green slot” principle, which is their second mock concession. Once again, the Department for Transport can say only that the detail on green slots will be worked up in the future, but the idea is that only low-emissions aircraft would be allowed to use the new runway.

Yet that simply means that the new aircraft will use the new runway, while all the most polluting planes are left to feel free to use the current runways. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands) pointed out, that would mean noise for people who currently do not even have it.

The third mock concession is the announcement that aviation should reduce its carbon emissions below 2005 levels by 2050. When will Ministers understand that a target is meaningless without a plan to attain it? Have they taken into account the consequences for other industries? If 30 per cent. of the carbon budget is taken up by aviation, where does that leave the rest of our industry? It is almost like the old game of Pacman, with the contribution from other industries being gobbled up by the single monster that is Heathrow.

We know that the more environmentally friendly Cabinet members did their best to extract genuine concessions. However, they failed, and we should not delude ourselves that the third runway proposal would be anything other than catastrophic for our commitment to reduce emissions.

I turn briefly to the question of air quality, a matter raised by my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) and by the hon. Members for Reading, West and for Hayes and Harlington. Nitrogen dioxide is already at levels that are likely to breach the EU air quality directive, which becomes mandatory next year. Many hon. Members pointed out that the Environment Agency, whose chairman is Lord Smith, a former member of the Government, has warned that a third runway would cause increased morbidity and mortality—in other words, that people would die needlessly.

One of the contributors to poor air quality and CO2 emissions in dense residential areas is emissions from motor vehicles taking people to and from the airport. Hundreds of thousands more flights a year will mean millions more journeys by car through congested areas of London. Do we really want to turn London into the Mexico City of Europe—notorious for crawling traffic, blighting the lives of residents and travellers alike?

Noise levels were mentioned by the hon. Members for Hayes and Harlington and for Sunderland, South and by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham. Two million people from Windsor to Brixton are already affected by the noise from London Heathrow. A third runway would make that worse. When the Government commissioned a study of noise, saying that it underlined their commitment to underpin policy with substantial research, they set aside the very research that they commissioned. The study was published and showed that the problem would be deepened, but its results were trashed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham said, new areas such as north Westminster will be exposed for the first time.

Many hon. Members urged the Government, in the words of the motion, to explore more fully the provision of high-speed rail to other major cities. My right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal, my hon. Friends the Members for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) and for Henley (John Howell) and the hon. Members for City of York and for Selby all mentioned high-speed rail. While other European countries have invested in high-speed rail networks, Britain has been left behind, with the channel tunnel rail as our only high-speed rail line.

In France, before the TGV linked Paris and Marseille—a distance of 660 km—22 per cent. of passengers travelled between the two cities by rail; now 69 per cent. of them do so. Yet in Britain, 32 flights a day link London to Manchester, despite it being only 260 km away. A high-speed rail network linking London, including Heathrow, with the cities of the midlands and the north, and we hope Scotland in due course, could save thousands of flights, not only at London Heathrow, of course, but at other UK airports, including Gatwick, Stansted and regional airports, thus unleashing significant spare capacity.

The economic case was questioned by several hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd), the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton and the hon. Members for Selby, for Richmond Park, for Hayes and Harlington, for Sunderland, South and for City of York.

A report by the international consultancy CE Delft has suggested that the number of extra visitors to Britain was overestimated by a factor of 12 and their contribution to the economy by a factor of four in the paper on Heathrow expansion. There are flaws in the Government’s case. For example, the net present value of the Government’s proposal assumes that airport passenger duty counts as a positive value, when, of course, it is merely a transfer from the private sector to the public sector. As many hon. Members have mentioned, the idea that Heathrow, which is currently Europe’s largest hub airport, will somehow wither away is not credible.

The seventh theme that emerged from hon. Members’ contributions was that of democracy. I respect the record of the hon. Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris) as a former Transport Minister, but he said that there was something strange about voting on an early-day motion that was signed by so many colleagues. I do not think that people outside the Chamber will understand the logic that hon. Members can sign to say that they agree with a motion and then vote against when it is debated. The idea that there is some sort of unwritten convention that that should not happen will strike people who listen to the debate as precisely the kind of murky practice that brings Parliament into disrepute. If we sign a motion, we ought to stand by that if it comes to a vote, especially when it is a balanced motion.

Martin Salter
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that some of us find it slightly bizarre that some Labour Members will go through the Lobby with members of the Democratic Unionist party who deny the existence of climate change? The argument cuts both ways, does it not?

Greg Clark
I noticed the contribution, and I hope that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is content with the company that he will keep in the Lobby.

By my reckoning, 21 of the 26 speeches that we have heard supported the motion, which asks the Government to think again before committing irrevocably to a third runway at Heathrow. Almost all the speeches have been constructive. It would be wrong to say that the House had reached a consensus, but I hope that the Secretary of State will reflect on the repeated guidance that has emerged.

Listening to the debate, it seemed to me that three broad principles could be discerned for a policy on aviation that reflects the mood of the House. First, plans for runway capacity in Britain should be predicated on what is needed following the building of a high-speed rail network, rather than in the absence of one. Secondly, given that we are committed so stringently to reducing CO2 emissions, runway capacity should be built only if it can demonstrably reduce the total volume of CO2 emissions from the UK, not if we just hope vaguely that it will do so in future. Thirdly, any new runway capacity should be allowed only if it improves the quality of life of the people who have to live with it, including in relation to air quality, noise pollution and local transport connections.

That, I sense, is what the House would like to see, and with the right will, it may be possible to achieve those objectives, but not at Heathrow, not now, and not with the plans that are proposed. The Government’s proposals for the third runway fail on each of those counts—on rail, on climate change, and on quality of life. In the words of the hon. Member for Selby and 166 colleagues from across the House, the Government should think again.

