The prospect of airport expansion is hugely controversial. It sparks an inevitable tug-o-war between those who see larger airports as key to economic growth, and those worried about the impact on the environment.
Many people, including in my own party, are rightly concerned about the potential damage increased airport capacity could cause. These feelings can be particularly acute in London, especially around Heathrow, where residents endure noise and dread the prospect of more flights.
Our Liberal Democrat pre-manifesto – set by our party’s working groups and committees – looks set to include a commitment to no net increase in runways across the UK. But I believe Lib Dem’s ambitions for a greener future must also fit with our vision for a stronger economy and a fairer society – and that means looking for opportunities for growth across the whole country. Our concerns about pollution and noise from today’s aeroplanes may be less relevant to the next generation of cleaner and quieter aircraft in twenty, thirty and forty years’ time.
We don’t yet know how technology will improve air travel: carbon emissions may fall faster or slower than currently predicted, and our policy response must be flexible to accommodate the evidence as it emerges. It would be short sighted of us to rule out new routes for airlines offering a chance to explore new markets and encourage investment. There is a real chance we risk prejudicing decades of growth by nailing down excessively restrictive plans for airport growth now.
None of this means I do not hold our target of Zero Carbon Britain to be sacred. I think our airports strategy must be evidence based and designed to limit carbon and noise emissions from aviation. But within these limits we must seek to target economic opportunities across the UK, as well as helping rebalance the economy.
There is no doubt we need an economy where growth is better shared across the country, not purely around the capital. And in the future we should be able to dramatically reduce carbon emissions, as well as reap the benefits of growth in investment and jobs thanks to sustainable airport expansion.
For these reasons, if the pre-manifesto does look towards no net runway growth, I will be proposing an amendment at conference in October. I want to stress the enemy is the carbon and the noise, not the aeroplane or the travel.
I do not want to commit to a policy that, with the best of intentions, could sacrifice tomorrow’s economic growth on the altar of today’s carbon and noise emissions.
Lorely Burt and Stephen Gilbert have voiced similar concerns about restricting new runways and the potential impact on regional growth. Both have warned against risking future growth on the basis of today’s aircraft emissions.
* Mike Thornton is the Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh.
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25 Comments
“I do not want to commit to a policy that, with the best of intentions, could sacrifice tomorrow’s economic growth on the altar of today’s carbon and noise emissions.”
Oh good heavens. I have no words. What a deeply disappointing article.
So you don’t want us as a party to commit to having the smae number of runways in 40 years time.
I wouldn’t bother Mike, the chances of the Lib Dems being in Government again after May 2105 are about 1%, con-incidently the sort of predicted poll figure for the Lib Dems in the Clacton By-election.
We discussed this policy at Lib Dem conference a few years ago, why didn’t you say anything then?
What we should be commiting to is no increase in the use of Airline Fuel, with reductions later. If The Airlines can fly more passengers on the same fuel then we can look at Airport capacity again.
The worst thing about the article is the misunderstanding of what Economic growth is. GDP & such simply measure Value, things people are willing to pay for. If we couldnt spend as much on Air Travel we would spend more somewhere else. Growth comes from new, better ways of doing things & all the evidence suggests that long-term growth in Mature Economies isnt really affected by the normal range of Political choice.
I’ve now tried 3 times to come up with a response which accurately projects my reaction to this article. I think Sarah Whitebread has the polite version!
Remind me, where’s Southampton Airport. Oh yes, I remember.
I stand by our commitment to Zero Carbon. The carbon and the noise are the enemy not the aeroplane. If travellers choose Schipol or De Gaulle the number of aeroplane journeys remain unaffected while UK economic activity is affected.
“Oh good heavens. I have no words. What a deeply disappointing article.”
I, on the other hand, find myself to be delighted with obvious good sense:
“I want to stress the enemy is the carbon and the noise, not the aeroplane or the travel.”
If Mike Thornton is proposing that future capacity is built outside London, then that is a good long term policy for a rebalanced Britain.
For me, the most interesting part of moving towards a zero carbon Britain is how at the moment not a single main source of energy is zero carbon. Once we have one energy sector that is zero carbon, we can use more of it. But for the moment, even electricity is 67% fossil fuel and transport is almost 100% fossil fuel (electric trains are 67% fossil fuel at the moment).
If in 20 years we can promote UK electricity as 100% carbon zero, then we finally have choices on tackling climate change, and maybe even planes can be part electric!
