Heathrow should be Cornwall’s airlink

THE decision to subsidise an airlink from Newquay to London is part of the government’s ‘levelling up’ commitment to the Cornish national minority, whose homeland remains the poorest in the UK.

Newquay airport was EU-funded and Cornwall has lost billions in EU funding. An airlink is vital for our growing marine sector and lithium and other high tech mining projects, as we remain over-dependent on mass tourism which has failed our society in terms of pay and housing misuse.

However the subsidy, if justified at all in a climate emergency, only works if it is to Heathrow.

Gatwick pre-pandemic was not a hub and now has lost all Virgin and most BA flights.

The Newquay-Heathrow slots were valuable to Cornwall as a ‘national’ asset, and at the very least the value of the slots should be used to fund Newquay other infrastucture in Cornwall, such as the green InterCity rail links from Penzance.

Who has ‘stolen’ these assets? Heathrow’s third runway was promised on the basis of links to regions such as Cornwall.

Without Heathrow, and with no compensation to the Cornish national minority for the lost slots, this subsidy is not in the Cornish national interest and will be yet another high carbon subsidy for the exploitative mass tourist lobby and should be challenged with a judicial review. No service to Heathrow has demonstrated before that Newquay is at best marginal and, certainly on a cost benefit analysis basis, of limited advantage to Cornish economic development.

Timothy James Penzance, Cornwall