18:45:00

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Edward Miliband)
I, too, pay tribute to right hon. and hon. Members who spoke in the debate, and I want to pick out two contributions in particular. One was by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who spoke with passion about his constituents, and the other was by the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall); he began his contribution by saying that he was not going to make an eloquent speech, but he then did so. In a way, he summed up how difficult the decision is.

My argument tonight is that we can reconcile the economic and social case for aviation expansion, including at Heathrow, and our duty to the environment. That is the nature of government—finding a way through difficult dilemmas, and not ducking them. That is an important lesson for Opposition Members. What is the way through the dilemma? The answer lies not in unlimited aviation, which would not be environmentally credible, but in limited aviation expansion—limited by conditions on carbon dioxide emissions, on air quality, and on noise. That is the proposition before the House.

Let me turn to the carbon argument, which a number of right hon. and hon. Members brought up, including the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), who has a long record on such issues, the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd), my hon. Friends the Members for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), for Eltham (Clive Efford), and for Reading, West (Martin Salter), my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher), and my hon. Friends the Members for Islington, South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson), for Selby (Mr. Grogan), for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones).

On the carbon argument and the 80 per cent. target for 2050, the heart of the question is this: in trying to achieve an 80 per cent. target, do we think that the cuts should be across the board—that is, should there be a cut of 80 per cent. in every sector, including aviation? This is what the Committee on Climate Change said on the subject in its report in December:

“aviation is likely to grow as a percent of all emissions. This is not in itself undesirable: in a carbon-constrained world fossil fuels should be used in those applications where alternatives are least available”—

that is, in aviation. Is that the right position? That is the question for the House today. I believe that it is, because an 80 per cent. cut in aviation would mean going back to 1974 levels of flying. We must all accept the principle that aviation will not bear as big a burden as other sectors in the economy.

Norman Baker
Will the Secretary of State give way?

Edward Miliband
I will in a moment. The question then is, what burden should aviation bear? At times it has been hard to tell what the Opposition Front Benchers’ position on the issue really is, but some people in this House have implied that perhaps we should have a freeze in aviation. [Interruption.] They say no. The truth, revealed by this debate, is that we are seeing opportunism from the Conservative party—the worst sort of opportunism, environmental opportunism.

Mr. Gummer
Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that it is not opportunism to suggest that as a result of the extra emissions that would result from the proposal, aviation would have not just a special place, but so large a place that the effect on the rest of industry would be devastating? That is not opportunism; it is sensible management.

Edward Miliband
I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but I disagree with him on this point. I do not believe that 2.7 million tonnes of carbon from the half third runway proposal that has been allowed is devastating to our climate change commitments. I believe something even more important. When we think about aviation expansion and about people watching the debate in the House, they are asking a simple question: is tackling climate change consistent with economic growth and the way the world is moving? Our position is that it is, and I shall explain why.

Norman Baker
This is an important matter. The Government’s target is to keep aviation emissions in 2050 at the same level as they were in 2005. Does the Secretary of State accept that if that target is realised, the rest of industry will have to make cuts of 89 per cent. in order to meet the Government’s overall 80 per cent. target?

Edward Miliband
The rest of industry would have to bear a bigger burden. That is true, but I have explained to the hon. Gentleman why the Committee on Climate Change thinks that is right.

We are the only party in the House that has a clear position—an internationally leading position on aviation emissions. We say that by 2050, aviation emissions must be back to current levels. That is a target consistent with the 80 per cent. target. Why is that significant? Because for the first time we are saying that aviation expansion is conditional on improvements and reductions in carbon emissions. That is a significant commitment. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal thinks that we will have trouble at the international negotiations on the matter, but we will be in a world-leading position in the international negotiations when we enunciate our policy. I will have trouble though persuading other countries to sign up to the target, because it is such an ambitious target.

Colin Challen
The debate has been about aviation expansion per se, not just about one runway. Regional runways and every possible form of expansion need to be discussed. Will that be the case when we consider the national planning strategy? Will the House have a substantive vote on the issue when we come to consider the NPS?

Edward Miliband
My hon. Friend knows that the procedure is that when the national policy statement is set out in 2011, it will go to the Select Committee, which can recommend that the House debates a motion on these matters.

Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North) (Lab)
How seriously can my right hon. Friend take the Opposition’s position on carbon emissions and climate change in the aviation debate when the most senior elected Conservative politician in the country is planning a major expansion of airports in east London? Does that not destroy the central plank of their argument?

Edward Miliband
My hon. Friend is right. The best mate of the leader of the Conservative party wants a whole new estuary airport.

In the debate the shadow Transport Secretary, sadly, had to disown her own words from only 15 months ago on the case for Heathrow expansion. In politics, when someone has to disown words that they said only 15 months ago, they know they are in trouble. If they cannot agree with themselves, that does not speak well for their position.

John McDonnell
Further to the reply that the Secretary of State gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen), can we be clear? What the Government have said in the context of the new planning legislation is that a national policy statement will be produced as a result of consultation, there will be a Committee examination of that, and there will be a debate in the House on the motion. But no guarantee is given by Government that that resolution will determine the national policy statement. It could be a debate on the Adjournment of the House, not to determine the policy. May we have an assurance that it will determine the national policy statement?

Edward Miliband
I am not going to change our position on the national policy statement. The position is as it was in the legislation.

We are setting a stretching target for aviation emissions. In the debate a number of hon. Members raised the issue of BAA’s broken promises. I know that they feel passionately about that. We need to make clear the important decision that we made. For the first time, air quality will be monitored and enforced by the Environment Agency. Noise will be monitored and enforced by the Civil Aviation Authority. Climate change will be enforced by the Committee on Climate Change. So to those who ask, “Given the promises made in the past, how can we trust that this will be the case in the future?”, I reply that we are putting in place enforceable mechanisms that will be independently monitored to make sure that that happens in the future.

