Heathrow expansion will not help airports outside London

From: Paul McGuinness, Chair, No 3rd Runway Coalition, London.

WHY HAS Heathrow spent the best part of £100m lobbying regional “business leaders” and MPs to support its expansion? Because it works. And (as one of their delighted executives revealed in a recent publication) better than they could have imagined.

And, having read his article (The Yorkshire Post, March 3), perhaps Robert Goodwill, the MP for Scarborough and Whitby, and former Aviation Minister, will be seen as one of their favourite scalps.

Because 10 years ago, Robert signalled his agreement with the Conservative Party leadership’s opposition to Heathrow expansion, by “twinning” his estate with one of the villages that will be destroyed if Heathrow expands, and even planting an apple tree there to demonstrate his enduring commitment to the antiHeathrow expansion cause.

It really is quite a turnaround. But the snag with the latest incarnation of Robert’s position is that every source of research contradicts the spin of Heathrow Airport lobbyists, and what Robert now says. The research finds that Heathrow expansion can only adversely impact regional economic opportunity.

According to the Department for Transport’s own aviation forecasts, regional airports in Yorkshire and Humberside will suffer significant negative impacts were Heathrow to expand – leading to a loss of 5,862 flights per year by 2030.

And 17 million of the 43 million extra passengers projected to pass through an expanded Heathrow’s lucrative shopping malls will, according to the Government’s own statistics, be at the expense of regional airports.

Moreover, according to a fresh economic study, only published last week, Heathrow expansion will result in around 27,000 jobs relocating from the UK’s wider regions to London and the South East, taking £43bn away from the regional economy in the process.

And (as if this weren’t all bad enough), according to the

Government’s adviser on Climate Change, such are the nation’s international obligations that Heathrow expansion is now “likely to leave at most very limited room for growth at nonLondon airports”.

When Heathrow started to formulate their spin for regional business leaders and MPs, it was not the regions that they had in mind, but the airport’s own narrow, economic selfinterest.

We only hope that Heathrow has not persuaded Robert to cut down the apple tree, too.