WHY A THIRD RUNWAY IS VITAL TO GLOBAL BRITAIN

Airport could sue for £500m if runway is axed PM’s failure to back expansion puts HS2 in peril Cost of all major building projects may soar by 20%

AFTER 5 0 years o f debate, I believe we are just a few years away from expanding Heathrow and unleashing Britain’s potential. Last week’s Court of Appeal ruling, however, added at least another 12-month delay. What is another year after more than 50, you might ask.

Well, it is another 12 months of firms in Liverpool or Teesside having to export their products through Paris or Amsterdam, or tourists from China and South America having to go through France to get to Belfast or Inverness.

It is another 12 months of giving control over our trading network to our competitors and friends in the European Union.

Make no mistake, Heathrow is more than just another airport. As the UK’s only hub airport, we connect passengers and goods from all over Europe to global markets.

By pooling demand, we can support daily, year- round flights to long-haul markets such as Mexico City or Tokyo, carrying British exporters and t heir products around the world, and bring in tourists, students and inward investors to spend their money here.

These trading networks are the lifeblood of the UK economy and Heathrow is its beating heart.

We are really good at our role. We have more regular long-haul destinations than any other airport in the world, apart from Charles de Gaulle, an airport in Paris that has four runways. Like Paris, Heathrow is one of the biggest in the world, but in contrast to Paris, we are rated by passengers as one of the best in the world for service.

Thanks to £12 billion of private investment in recent years, we are a national asset that Britain can be proud of.

More significantly, we are the UK’s biggest port by a long way, handling 40 per cent of British exports to non-EU markets in 2019. Why so much? Because the UK economy today is increasingly based on things that need to get to their destinations quickly, products that are delicate or of high value.

Think pharmaceuticals, high-tech engineering parts or fresh Scottish salmon. These travel under your feet in the cargo holds of passenger planes.

So whenever Heathrow opens a new passenger destination in India or China, we are also opening a direct trading route, adding arteries to our nation’s economic heart. No other airport in the UK does t hi s . In fact, we handle more exports in the space of a few weeks than Gatwick, our second largest airport, handles in a year.

WHY am I so confident that Heathrow will expand, despite last week’s ruling? Because it is essential and, in today’s global economy, it is critical. These trading routes really matter, because the world economy is changing.

Future economic growth will come from the Americas, India and China, not the Old World economies in Europe. We need to be adding more destinations and frequencies to those markets and we need to be better connected to them than our rivals in Europe.

Yet today Heathrow is full. Our beating heart is congested.

We have been at full capacity for 15 years and, in that time, I have had to turn away requests to open new routes and destinations from dozens of airlines in India, China and other emerging economies.

We are always the first choice for international routes, meaning that Heathrow is the most valuable destination in the world.

But what if they cannot get to Heathrow? They go to Paris, Frankfurt or Amsterdam. Bear in mind that the first two operate four runways and the Dutch one uses six! Within two years, Paris will overtake Heathrow as the biggest airport in Europe. Within ten years we will have dropped to fourth place.

This is a tragedy. Heathrow can easily be the biggest and bestconnected airport in the world. Further, because international businesses like to base themselves next to a well- connected airport, an expanded Heathrow would help make Britain the best place in the world for commerce.

Why does t his matter? Why shouldn’t business people in Newcastle or Belfast travel through Paris instead? I can tell you that it absolutely does matter. This is about the UK as a newly sovereign nation being in control of its trade routes.

The Prime Minister has just started negotiations with the EU and is doing the same with other

This is about the UK as a newly sovereign nation being in control of its trade routes

big economies. How can he stand strong when dealing with India, if business people in Ahmedabad or Kolkata have to travel through Paris to get to the UK?

And what happens when Paris starts to get full and decides to stop the Liverpool flight because they are adding a new route to India? Or when we get into a trade war with Europe, and they decide to cut off our routes?

What was impossible to imagine five years ago is an economic reality these days as trade has become an economic weapon. Why would we ‘take back control’ from Brussels with one hand and give it to the French with the other?

That is why I say, ‘No Heathrow expansion, No Global Britain’.

Unless we start expanding the UK’s only hub as quickly as possible, we will be ‘Little Britain’, not ‘Global Britain’. We will be ‘Levelling Down’, not ‘Levelling Up’.

Even in these times, when we are concerned about the climate, there are some vital cities that have no choice but to be connected by air.

It will be many years before Belfast, Aberdeen or Inverness enjoy a high-speed rail link to the UK’s hub airport. It is air travel to Heathrow that makes these cities the vital economic centres they are, and the Government should guarantee these connections will remain in place so that businesses can invest with the confidence that they won’t be cut off.

IHAVE heard some people say that the UK should set an example to the world by stopping flying altogether. That is not a lead that India, China or the US are ever going to follow. Instead, we should show how we can still fly, even in a world in which carbon emissions are dramatically reduced.

Heathrow and the UK aviation sector have shown real global leadership, committing to net zero emissions by 2050 and by publishing a plan to get there.

The solution lies in changing the design of aircraft and aeroplane engines, and in using new power sources such as biofuels from waste, synthetic fuel, hydrogen and batteries for short haul. These technologies all exist today, but they need to be deployed more rapidly.