Greg Clark
Given that the Secretary of State has ignored the advice of the Environment Agency, why should we think that in future he will follow its advice and that of the Committee on Climate Change?

Edward Miliband
We are not ignoring the advice of the Environment Agency. We are very clear about this. We are going to come within the air quality limits that have been set out, and no expansion can go ahead until that happens. Our position is extremely clear, and there should be no doubt about it.

Susan Kramer
Does the Secretary of State recognise that, at 480,000, the current cap on flights at Heathrow is enforceable? It is just being set aside. That is the fear with every constraint that he has described.

Edward Miliband
No, we are very clear about this. We will have to live within the air quality limits that have been set out. No expansion will happen and no slots will be granted until those limits have been met. Any slots that are granted will have to live within those limits.

We have set out tough conditions on carbon, noise and air quality. Then we come to the question of the economic argument, and here the Conservative party has a fundamental problem. It is why it has to look both ways and why the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet has to disown her previous remarks and to say, “Well, I see the case for expansion in the south-east.” She knows that the economic case is there.

Adam Afriyie
indicated dissent.

Edward Miliband
The hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) is speaking from a sedentary position, but in this debate he asked whether the forecasts took account of the recession and the current economic situation. I shall tell him: yes, they do. The forecasts show that passenger movements are due to rise from 210 million to 430 million. The question that we face is whether we should just try to turn off or wish away that increase in passenger numbers, with all the implications that that would have for Britain’s economy and society.

Adam Afriyie
The Secretary of State is clearly on a sticky wicket. The question is about why the decision has to be made now. Flight numbers are going down; they went down by 8 per cent. in December. During the Labour downturn and the Labour recession, the Government have the opportunity to make a decision two, three or four years from now if they are still around. They do not have to make it now.

Edward Miliband
If ever we saw a sign that the Conservative party is not ready for government, it is in the motion that it put before us tonight. What does it offer? Delay, indecision and more consideration. Just remember—the Conservatives used to accuse us of being obsessed with reviews. What do we have from them now? We have, “Let’s have a review, let’s put off the difficult decision.”

British business and the trade union movement are listening to this debate tonight, and they are asking this fundamental question: can we reconcile the needs of our economy and of people who want to travel with the environment? Putting the issue in the box marked “Too difficult to make a decision” will not wash.

Mr. Stewart Jackson
Perhaps the Secretary of State will answer the question that I put to the right hon. Member for Bolton, West (Ruth Kelly). Surely his position is irreconcilable. He is committed to a third runway and reducing CO2 emissions, but that will stymie development of regional airports throughout the country and have a massive impact on regeneration and employment for his constituents and those of his hon. Friends across the country.

Edward Miliband
The Conservative party has adopted a number of different positions today. The hon. Gentleman accuses us of being too tough on aviation emissions with the new target that we are setting tonight. The truth is that the Conservatives have been exposed in this debate. They have been exposed for their political opportunism—they saw an opportunity and decided to abandon a position in favour of expansion because they thought that they could get away with it. They cannot; people will see through it and business will see through it.

Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire) (Con)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).

Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Question put accordingly, (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.

The House proceeded to a Division.

Paddy Tipping (Sherwood) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It has been drawn to my attention that the Carriage Gates have been closed. Right hon. and hon. Members may therefore have difficulty in accessing the premises. Given that, will you consider extending the length of the Division?

Mr. Speaker
Order. The first piece of information that I got regarding the Carriage Gates was that only the exits were closed, not the entrance. I have now been reliably informed by an hon. Member that the gates are clear. However, to avoid any problem I will allow a few minutes more for this Division to provide enough time.

Division 26
28/01/2009 18:59:00
The House having divided:
Ayes: 278
Noes: 297
Question accordingly negatived.

Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the proposed words be there added.

Question agreed to.

The Speaker declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to (Standing Order No. 31(2)).

Resolved,

That this House notes the Government’s commitment in the 2003 Aviation White Paper to limit noise impacts and to be confident both that statutory air quality limits will be met and that public transport will be improved before expansion is permitted at Heathrow; welcomes the Government’s new enforceable target to reduce UK aviation carbon dioxide emissions below 2005 levels by 2050, and the commitment that increases in capacity at Heathrow, beyond the additional 125,000 movements a year already agreed, will only be approved after a review in 2020 by the Committee on Climate Change of whether the UK is on track to meet this independently monitored target; notes that development at Heathrow will be conditional both on requirements that the size of the 57 decibel noise contour will not increase compared with 2002 and on adherence to the requirements of the European Air Quality Directive; notes the decision not to proceed with mixed mode, thereby ensuring that neighbouring residents will have predictable respite from aircraft noise; welcomes the proposal that new slots at Heathrow should be ‘green slots’ using the most efficient planes; recognises the economic and social importance of Heathrow; and welcomes proposals on ultra-low carbon vehicles and new rail links to the west of Heathrow and new high-speed services from London to the Midlands, the North and Scotland linked to Heathrow, to the benefit of the UK as a whole.

European Union documents

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 119(11)),

Credit Rating Agencies

That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 15661/08, draft Regulation on Credit Rating Agencies, and endorses the Government’s approach.—(Claire Ward.)

Question agreed to.

 Trading Standards (Tooth Whitening)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Claire Ward.)

19:18:00

Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)
I thank the Minister for coming. The one advantage of being the last man standing is that the gates might be open when he leaves.

