Debate over airport capacity has returned to the top of the political agenda after senior Conservative Tim Yeo goaded David Cameron over the expansion of Heathrow, urging him to decide if he is “a man or a mouse”.
The former environment minister, who chairs the Commons energy committee, insisted that environmental objections to controversial calls for a third runway were disappearing and claimed backing the move would give the government a “sense of mission”.
In a stinging attack, he challenged the prime minister to be bold and push forward with the controversial plans. “An immediate go-ahead for a third runway would symbolise the start of a new era, the moment the Cameron government found its sense of mission. Let’s go for it,” he said.
Yeo’s broadside came after housing minister Grant Shapps had said that a third Heathrow runway was needed to ensure that the UK remained a “great trading nation” and Mayor of London Boris Johnson had accused Cameron of “pussyfooting around” on airport expansion.
Yeo was previously a high-profile opponent of expansion, but now argues that European Union carbon emissions caps will force airlines to use more environmentally friendly planes if they want to use new capacity at Heathrow.
He added: “The environmental objections are disappearing. Last January, greenhouse gas emissions from flying were brought within the EU cap. Indeed, we could cover the whole of Surrey with runways and not increase emissions by a single kilogram. if Heathrow expands, so remaining the European destination of choice, airlines will fly their newest and quietest aircraft to it.”
Airport expansion rows are nothing new. The topic has proved to be the political hot potato that successive governments have been unable to handle. Ambitious plans for Thames Estuary airports, such as those put forward by Johnson and architect Lord Norman Foster, have been mooted for years. It was almost 40 years ago that an estuary scheme at Maplin Sands, near Southend in Essex, was boldly put forward, only to be dropped within a year for economic reasons.
There is also nothing novel about Heathrow expansion schemes. In 2003, the Labour government’s white paper envisaged a third runway at Heathrow by 2015-20, with the document also supporting a second runway at Stansted Airport in Essex by around 2011 or 2012. The Stansted plan gradually faded away, but in 2009 Labour signalled its support for a third runway and a sixth terminal at Heathrow.
Labour’s defeat in the 2010 general election put an end to the scheme for the time being, and the new coalition government announced that it had ruled out building a third runway at the west London airport.
Now the coalition is under pressure to reverse its Heathrow position. But airport expansion is fraught with difficulties. There are the environmental considerations as well as the political ones. Airport expansion can create jobs, but it can also mean a loss of votes.
Also, a third runway at Heathrow would lead to the loss of hundreds of homes in the village of Sipson, near the airport. But big business and airlines have been insisting that the economy will suffer if there is no expansion at Heathrow.
Their argument, refuted by some, is that London and the UK will lose its prominence as a place to do business, with global companies simply going elsewhere and using multi-runway airports on the Continent.
But what of the alternative schemes? Johnson has consistently backed a new estuary airport. He argues that Heathrow expansion is not the answer, as its location means it cannot grow to compete with the likes of Frankfurt, Madrid, Amsterdam and Dubai airports.
Putting forward his plan last year, the London Mayor expressed a view on airport policy shared by some when he said: “For too long Britain has failed to act, paralysed by the difficulties.”
Lord Foster’s £50 billion scheme would see an airport built on the Isle of Grain, capable of handling 150 million passengers a year.
Timescales and extreme costs would appear to rule out any estuary scheme. A local agreement means there can be no expansion at Gatwick Airport in West Sussex before 2019, while Stansted growth seems unlikely.
That leaves just Heathrow. But no one should expect any decision soon. A long-delayed government aviation policy statement, now due this autumn, will merely set out the airport expansion options ahead of another document due next year.
Eventually, the debate over airport expansion could result in political casualties. Transport secretary Justine Greening has already admitted she would find it “difficult” to remain in a government that backed a third runway at Heathrow. Greening, a prominent campaigner against a third runway, which she fears would directly affect the quality of life of her constituents in Putney, south-west London, insisted there was now a consensus against the development.
She said a third runway would not be “the right thing for Britain” because it would become rapidly outdated, and insisted that a wholesale review of airport capacity was needed.
Asked last month whether she could continue to serve in government if a third runway was approved, she said: “I think it would be difficult for me to do that. But I think, at the end of the day, the process I’m about to kick off is one that will see us come up with a much better, longer-term, solution.
“The coalition agreement is clear that we don’t support a third runway, and there is now cross-party consensus against it.
“But what we do need to do is to start the process of saying ‘well, if we’re not going to have a third runway, how do we make sure we have got the hub capacity that our country needs, going forward?’”
The transport secretary said she would begin that process when the Commons returned from its summer recess. “We do need to look long-term. One of the problems with the third runway, in my opinion, aside from the issues of noise and air pollution and surface access – getting there – is that it’s not a full-length runway.
“It’s a half-runway, essentially. It can’t take the major new planes that are coming on to the market.
“The question is: if you have a third runway, where would the fourth one go? What this all shows is it’s time to move away from what we have had in the past, which has been a piecemeal approach to aviation capacity.”
There was a need to be “bold” and look at what the country would need in 50 years – including the possibility of a new hub airport.
“It’s clearly one of the options,” she said. “It will be open to people to put that forward as an option.”
It would also be open for Heathrow’s operator, BAA, to put forward its own expansion plans, but Greening said: “I don’t think any of the facts have changed around a third runway.”
She added: “Britain deserves better, and deserves much longer-term aviation plans than it’s had in the past. That’s a process we’re kicking off right now.”
With Cameron expected to carry out a reshuffle shortly, Westminster watchers think that Greening’s trenchant views on the matter could put her place at the Cabinet table at risk.