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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): Order. We must move to the next debate.
Manchester Airport (Second Runway)
12.30 pm
Mr. Martin Bell (Tatton): I am grateful for the opportunity to talk about an issue that is very important to many of my constituents. I promise to be brief, both because I believe in brevity and to allow other hon. Members--including some with a long involvement in the issue--to have their say.
This is not a routine debate and its subject is not a routine issue. I represent many dismayed people who feel that their land and their homes are being taken from them against their will without sufficient reason. The hour is late; the official inquiry went against them and the heavy equipment will be moving on to the site any day now to begin the work of construction and, it must be said, destruction.
We are the small platoons up against the big battalions. Only one statutory body is left standing in the field and fighting in the last ditch: Mobberley parish council. The council has gone to the European Commission with a complaint that deserves--and, indeed, is receiving--a hearing: that the funding of Manchester airport with public money infringes the treaty of Rome by distorting competition within the European Community. Government money is luring airlines to Manchester that would not otherwise fly there.
Mr. Graham Stringer (Manchester, Blackley):
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, although Manchester airport is in the public sector, no public subsidy has been provided by the town authorities that own it? They have lent the airport money borrowed from the public works loan board--which could have been borrowed from any other source on commercial grounds. The parish council's case is that a subsidy has been provided, but it has not.
Mr. Bell:
The European Commission is now reviewing the position and will make a decision.
In its complaint, the parish council cites an agreement between Manchester airport and Continental Airlines to offer slots for five years in return for landing fees at less than the market rate and a roughly similar agreement with American Airlines. There is a pattern of development that is promoting Manchester as the Heathrow of the north. While that may seem a laudable municipal ambition, it carries certain consequences, one of which is Manchester's probable expansion at the expense of other airports. Another is that 1,000 acres of Cheshire countryside will be sacrificed. That is not the march of progress; it is the march of conflict.
A further consequence is that the travelling public--who could travel more conveniently, especially on charter flights from other regional airports such as Liverpool and Leeds-Bradford--will take the long journey to Manchester, putting a further strain on a road system that is already close to gridlock for much of the time.
The figure of 50,000 new jobs was originally conjured out of a hat. On cross-examination, that figure fell to about 8,000. Many of those jobs would be created by the continuing expansion of the airport within its existing boundaries and the concentration of traffic in Manchester will clearly be to the disadvantage of Liverpool. The planners talk of disbenefit to Liverpool. That means damage and the possible loss of jobs.
Mr. Stringer:
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the growth of Manchester airport that was projected at
Mr. Bell:
I am coming on to the projections of passenger growth--and I think that the hon. Gentleman means 30 million people, not 30,000.
Refusing permission for the expansion of Liverpool airport, the Deputy Prime Minister said that this was by no means the end of the story. He added that he intended to take a close look at the role of regional airports in contributing to regional development--but the time to do that, surely, is before the Bollin valley has been concreted over, not after.
Much of the debate--this will be familiar to the House--depends on forecasts of future traffic. The figures in those forecasts have not been rising so fast lately. A more plausible figure for the year 2005 at Manchester airport is 20 million. Today Gatwick airport handles more than 20 million passengers a year on one runway, and it expects to be able to handle 35 million on one runway by 2012. Gatwick is a model example of what can be done with one runway. If Gatwick can do it, why cannot Manchester?
The argument is not about process and procedure, although we may well wonder about the fairness of a system that allows one side to outspend the other in the planning period by a factor of more than 10 to one. The argument is about the best way in which we should now proceed. The inspector accepted that the second runway was an inappropriate development of green-belt land and would be harmful to it and that such development could be approved only in exceptional circumstances, which he set out.
I submit that we now have a new special circumstance: the election of a new Government who are committed to an integrated transport policy. The Deputy Prime Minister emphasised that again on Monday, when he said:
The Minister may consider that hands are tied by the last Government's decision and the result of the public inquiry, but there is the option of switching charter flights, above a certain limit, from Manchester to other regional airports, particularly Liverpool. That would relieve congestion at Manchester during the rush hours and help the development of other airports. Exactly that kind of action was taken in the early 1980s, when charter flights were redirected from Heathrow to Gatwick, and it started the regeneration of Gatwick. If such action could be taken then in the south of England, it can be taken now in the north.
Even in the present circumstances, the suggestion that Manchester's traffic growth exceeds its capacity is hard to square with common observation. I have received a letter from one of my constituents, a British Airways captain who flies out of Manchester and sees it more closely than most people, who states:
It would be useful at this point to pre-empt and answer the charge of NIMBYism. That unappealing acronym now has a different meaning: "not in Manchester's back yard". This is not a case against Manchester; it is a case for Manchester. Manchester must breathe, and the Cheshire green belt is one of its lungs. The development of the second runway will damage its lungs, and that damage cannot be made good.
Let us also counter the arguments that can and will be advanced about the necessary action of mitigation and damage limitation. Bats and badgers will be rehoused, hedges will be planted and ancient woodland will be replanted. We are promised the greatest migration of forestry since Birnam wood came to Dunsinane. This is about people, however. It is also about woodlands: ancient woodlands cannot be transplanted, but they can be destroyed.
The victims, however, will be people, such as those whose homes will be taken from them. There are two people observing this debate whose 17th-century farmhouse with its landscaped garden will go under the end of the runway. People have security guards living in their outbuildings, but no compensation has yet been agreed. The victims will be the people whose farms, footpaths and fields will be taken from them and the people who live beyond the perimeter of the new runway and who are unable to sell their homes, so they are, in effect, prisoners of their own property. Altogether a quarter of a million people will be affected by the noise and the extra risk factor associated with the second runway.
"Integration is a serious matter--not a buzz word. It is about how we can use existing capacity better than we do at present. It is about putting things together so that the whole is better than the sum of the parts".
The second runway at Manchester has nothing to do with an integrated transport policy. I argue that it has more to do with a disintegrated transport policy. Manchester may well prosper at the expense of other airports. Its development was not considered with that of Liverpool, or that of the region's road and rail system; it was considered separately. If we are to have an integrated transport policy, let us have one, and let us consider--even at this late stage--whether the loss of the Cheshire countryside is in any way justifiable.
"My daily experience of airport operations makes it abundantly clear that the airport's existing runway is under-utilised. For extended periods, there are few, if any, aircraft movements."
The case for a second runway is not convincing. Those who walk the local fields and footpaths, as I did last weekend, between fences of a size and complexity that I have not seen since the end of the cold war, will wonder how convincing that case can be. In fact, there is no sufficient case, but there is every case for a pause and a review of airport and road and rail policies. Those policies hang together, or they fail together.
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