Let me first declare a simple interest and then add to it because of the specifics of the debate. I am a qualified and practising—admittedly very part-time practising—dentist. In addition, I am a member of the British Dental Association, the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, the British Endodontic Society and the British Dental Bleaching Society. That explains why I become a target of considerable pressure on dental issues, so I hope the Minister will bear with me.

I am trying to persuade the Minister to help us sort out a situation that has been confusing dentists and trading standards officers throughout the UK for a considerable number of years. If the Minister will bear with me, I will endeavour to explain a little of the process of dental bleaching and why the present situation is producing a dilemma for dentists.

Bleaching by dentists has been around for a very long time. I first used dental bleaching about 30 years ago. My tutor was my now retired dental partner who qualified during the second world war, and his tutor was his father who qualified shortly after the first world war. It has been used for nigh on 100 years. In the early days, we used a 30 per cent. solution of hydrogen peroxide—better known as Superoxol. It was destructive to soft tissues, which needed to be protected; in those early days, that was done via a mechanism called a rubber dam. This is a small sheet of latex rubber with holes placed in it so that the teeth can go through; a tight seal then comes round the neck of the tooth so that the gingival and other oral soft tissues, including the lips, can be protected.

The aim of bleaching is to remove discolorations from the teeth without harming the teeth themselves. The discolorations can come from a number of sources: from tobacco, hard water, tea, coffee and so on. Teeth may also be iatrogenically discoloured, the most famous example being tetracycline discoloration. In the early days of antibiotics, children were given an antibiotic called tetracycline, which was one of the early broad-spectrum bacteriostatic antibiotics and was widely used. While it dealt with the targeted infection, if taken by children it discoloured the developing teeth, sometimes to a grotesque degree.

Second or adult teeth that may have received a blow can often darken quite quickly, particularly if the individual is young. The teeth most frequently hurt in this way are the upper incisors, particularly the upper central incisors. Endodontically treated teeth often darken, particularly if the operator has been unable to remove or has not removed all the pulpal tissue from the internal dentine.

Increasingly nowadays, dental restorations are of a more cosmetically acceptable material. If someone is to have a filling, it is good to do it in a cosmetically acceptable way. It is becoming increasingly accepted as standard practice that when such restorations as porcelain crowns, porcelain veneers and porcelain inlays are used for restorations, it is sensible to bleach the teeth first. That achieves a benchmark colour to which the new restoration is colour-matched. As the patient’s teeth become more discoloured over subsequent years, it is possible to use the same process to bring the teeth back to that benchmark level. Otherwise, we will end up with white teeth sticking out among the brown, which I have seen particularly in some areas of London.

Dental bleaching is not available on the national heath, but I believe that in some cases it should be because it is the less destructive treatment. To provide a simple example, if a national health patient has badly tetracycline-stained teeth, the only option on the NHS to restore normal appearance is by extensive crowns or veneers. These are destructive to the teeth and much more costly, and in time they will need replacing. The cheaper approach is dental bleaching, which leaves the teeth intact and of an acceptable colour.

Techniques of dental bleaching have improved. First, the dentist must check that the patient’s teeth are in good order. Then there are essentially two different bleaching techniques available. The first is the so-called home technique, where the dentist constructs close-fitting clear trays that the patient wears for a period of time at home. The bleach trays are designed to hold the gel against the teeth but away from the soft tissues.

The second method is so-called power bleaching, which is done in the surgery and generally uses much stronger hydrogen peroxide concentrations. The soft tissues are protected either with the aforementioned rubber dam or nowadays a foam that is set by an ultraviolet light. Some techniques advocate the use of light or heat source, although I personally believe that this does more for the image of the procedure to the patient than it actually benefits the bleaching process.

Hydrogen peroxide is generally delivered in varying strengths of carbamide peroxide nowadays. These strengths vary between 10 per cent. and 38 per cent. carbamide peroxide. The hydrogen peroxide concentration delivered is lower. For example, 10 per cent. carbamide peroxide delivers approximately a 6 per cent. concentration of hydrogen peroxide. As logic will tell the Minister, the higher the concentration the faster the bleaching, but the more likely it is to produce sensitive teeth.

I hope that the Minister understands from this that this material should be in the hands of a trained dental professional, as misuse can cause harm. Recent decisions of the General Dental Council state that dental bleaching by trained dental professionals is part of professional dental treatment. That has been accepted by the Secretary of State for Health for England, and I have written asking for the position of the Ministers of Health for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales on this issue. To date, the Minister of Health for Wales has replied and agrees with the position taken by the Secretary of State. I await the post from Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The reason for this preamble is to explain to the Minister that the dangers of the material when misused are understood, and that organisations such as the British Dental Bleaching Society run certifying training courses to ensure that the dental professional teams undertaking this treatment are properly trained. Unfortunately, there are a number of non-dental professionals, in beautician salons in particular, who are illegally bleaching teeth. Sadly, some of these individuals are using a material called chlorine dioxide, which, although it produces an initial appearance of bleaching teeth, actually damages them.

As the Minister will be aware, the fly in the ointment is the European cosmetics directive, which restricts the sale of tooth-bleaching materials containing more than 0.1 per cent. hydrogen peroxide. Clearly, this makes eminent sense when applied to over-the-counter medicines, but from a dental treatment point of view 0.1 per cent. hydrogen peroxide is absolutely useless.

Enforcement of the cosmetics directive is in the hands of local government trading standards officers on behalf of the Minister’s Department. Most trading standards officers and departments are too busy to bother dentists. Also, most of those who do look at the issue recognise that higher concentrations of hydrogen peroxide delivered as part of dental treatment are quite different from over-the-counter sales. Indeed, some trading standards officers have visited dental surgeries that I know of and have accepted the use of such products as part of dental procedures, but not for over-the-counter sales. Unfortunately, there are a few trading standards officers who continue to threaten to prosecute dentists using more than the 0.1 per cent. concentration. I was approached in the last few weeks after dentists in Northern Ireland and, of all places, Redcar received quite aggressive letters threatening prosecution. Incidentally, if the Minister ever contacts the Redcar trading standards department, he might like to point out that his Department is no longer called the Department of Trade and Industry.

