Heathrow Airport: Why We Don't Need the Third Runway

Speech by David Schmitz delivered to HACAN organised meeting in Enfield on Mon 15th Sep 2008

When I was asked to give up a day at the Lib Dem party conference, I was happy to accept because I knew, as did those who asked me, just how important it was that we should be represented here.

It is important because an attack on the environment of any of us is an attack on the environment of all of us. What is more, since we are not the people most directly affected, no-one can accuse us of mere NIMBYism when we support the people of West London in opposition to the expansion scheme.

It is important because in widening the area of protest, we will make the government hesitate all the more before it approves the scheme. The government will have to count and recount the electoral cost which it will have to pay if it puts through this scheme or any scheme which damages the environment so extensively.

It is important because the Liberal Democrats alone among the major parties are unequivocally opposed to any further expansion of Heathrow airport.

Other parties are sceptical about it, and there are individuals, like the Tory MP Justine Greening, whom I will mention later, who have done some helpful work. But as a party, the Tories have yet to go any further than to say that the economic case is not yet made out, and that high speed rail is worth looking at. Indeed on the Today programme on the 16th August, Theresa Villiers said that the Tories still hadn't necessarily ruled out a third runway.

Boris Johnson has been looking into putting a new airport in the Thames Estuary, but that really is a crackpot proposal. First, the cost could be up to £33 billion. Secondly, there are seabirds. Not only should we all want to protect them; we can't take the risk of them causing crashes as can happen when they're sucked into jet engines.

So it is only we as a party who have said "read my lips, no third runway." And it is we who have committed ourselves to the high-speed rail alternative.

But I don't want to bang on about this, because everyone in this room is opposed to the third runway, and it would be a waste of your time if each of us were to say spend the evening saying, "I am 28.3 times more against it than you are."

So what I will do is discuss the economic side of the proposal. Before doing this I want to say that I recognise that many people may say, "The citizens of West London have suffered enough. The people of London have for too long been subjected to a risk of a horrible accident. We can no more acquire more air space than the citizens of Saudi Arabia can acquire Niagara Falls. The economic case is therefore irrelevant."

Because reasonable people can differ about the relevance of the economic case, and because we want the maximum support for this campaign, I think it right to deal with it. In dealing with it, we have some powerful and sometimes unexpected allies. These include Bob Ayling (former boss of British Airways), Steve Norris (former Tory Transport Minister) and Anatole Kaletsky (business columnist for the Times). They also include The Economist which did a demolition job on the pro airport case in its issue of the 27th March

There are four topics I want to deal with.

1. Why the plan cannot possibly meet its objective, which is to have an efficient hub airport capable of rivalling CDG Schipol and Frankfurt.

2. Why it doesn't matter that this can't be done.

3. What we should aim for instead.

4. How do we get there.

Why the plan cannot succeed

There are two reasons. First, Heathrow is running at 99 per cent capacity. That's why it's so awful to fly from there. If anything goes wrong, there's gridlock. Yet if they build a third runway, there will only be a brief respite. Such is the demand for slots, the expanded airport will be full again within 10 years.

Secondly, Heathrow's competitors will continue to be able to expand and add runway after runway. Whatever Heathrow does, the others can match and raise.

So if it mattered that our hub airport should be able to compete, we would have precisely the same problem a few short years from now.

But it doesn't matter

The pro-airport case is that the British economy would gain £7 billion a year from a third runway by 2030, and that the costs of further congestion if nothing were done would be £13 billion a year by that date.

But much of the demand is generated by transfer passengers whose activities in this country are practically non-existent, and a great deal more of it is from leisure passengers who could just as easily use another airport, especially if we put in some high speed rail links.

Transfer passengers accounted for 35% of the total in 2004, up from 9% in 1992. Can it seriously be suggested that we benefit one jot if a traveller from San Francisco changes at Heathrow for a flight to Mumbai? And do we really have to hang our heads in shame if we discover, as I did this afternoon, that the best way to get from Wichita to Gothenburg is via Schipol, rather than London? Of course not, and what is more, the lack of the Wichita trade doesn't stop there being 2 SAS flights a day from Heathrow alone to Gothenburg.

The airport apologists say that we have to be a hub in order to preserve passenger choice. But what sort of choice is it if our flights are constantly delayed or cancelled?

The fact is that the largest city in Europe will still get plenty of choices of destination without a bloated transfer market, for the simple reason that plenty of people want to come here, and there is money to be made in bringing them. And if there is a modest reduction in choice, per destination, than that means a big reduction in flights overall - and isn't that something that we're all supposed to be for?

A think tank called Oxford Economic Forecasting said that EU pollution targets would be met, because increased road and air traffic would be counteracted by cleaner cars and planes. But Justine Greening's useful questioning exposed that the underlying assumptions about the switch to cleaner vehicles were the ones supplied by BAA.

And then there is the matter of the economic benefit of people being well rested and children not having their lessons interrupted by aircraft noise. No attempt at all was made by Oxford Economic Forecasting to price the cost of noise pollution.

So I think we can all agree that a reduction in flights is A GOOD THING.

As for leisure passengers, is there anyone here who minds flying from an airport other than Heathrow? Or are we content to go from anywhere reasonably convenient?

What should we aim for?

1. Reduce the number of flights from London and generally. Let leisure passengers use other airports, either in London or in the provinces. Let transfer passengers use airports in places which are better able to accommodate them.

2. Reduce demand for Heathrow so that it becomes an efficient airport, primarily there to serve the (we would hope) reducing number business customers who still need to fly, but whose travel contributes the most to our economy. Remove the threat to London's economy which comes from the horror with which busy people regard a trip from Heathrow.

How to we get there

1. High speed rail will help immensely, both by making it unnecessary for people to fly at all over short hauls, and by making it possible for people to use other airports. If, as HACAN has discovered, more than 1/5th of flights are to places where there is, or could easily be, a good rail alternative, why not seize that alternative? It should not be forgotten that the third runway will only be long enough for single aisle aircraft - precisely the sort of aircraft that serve destinations where rail is a viable alternative.

2. Kill off BAA's monopoly. This is already beginning to come about. The monopoly has meant regulated fees, which has meant that fees at Heathrow are too cheap. Witness the enormous sums that airlines are prepared to pay for slots there. This means that there is no incentive on its owner to improve services or reduce traffic. Their business model is "Pile in as many flights as you can to multiply the standard tariff by as much as possible." With competition there will be market rates, Heathrow's prices will rise and above all prices will start to differ between Heathrow and the other airports. A market in the prices of slots is not a solution in itself, but it will be a useful tool. With slots getting more expensive, airlines will start to ask themselves, "Is this trip necessary, and if it is, does it have to be made from here?"

3. Make air traffic pay more towards the cost of pollution. Impose landing fees and eliminate the exemption from VAT of aviation fuel.

Above all, we must run our transport policy for the benefit of our country as a whole, and not for the benefit of BAA or of BA, which owns so many of those cheap slots and which gets so much of the business from transfer passengers which, as a country, we just don't need.

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