‘Heathrow expansion: flying in the face of reason’

Exhausted after months of constituency work, casework and ushering in a new Prime Minister, MPs are now on their summer breaks – many jetting off on holiday from Heathrow. 

When they return, one of the biggest decisions awaiting the government will be whether to press ahead with expanding Britain’s largest airport. 

This will also be one of the first major tests of whether Prime Minister Andy Burnham is serious about governing differently from his predecessors.

For years, the political case for a third runway has been remarkably durable. Expansion has been portrayed as synonymous with economic growth, Britain’s global competitiveness and business confidence, while those questioning it have frequently been dismissed as ‘anti-growth’.

But that position is now much harder to sustain because the government’s own evidence undermines it.

READ MORE: ‘Working class communities deserve a bold climate plan from Labour’

This summer, ministers published their draft National Policy Statement alongside hundreds of pages of government analysis. Taken together, they pose an awkward and obvious question: if this is the evidence, why is Heathrow expansion still government policy?

The government says a third runway must pass four tests. It must drive economic growth across the country, comply with air quality obligations, limit noise impacts, and remain consistent with the UK’s legal obligations on climate change.

These tests alone are simply not strong enough. Yet the government’s own assessment shows the proposal fails every single one.

On economic growth, the projected boost to GDP has shrunk dramatically, to just 0.03 – 0.05% by 2050 – around a tenth of the previous estimates that underpinned the case for expansion.

Ministers have cited £40 billion in economic benefits to the UK, but this simply cherry-picks one number from one side of the balance sheet. Their own appraisal concludes that the limited economic benefits of expansion are significantly outweighed by the social

 and environmental costs.

Nor would the benefits be spread across the country. The government’s test is that expansion should deliver economic growth nationwide, but analysis by the New Economics Foundation shows that at least three-quarters of the already modest boost would go to

 London and the South-East, with many regions actually losing jobs.

That sits uneasily with Mr Burnham’s promise to deliver growth in every postcode. Indeed, as Mayor of Greater Manchester, he argued that Heathrow expansion represented “a model for an ever-overheating UK economy rather than a more balanced, levelled-up economy”.

Then there are the climate impacts.

The government’s new analysis forecasts that average annual aviation emissions over the period of the Sixth Carbon Budget (2033-2037) would be nearly a sixth higher than stated in the government’s Carbon Budget & Growth Delivery Plan, published just last autumn.

Those extra emissions would require deeper and politically difficult emissions cuts elsewhere.

Remarkably the government has also told the promoters of the new runway that they don’t need to account for the climate impacts of sources of pollution, such as contrails – which greatly add to the warming effect of aviation.

And there are the significant local impacts.

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A third runway would mean more than 250,000 additional flights each year, bringing more noise and air pollution. Current air pollution limits are already outdated and weak, with the government still refusing to meet the World Health Organisation’s latest science-based standards. 

A further 900,000 people would be exposed to aircraft noise at levels that are, in many cases, harmful. But it’s not clear exactly where the affected people would be, as the government hasn’t published flight paths and its modelling is based on scenarios that

 are 12 years out of date. 

So, does the case for expansion stack up? The answer is a resounding no. The government’s plans clearly and unambiguously fail the tests it has set itself.

The public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny currently underway must not become a box-ticking exercise before an inevitable approval. The government’s own evidence shows that the arguments for Heathrow expansion are deeply flawed, so ministers must change course.

Andy Burnham has previously questioned whether Heathrow expansion feeds into an economy tilted too heavily towards London. He must now show that those were not just words that he would rather forget now that he’s Prime Minister.

Supporting airport expansion would be plane crazy. Hopefully Mr Burnham will get off to a flying start by ditching this disastrous scheme. 

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