In 2005, the European Commission Scientific Committee on Consumer Products recommended that, although tooth-whitening products containing 0.1 to 6 per cent. hydrogen peroxide are not safe to be sold over the counter and should not be used freely, they are safe to be used after the approval of, and under the supervision of, a dentist. In December 2007, the SCCP reinforced this, and in November 2008 the Council of European Dentists unanimously stated that it

“Recognizes the need for regulation of availability of tooth whitening products at EU level on the basis of the December 2007 SCCP opinion; Feels that the aim of such regulation should be to protect consumers from potential harmful effects of excessive exposure to tooth whitening products and to enable distribution of the full range of tooth whitening products, under the responsibility of a dentist, as justified by scientific evidence; Expresses concern about continued delay in implementing the SCCP opinion and calls on all actors involved to ensure that a solution is found as soon as possible in the interest of patient safety; Supports the intention of the European Commission to amend the Cosmetics Directive in line with the final SCCP opinion and Encourages the European Commission to schedule a vote to amend the Cosmetics Directive at the earliest opportunity and urges Member States to contribute to a positive outcome.”

That leaves me with two simple requests for action to sort out this nonsense. First, I urge the Minister to press the Commission to change the directive speedily. The nonsense to which I refer has continued for many years, in the face of the evidence of many decades of successful and safe bleaching in the hands of dental professionals. Such techniques are commonly used in the rest of the world; it is the EU that has got itself bureaucratically out of step.

I realise—and, indeed, remember from my days as a Minister—that it will probably take some time to get the change through the EU bureaucracy, no matter how much the Minister pushes for it. It would therefore be helpful for him to suggest to trading standards departments that a more enlightened approach should be adopted to dentists using these materials in the way intended. However, I back their approach to such products when they are used as over-the-counter medicines. It would be more logical for trading standards officers to concentrate on other public sources of bleaching gels that are being sold over the counter by the likes of beauticians who are not legally qualified to undertake any dental treatment.

At present, dentists and others in north America laugh at our smiles. We must stop that, and the way to do that is to allow the full range of dentistry, including bleaching.

19:31:00

The Minister for Trade, Development and Consumer Affairs (Mr. Gareth Thomas)
Let me begin in the usual way, by congratulating the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) on securing a debate on an interesting and important subject. As a result of my research for this purpose, I am substantially better informed about tooth whitening than I was a short time ago. While I nevertheless cannot begin to compete with the hon. Gentleman in terms of knowledge and expertise, I hope that I can set out some of the context of the way in which the Government have handled the issue of reform of the cosmetics directive so far. I undertake to try to keep the hon. Gentleman informed as the reform process gets under way. Of course, if he wishes to bring constituents or colleagues in the dental profession to see me to discuss the matter further, I shall be happy to receive them.

Let me now set out what the Government seek to do. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman will perceive a good deal of agreement in our respective positions, although I recognise the frustration felt by his profession at the current position. As he said, the use of hydrogen peroxide is controlled under the cosmetics directive. He will acknowledge—and, I am sure, the House will welcome the fact—that my Department takes its responsibilities under the directive, and under the United Kingdom’s implementing regulations, extremely seriously. The need to ensure that only safe cosmetic products are available to consumers, and that consumers are equipped to make informed choices about which products to use and the content of those products, is an important part of the Department’s role.

Hydrogen peroxide has been used in tooth whitening for many years, but, as the hon. Gentleman knows, only in the last 10 to 15 years has the desire to have much whiter teeth really taken off with consumers in the UK. I know how long some of the products described by the hon. Gentleman have been used, but I hope he will accept that the trend—stimulated in part by widespread use by consumers in the United States—has been noteworthy in the last 15 to 20 years in particular. However, there has been some confusion, as well as concern, about the regulation and enforcement of tooth whiteners under the EU cosmetics directive, so I welcome this opportunity to put the record straight and to explain what we are doing to deal with that confusion.

Let me give some of the context. I shall not go into all the lengthy detail of previous court cases in the late 1990s, but in 2001 the House of Lords ruled that tooth-whitening products should be regulated under the directive, on the basis that the whitening of teeth was a cosmetic process and discoloured teeth were not regarded as a handicap under the medical devices legislation. The directive is implemented in the UK by the Cosmetic Products (Safety) Regulations 2008, which—as the hon. Gentleman said—are enforced on my Department’s behalf by local authority trading standards departments.

Annexe 2 of the cosmetics directive is a list of substances that cosmetics products must not contain except subject to certain restrictions and conditions. Entry number 12 in that annexe is the listing for hydrogen peroxide, which is the most widely used substance to whiten teeth. The directive states that in oral hygiene products—a definition that includes tooth whiteners—the maximum permitted percentage of hydrogen peroxide present or released is 0.1 per cent. The scientific dental and medical consensus is that this is not sufficiently strong actually to whiten teeth. It is important to note that the directive applies to all products—those sold over the counter and those provided by dental practitioners. Since 2001, the UK has been leading the way in seeking an amendment to the cosmetics directive to allow a greater percentage of hydrogen peroxide so that the bleaching effect will actually work and teeth will be whitened. The process has proved to be far from easy to conclude, and has so far not resulted in an amending directive that has received a positive vote from the member states.

A large element of the debate on reform of the directive in relation to use of hydrogen peroxide in tooth whiteners has been around the issue of safety versus efficacy. In other words, we need a level of hydrogen peroxide in products that will actually whiten teeth, but that level must not cause harm to the health of consumers. That is one part of the reason why it has taken so long to get to the stage that we are at today.