Failing to build a third runway won’t help the global climate. We have already seen that not a single ounce of carbon was avoided when the Coalition Government blocked Heathrow expansion in 2010. British passengers just flew through Amsterdam instead, boosting the Dutch economy at the expense of our own.

I have been asked many times this week whether the man who said he would ‘lie down in front of the bulldozers’ could ever support Heathrow expansion. My answer is that a Prime Minister facing the most critical economic challenge in our history should not be bound by a throwaway comment he made as a newly elected MP.

Rather, he should be bound by his promise to the British people that he would bring us economic prosperity, that he would ‘level up’ those in danger of being left behind, and that he would tackle climate change. Only Heathrow expansion will help him deliver all three.

We should all be asking him to live up to that promise, and make this a truly Global Britain.

BORIS JOHNSON’S refusal to back Heathrow’s third runway threatens to leave the taxpayer on the hook in a £500 million court case, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

In a move that dismayed businesses last week, the Prime Minister decided not to appeal when the Government’s official policy of expanding Heathrow was rejected on environmental grounds by judges in the High Court.

Now the MoS can disclose that documents signed off by Heathrow and the former Transport Secretary Chris Grayling in 2016 show the airport has the right to sue the Government if it pulls the plug on the project.

Heathrow is understood to have invested £520 million so far on planning the expansion – and could seek to recoup this from the taxpayer if the third runway is axed entirely.

Sources told this newspaper that a permanent block on enlarging Heathrow would also threaten the Prime Minister’s own plans to build hospitals and the HS2 rail link, as well as making all future infrastructure projects up to 20 per cent more expensive as firms factor in the risk of legal complaints on environmental grounds.

Industry sources said it could become almost impossible to launch big building schemes in Britain – including expanding regional airports instead of Heathrow – without taking into account the effect on climate change.

Mark Reynolds, chief executive of £2 billion construction firm Mace which has worked on Heathrow and HS2, said: ‘If projects like Heathrow, and then potentially High Speed Rail or Highways England programmes, become toxic because of the environmental impact, then what are we as a nation going to do? Are we just going to stop and say we don’t do anything?’

The defeat in the High Court last week – and the Government’s refusal to appeal – has forced Heathrow and its backers to take their case to the Supreme Court, adding at least 12 months to the project and jeopardising Parliament’s 2030 deadline for completion.

The Government’s refusal to launch its own appeal fuelled speculation that Johnson, who previously pledged to ‘lie down in front of the bulldozers’ to stop the project, was using the ruling as a convenient way to allow it to die. But sources warned that if the Supreme Court also blocks the third runway over climate concerns, it would set an ‘extraordinary precedent’.

This is because the highest court in the land would be siding with judges who rejected Heathrow’s plans on the grounds that they ‘ unlawfully’ failed to take into account the Paris climate change agreement, under which countries pledge to hit a ‘ net zero’ carbon emissions target by 2050. It is understood the HS2 plans, given the goahead by Johnson last month, do not take into account stringent climate objectives and so could hit a similar block if challenged in court.

Heathrow insists its plans do now meet the Paris climate target, meaning the Government would have no trouble satisfying the court’s order.

A Heathrow spokeswoman explained that Ministers simply needed to update the National Policy Statement on Heathrow expansion, which was overwhelmingly backed by MPs in 2018, to reflect this.

But a collapse of the project could usher in costly legal proceedings.

According to the 2016 agreement between Heathrow and the Department of Transport, the project’s ultimate failure could activate a clause allowing the airport’s owners ‘to pursue any and all legal and equitable remedies (including cost recovery)’ on the basis that the Government switches to an ‘alter

native scheme being preferred by the Secretary of State or Government and/or the withdrawal of the Government’s support for aviation expansion for Heathrow Airport’.

The Government also faces claims it has failed to grasp the opportunity to throw open the doors to international business and visitors as the UK begins its post-Brexit era.

Last night, Bill Galvin, group chief executive at the £75 billion Universities Superannuation Scheme – Britain’s biggest pension fund which owns 10 per cent of Heathrow – said the court decision was ‘disappointing’.

He added: ‘This is happening at exactly the same time as the Government has placed infrastructure development as a key policy initiative.

‘The expansion would bring jobs and help grow the economy around the country. Heathrow, with our support, has already promised to boost the UK economy by over £200 billion, as well as create around 180,000 jobs.’

Arora Holdings, which has an alternative plan to build the runway, is joining Heathrow in appealing the judgment in the Supreme Court. Carlton Brown, its chief financial officer, said: ‘The Paris agreement isn’t binding on the UK so its ironic this is now having this impact on the UK.’

Heathrow’s spokeswoman said: ‘Last week’s ruling has meant there will be a delay in realising the benefits of Heathrow expansion until the Government remedies an eminently fixable issue.

‘Failure to fix it rules out airport growth anywhere in the country and casts doubt on other infrastructure projects, including roads and housing pledges made by the Government.’

She said Heathrow has taken a lead in meeting climate targets and is ready to work with the Government to ‘level up’ Britain.