To get to a carbon zero Britain is not to transform Britain into a 3rd world country, with energy usage to match. But to use technology and political commitment to invest in getting lots of sustainable energy, sun, wind, tides……
Big picture folks: this is the tuition fees of 2015. The big 2 parties are too scared to go into the election with any honesty about their plans. So commission a review loaded to give the answer you want, to report just after the election. Browne last time, Davies this time. Your manifesto says how much you are looking forward to reading that report to inform your thinking.
The Lib Dems go into the election with a principled objection, upgraded to full pledge status. Which then doesn’t last 5 minutes in coalition negotiations – and we are pilloried by all when we foolishly rat on our promise to the electorate.
I agree this is a disappointing article to read – but the discussion so far misses the significance of the political positioning.
“We don’t yet know how technology will improve air travel: carbon emissions may fall faster or slower than currently predicted,”
Actually, no. We do pretty much know. You can get some improvements form better ATC, some from higher load factors, some from slightly better engines (although there’s not much scope there), slightly better wings, better, lighter materials… but it’s not going to be more than a few per cent per revenue passenger kilometre per year. But the rpks if we do nothing will go up faster than that.
There are no practical better fuels than kerosene in the near to medium term. You could get your kero by using concentrated solar to create electricity and make it from water and CO2, which is obviously carbon neutral, but not cheap. The last dregs of our oil will almost certainly be converted into kerosene, diesel fuel and petrol for transport.
All that said – I think more runways might be a good idea; just we need a method of reducing aviation fuel demand to go with it.
I agree with the gist of this article, that new runways may be a good way to promote economic growth, considering some companies do need to send staff or goods at high speed.
However, that doesn’t mean to say that London needs yet another massive airport. In the southwest, in order to go almost anywhere abroad it is necessary to drive to Stansted, Heathrow or Gatwick.
Any airport expansion needs to be offset by an increase in investment in public transport and cycling initiatives.
Well, of course the truth is that we could halve the number of runways and also the amount of fuel used, and we’d still be wrecking the planet very quickly. Also, that improved technology won’t make enough of a difference to alter that conclusion. On the other hand, business wants more runways, travellers want more runways, and as tpfkar says, the other two parties are getting ready to build more runways just as soon as they’ve got the election out of the way. And it’s tuition fees deja vu all over again.
What do the Greens say? I suspect they express implacable opposition to runways, and nobody asks them what they’d do in coalition. Which is convenient.
Why don’t we just say we’ve got a policy, it’s right for Britain, but unless we get a huge upsurge in support, we don’t think we will have enough clout to get it implemented?
Politically and empirically illiterate.
I agree with the thrust of the article. As was said above: “big picture folks”.
Unless we take steps to encourage continued growth/recovery in the economy, we simply won’t have the money available for the “fairer society” part of our strap line, and if the response is simply “oh well, lets put up tax to pay for it” that’s not going to win us any votes is it? Besides, higher taxes tend to stifle the enterprise we need in order to have the stronger economy.
We need a careful balance when it comes to promoting a policy which is going to be subject to so much scrutiny, but as Mike has said, it’s not the travel that’s the problem; we need to find a credible way to make a real impact on the side-effects. And we need to be very clear about that, otherwise we will be in a re-run of the hugely embarrassing school fees debacle if we do manage to find ourselves holding the balance of power again after next May. Let’s learn from past mistakes!
The irony of someone saying “big picture folks” when arguing for us to put short term economic objectives ahead of the need to tackle climate change is really too much.
“We don’t yet know how technology will improve air travel: carbon emissions may fall faster or slower than currently predicted, and our policy response must be flexible to accommodate the evidence as it emerges. It would be short sighted of us to rule out new routes for airlines offering a chance to explore new markets and encourage investment. ”
Yeah, I know what you mean Mike. I for one hope we include rights for Fairies in our manifesto. Let’s face it, who knows what technology advancements in a few decades time will allow us to detect these so called ‘mythical’ creatures. Do we really want to hamper ourselves now with regulations that will make it inflexible to campaign for Fairy rights in future?
On a serious note, the actual flaw is your zero sum game you state between economic growth and the environment. It doesn’t exist.
“The tug o war is between those who see larger airports as the key to economic growth and” ….. those who think there are better alternative forms of growth, who think that most air travel is not particularly economically productive and who don’t wish to pander to the vote of people working at an airport in or near their constituency.
” These feelings can be particularly acute in London, especially around Heathrow, where residents endure noise and dread the prospect of more flights.”