Let me explain what has happened. First, scientific papers were submitted to the European Commission’s scientific committee on consumer products showing that allowing a greater percentage of hydrogen peroxide in tooth whiteners would not be detrimental to the health of consumers. The scientific committee’s view was that a greater percentage could be allowed, but it indicated that products with a higher percentage should not be used by habitual smokers and regular alcohol drinkers. That led to a discussion of what habitual meant in these circumstances. This was the start of several years of back-and-forth questions from the member states and the Commission to the scientific committee seeking clarification on that issue. There were also a number of other questions relating to use by children and pregnant women and consumer exposure to hydrogen peroxide as a whole. Without going into the protracted detail of all this scientific questioning, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we are now at the position where we have had six opinions from the scientific committee and two draft directives from the Commission proposing changes. I should also say that we have had excellent advice from the office of the chief dental officer and his staff.

In October 2008 the Commission presented an amending directive to the experts committee on cosmetics products. It is the result of the protracted discussion I have outlined. It would allow tooth-whitening products containing a maximum of 0.1 per cent. hydrogen peroxide to be freely available to consumers, as they are today. Tooth-whitening products containing up to 6 per cent. hydrogen peroxide would be available to consumers after assessment and first application by a dental practitioner. The remainder of the kit could then be taken home and used by the consumer as directed by the dental practitioner. For kits containing 6 per cent. hydrogen peroxide, this procedure would need to be repeated every time a consumer wanted a tooth-whitening course. Products containing more than 6 per cent. hydrogen peroxide would not be available to the consumer at all. They would only be for use by dental practitioners and should not be used on children under the age of 18.

The draft directive also describes a number of labelling requirements that must appear on tooth-whitening products. Unfortunately, as a number of member states still had questions and concerns on the draft directive, the Commission did not put the text forward for a vote in October. It is hoped that the text will be re-presented at the next cosmetics expert working group in February. As the hon. Gentleman made clear, until there is a change to the directive, the maximum hydrogen peroxide level remains at 0.1 per cent. My officials and the chief dental officer’s office at the Department of Health will continue to apply pressure on the Commission to bring the situation to a speedy conclusion. Any assistance that the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues in the dental profession could bring, through their own contacts in other member states, would be extremely welcome.

The hon. Gentleman also alluded to the fact that trading standards departments have also been faced with the uncertainty of when and if the cosmetics directive will be amended. That has been exacerbated by manufacturers of tooth-whitening products, beauty salons and, indeed, some dental practitioners who have anticipated changes to the directive and offer products and treatments that contain more than 0.1 per cent. hydrogen peroxide. He will recognise that trading standards departments are required to consider action if they become aware of products being supplied, whether by dental practitioners or over the counter, that contain more than 0.1 per cent. hydrogen peroxide.

I recognise that the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues in the dental profession face uncertainty and considerable frustration, but he will recognise the difficult position that trading standards officers are in as a result of their need to implement the directive, as required by UK law. This will not offer him complete reassurance, but to the knowledge of the Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services—LACORS—no dentists have yet been prosecuted in the UK in this regard. That does not mean that none have been visited by their local trading standards departments, and I recognise and accept the veracity of what he said about the experience in Redcar and the experience of the other dental professionals whom he said have been visited. I am aware that a number of trading standards departments have sought to take action against those selling home kits containing about 10 per cent. hydrogen peroxide. I am sure that he will continue to recognise that that is clearly a situation, regardless of reform, that we would want to see continued.

I also join the hon. Gentleman in his concern about the use of other treatments such as the use of chorine dioxide. It is worrying that spas and, possibly, dentists are using alternatives that do not work or, worse still, are detrimental to health. I should take this opportunity to urge the dental industry and others to use only treatments that are proven to be effective and safe. In the meantime, any instances of bad practices by spas and others clearly should be brought to the attention of trading standards, so that action can be taken.

Finally, may I return to the key point of the hon. Gentleman’s purpose in securing this debate? We want reform of the directive and we are seeking to achieve that, as we have been doing for some time. I hope that we will get a positive outcome shortly, but he and his colleagues in the dental profession can be assured of my officials’, and now my attention, for this issue. I would be happy to keep him informed outside the Chamber and, if it is useful, to meet some of his colleagues in the dental profession to discuss this further. I hope that that will not be necessary, and that we will achieve reform shortly, but I leave that offer on the table.

Question put and agreed to.

19:44:00

House adjourned.

Deferred Divisionsection 5 of the european communities (amendment) act 1993That this House takes note with approval of the Government’s assessment as set out in the Pre-Budget Report 2008 for the purposes of Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993.The House divided: Ayes 261, Noes 214.Division No. 25]AYESAinger, NickAnderson, Mr. DavidAnderson, JanetAtkins, CharlotteAustin, Mr. IanBailey, Mr. AdrianBaird, VeraBalls, rh EdBanks, GordonBarron, rh Mr. KevinBattle, rh JohnBayley, HughBegg, Miss AnneBell, Sir StuartBenn, rh HilaryBerry, RogerBetts, Mr. CliveBlackman, LizBlackman-Woods, Dr. RobertaBlears, rh HazelBlizzard, Mr. BobBorrow, Mr. David S.Bradshaw, Mr. BenBrennan, KevinBrown, LynBrown, rh Mr. NicholasBrowne, rh DesBryant, ChrisBurden, RichardBurgon, ColinBurnham, rh AndyButler, Ms DawnByers, rh Mr. StephenCairns, DavidCampbell, Mr. AlanCampbell, Mr. RonnieCaton, Mr. MartinCawsey, Mr. IanChallen, ColinChapman, BenChaytor, Mr. DavidClapham, Mr. MichaelClark, Ms KatyClarke, rh Mr. CharlesCoffey, AnnCohen, HarryCooper, RosieCooper, rh YvetteCousins, JimCreagh, MaryCruddas, JonCryer, Mrs. AnnCummings, JohnCunningham, Mr. JimCunningham, TonyDavid, Mr. WayneDavidson, Mr. IanDean, Mrs. JanetDenham, rh Mr. JohnDevine, Mr. JimDhanda, Mr. ParmjitDismore, Mr. AndrewDobbin, JimDonohoe, Mr. Brian H.Doran, Mr. FrankDurkan, MarkEagle, AngelaEagle, MariaEfford, CliveEllman, Mrs. LouiseEngel, NataschaEnnis, JeffFitzpatrick, JimFlello, Mr. RobertFollett, BarbaraFoster, Mr. Michael (Worcester)Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings and Rye)Francis, Dr. HywelGapes, MikeGeorge, rh Mr. BruceGerrard, Mr. NeilGibson, Dr. IanGilroy, LindaGodsiff, Mr. RogerGoggins, PaulGoodman, HelenGriffith, NiaGriffiths, NigelGwynne, AndrewHain, rh Mr. PeterHall, Mr. MikeHamilton, Mr. DavidHamilton, Mr. FabianHanson, rh Mr. DavidHarman, rh Ms HarrietHarris, Mr. TomHavard, Mr. DaiHealey, rh JohnHepburn, Mr. StephenHesford, StephenHill, rh KeithHillier, MegHodgson, Mrs. SharonHoon, rh Mr. GeoffreyHope, PhilHopkins, KelvinHowarth, rh Mr. GeorgeHowells, Dr. KimHoyle, Mr. LindsayHughes, rh BeverleyHumble, Mrs. JoanIddon, Dr. BrianIllsley, Mr. EricIngram, rh Mr. Adam Irranca-Davies, HuwJames, Mrs. Siân C.Jenkins, Mr. BrianJohnson, rh AlanJohnson, Ms Diana R.Jones, HelenJones, Mr. KevanJones, LynneJowell, rh TessaJoyce, Mr. EricKeeble, Ms SallyKeeley, BarbaraKemp, Mr. FraserKennedy, rh JaneKhan, Mr. SadiqKidney, Mr. DavidKilfoyle, Mr. PeterKnight, rh JimKumar, Dr. AshokLadyman, Dr. StephenLammy, rh Mr. DavidLepper, DavidLevitt, TomLewis, Mr. IvanLinton, MartinLloyd, TonyLucas, IanMactaggart, FionaMalik, Mr. ShahidMann, JohnMarris, RobMarsden, Mr. GordonMartlew, Mr. EricMcAvoy, rh Mr. ThomasMcCabe, SteveMcCarthy, KerryMcCarthy-Fry, SarahMcCartney, rh Mr. IanMcDonnell, JohnMcFadden, rh Mr. PatMcFall, rh JohnMcGovern, Mr. JimMcGrady, Mr. EddieMcGuire, rh Mrs. AnneMcIsaac, ShonaMcKechin, AnnMcKenna, RosemaryMcNulty, rh Mr. TonyMerron, GillianMichael, rh AlunMiliband, rh DavidMiliband, rh EdwardMoffat, AnneMoffatt, LauraMole, ChrisMoon, Mrs. MadeleineMorden, JessicaMorgan, JulieMorley, rh Mr. ElliotMullin, Mr. ChrisMunn, MegMurphy, Mr. DenisMurphy, rh Mr. PaulNaysmith, Dr. DougNorris, DanOlner, Mr. BillOsborne, SandraOwen, AlbertPalmer, Dr. NickPearson, IanPlaskitt, Mr. JamesPope, Mr. GregPound, StephenPrentice, BridgetPrentice, Mr. GordonProsser, GwynPurchase, Mr. KenPurnell, rh JamesRammell, BillReed, Mr. AndyRobertson, JohnRobinson, Mr. GeoffreyRooney, Mr. TerryRoy, Mr. FrankRoy, LindsayRuane, ChrisRuddock, JoanRussell, ChristineRyan, rh JoanSalter, MartinSarwar, Mr. MohammadSharma, Mr. VirendraShaw, JonathanSheerman, Mr. BarrySheridan, JimSimon, Mr. SiônSimpson, AlanSingh, Mr. MarshaSkinner, Mr. DennisSlaughter, Mr. AndySmith, Ms Angela C. (Sheffield, Hillsborough)Smith, Angela E. (Basildon)Smith, GeraldineSmith, rh JacquiSmith, JohnSnelgrove, AnneSoulsby, Sir PeterSouthworth, HelenSpellar, rh Mr. JohnStoate, Dr. HowardStrang, rh Dr. GavinStraw, rh Mr. JackStringer, GrahamStuart, Ms GiselaSutcliffe, Mr. GerryTami, MarkTaylor, Ms