Not just Heathrow Mike. I live near Gatwick and we already suffering increased noise due to changed flight paths for the existing runway that are being strongly contested right now. But my opposition to a 2nd runway at Gatwick is not based on saying Heathrow would be better than Gatwick. That falls into the trap of pitting one set of protesters against another. We have a policy of no new runways in the South East decided at a recent Conference on environmental grounds and also because we believed the forecasts of future demand were over optimistic. As David Allen says, we should stick to it, but like most of our policies whether or not we can implement it depends on how much influence we have after the election.
The issue is as much about airport capacity as about the number of runways we have but the issues are, of course, interlinked.
Here in Eastleigh we have encouraged the growth of our airport – Southampton – which is close to Eastleigh town centre as it is primarily a business airport and diverts business journeys from Heathrow, reducing congestion there and on the M3. With a short runway we negotiated tight night-flying controls and routing such that complaints are now a rarity. Clearly that can’t be the case at all other airports.
But we do need, as Mike notes, to remain competitive as a country. Britian does not have good access to emerging markets in China, India or South America or much of Africa. This is a consequence of lack of airport capacity. It can only be addressed by more intensive use of runways, or more runways. We ignore this issue at our peril.
“We don’t yet know how technology will improve air travel”
We may not, but we can be sure that without incentive the pace of technology change with be glacial.
The challenge is that from all the research that has been done over the last few decades, we can be reasonably certain that the world will be very different in a few decades – potentially as soon as 2030.
A key factor in this is the increasing pressures on our dwindling fossil fuel reserves (the fact that we are considering fracking gives an indication of how bad things are beginning to get). So my question is what is the point of building a new runway that is (optimistically) likely to enter service in circa 2020 and by circa 2030 be a historical artifact?
No the best thing we can do is to not build any new conventional runways and cap the amount of aviation fuel [aside: point raised by paul barker] at 1998 consumption levels [aside: given 1998 has been used as the basis for many other green commitments]. Whilst providing tax incentives to diversify.
We should be trying to encourage substitution of air travel (for which we know no means of powering without consuming hydrocarbon fuels) by surface travel (which can be electrically powered, and it is possible to supply our electrical requirements from zero-carbon options).
The suggestion that an increase in intercontinental flights to the UK would benefit the economy seems entirely reasonable; but there are plenty of landing slots on UK runways for intercontinental flights; it’s just that many of them are currently occupied by intracontinental flights, ie flights to the rest of Europe.
We have a surface travel option to almost anywhere in Europe, and Air Passenger Duty should be increased for journeys where there is a surface alternative – certainly most places in Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Benelux, Germany, Denmark or Austria, all of which are doable within 24 hours or so from mainland UK.
Get the APD to say, on the coupon, “£x for the flight, £y premium for a journey doable in z hours by surface transport” and that should incentivise travellers to switch to surface methods that are much less polluting, and which also free up airport slots in the key SE airports for longer-distance flights.
It would also mean that flights from further away from the Channel Tunnel portal would face lower APD, so the tax increase wouldn’t harm more-outlying airports; and would also mean that HS2 would naturally increase APD, raising some additional money to pay for this essential infrastructure.
Richard Gadsden – good point
Also if we were being good European’s we would be pushing all this through the EU …
As well as protecting the environment and tackling climate change, we should be defending localism. If Southampton residents want to expand their local airport that’s fine. But why should the views of those who live near Heathrow and Gatwick be overridden?
We have plenty of capacity around London already – and judging from Gatwick’s problems with baggage-handling the last thing it needs is more flights..
We should also make it easier to travel by rail between the UK and mainland Europe. I think that one reasons peole still choose to fly between London and cities like Paris, Amsterdam and Cologne is that the rail option is almost like flying. The excessive security theatre along with a train service that’s bookahead-only and using a pure airline-style model of yield-managed fares take away some of the traditional advantages of travelling by train for journeys between the UK and mainland Europe. Cross-channel trains cannot carry UK domestic passengers, so services to/from anywhere other than central London are probably not viable.
Unfortunately any relaxation of the security theatre may not be politically possible. But the gold-plated safety regulations for trains running through the Channel Tunnel could be relaxed. I see no reason why operators should not be allowed to run shorter trains, even ordinary commuter sets, through the CT; they do through other, longer, rail tunnels.
At the EU level we should work towards more flexible trans-European ticketing, so that once again it might be possible to buy an international rail ticket from UK ticket offices. (I think the UK National Rail ticketing model, with some tweaks, would work well as a common ticketing structure for EU rail services.)
We are not making the most of the Channel Tunnel, with the only passenger service being a relatively infrequent airline-style service between major capitals. Ideally taking a cross-Channel train should be similar to taking any other train, rather than like catching a flight.