DariTaylor, DavidThomas, Mr. GarethThornberry, EmilyTimms, rh Mr. StephenTipping, PaddyTouhig, rh Mr. DonTrickett, JonTruswell, Mr. PaulTurner, Dr. DesmondTurner, Mr. NeilTwigg, DerekUssher, KittyVaz, rh KeithWalley, JoanWaltho, LyndaWard, ClaireWareing, Mr. Robert N.Watson, Mr. TomWatts, Mr. DaveWhitehead, Dr. AlanWilliams, rh Mr. AlanWilson, PhilWinnick, Mr. DavidWinterton, rh Ms RosieWoolas, Mr. PhilWright, Mr. Anthony Wright, DavidWright, Mr. IainWright, Dr. TonyWyatt, DerekNOESAfriyie, AdamAlexander, DannyAmess, Mr. DavidArbuthnot, rh Mr. JamesAtkinson, Mr. PeterBacon, Mr. RichardBaldry, TonyBaron, Mr. JohnBarrett, JohnBeith, rh Sir AlanBellingham, Mr. HenryBenyon, Mr. RichardBercow, JohnBinley, Mr. BrianBlunt, Mr. CrispinBone, Mr. PeterBottomley, PeterBrady, Mr. GrahamBrake, TomBrazier, Mr. JulianBrokenshire, JamesBrooke, AnnetteBrowne, Mr. JeremyBrowning, AngelaBruce, rh MalcolmBurns, Mr. SimonBurrowes, Mr. DavidBurstow, Mr. PaulBurt, AlistairBurt, LorelyCable, Dr. VincentCameron, rh Mr. DavidCampbell, Mr. GregoryCarswell, Mr. DouglasCash, Mr. WilliamClappison, Mr. JamesClark, GregClarke, rh Mr. KennethClegg, rh Mr. NickClifton-Brown, Mr. GeoffreyCormack, Sir PatrickCrabb, Mr. StephenCurry, rh Mr. DavidDavey, Mr. EdwardDavies, Mr. DaiDavies, PhilipDjanogly, Mr. JonathanDodds, Mr. NigelDorries, Mrs. NadineDuddridge, JamesDuncan, AlanDunne, Mr. PhilipEllwood, Mr. TobiasEvennett, Mr. DavidFabricant, MichaelFallon, Mr. MichaelFarron, TimFeatherstone, LynneField, Mr. MarkFoster, Mr. DonFox, Dr. LiamFrancois, Mr. MarkFraser, ChristopherGale, Mr. RogerGarnier, Mr. EdwardGauke, Mr. DavidGeorge, AndrewGibb, Mr. NickGidley, SandraGillan, Mrs. CherylGoldsworthy, JuliaGoodman, Mr. PaulGoodwill, Mr. RobertGray, Mr. JamesGrayling, ChrisGreen, DamianGreening, JustineGrieve, Mr. DominicGummer, rh Mr. JohnHague, rh Mr. WilliamHammond, Mr. PhilipHammond, StephenHands, Mr. GregHarper, Mr. MarkHarvey, NickHayes, Mr. JohnHeath, Mr. DavidHeathcoat-Amory, rh Mr. DavidHemming, JohnHendry, CharlesHerbert, NickHoban, Mr. MarkHollobone, Mr. PhilipHolmes, PaulHoram, Mr. JohnHorwood, MartinHosie, StewartHoward, rh Mr. MichaelHowarth, DavidHowarth, Mr. GeraldHowell, JohnHughes, SimonHuhne, ChrisHunter, MarkJack, rh Mr. Michael Jackson, Mr. StewartJones, Mr. DavidKawczynski, DanielKeetch, Mr. PaulKennedy, rh Mr. CharlesKey, RobertKirkbride, Miss JulieKnight, rh Mr. GregLaing, Mrs. EleanorLait, Mrs. JacquiLancaster, Mr. MarkLaws, Mr. DavidLeech, Mr. JohnLetwin, rh Mr. OliverLiddell-Grainger, Mr. IanLidington, Mr. DavidLilley, rh Mr. PeterLlwyd, Mr. ElfynLoughton, TimLuff, PeterMackay, rh Mr. AndrewMaclean, rh DavidMacNeil, Mr. AngusMain, AnneMason, JohnMates, rh Mr. MichaelMay, rh Mrs. TheresaMcCrea, Dr. William McIntosh, Miss AnneMcLoughlin, rh Mr. PatrickMiller, Mrs. MariaMitchell, Mr. AndrewMoss, Mr. MalcolmMulholland, GregMundell, DavidMurrison, Dr. AndrewNewmark, Mr. BrooksO'Brien, Mr. StephenÖpik, LembitOsborne, Mr. GeorgeOttaway, RichardPaice, Mr. JamesPaterson, Mr. OwenPelling, Mr. AndrewPenning, MikePenrose, JohnPickles, Mr. EricPrice, AdamPrisk, Mr. MarkPritchard, Mark Pugh, Dr. JohnRandall, Mr. JohnReid, Mr. AlanRennie, WillieRifkind, rh Sir MalcolmRobathan, Mr. AndrewRobertson, AngusRobertson, HughRobertson, Mr. LaurenceRobinson, rh Mr. PeterRogerson, DanRussell, BobSanders, Mr. AdrianScott, Mr. LeeSelous, AndrewShapps, GrantShepherd, Mr. RichardSimmonds, MarkSimpson, DavidSimpson, Mr. KeithSmith, Sir RobertSoames, Mr. Nicholas  Spelman, Mrs. CarolineSpicer, Sir MichaelSpink, BobSpring, Mr. RichardStreeter, Mr. GaryStuart, Mr. GrahamStunell, AndrewSyms, Mr. RobertTapsell, Sir PeterTaylor, MatthewTeather, SarahTimpson, Mr. EdwardTredinnick, DavidTurner, Mr. AndrewTyrie, Mr. AndrewVaizey, Mr. EdwardVara, Mr. ShaileshViggers, Sir PeterVilliers, Mrs. TheresaWalker, Mr. CharlesWallace, Mr. BenWaterson, Mr. NigelWatkinson, AngelaWebb, SteveWeir, Mr. MikeWhittingdale, Mr. JohnWiggin, BillWilliams, MarkWilliams, Mr. RogerWillis, Mr. PhilWillott, JennyWilson, Mr. RobWilson, SammyWinterton, AnnWinterton, Sir NicholasWright, JeremyYoung, rh Sir GeorgeQuestion accordingly agreed to.