Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280
- 299)
TUESDAY 24 FEBRUARY 2004
RT HON
ALISTAIR DARLING
MP, MR GRAHAM
PENDLEBURY AND
MR MICHAEL
MANN
Q280 Chairman: The Prime Minister
said in front of the Liaison Committee quite recently that the
issue of climate change is "of fundamental importance to
the long-term security and stability of the world". I take
it you would agree with that?
Mr Darling: I always agree with
the Prime Minister.
Q281 Chairman: Very wise, Secretary
of State! And yet the White Paper, by your own admission, will
contribute significantly to the very process that is causing the
problem.
Mr Darling: Yes. I accept that
whatever means you choose to use to move around will have an environmental
impact. The question is what balance do you strike in terms of
enabling people to move around with measures you put in place
to mitigate the environmental effect of that. For example, in
the White Paper it sets out a number of measures that the Government
is going to pursue, whether it is greater control of emissions
by landing charges or whether it is the EU Emissions Trading Scheme
or continuing the argument that we need to continue at an international
level in relation to aviation meeting the costs of pollution it
causes; there are a number of things to be done. I am not suggesting
for a moment you would advocate this, but to put it at its extreme
if we simply did nothing and we said, "Okay let's just let
our airports clog up," we would end up with the situation
that we have in other modes of transport in this country, where
successive governments of both political colours, frankly, did
not take the decisions they should have done and the strains on
our road and on our rail system are there for all to see.
Q282 Chairman: That is very interesting
because of course the Government have done quite a lot to draw
the public's attention to the problems. In a sense, it is easier
if you are sitting in a traffic jam for hours to realise the problem,
but the Government has made efforts to discourage people from
excessive use of their cars. To what extent have you thought of
applying that to aviation and air travel?
Mr Darling: We had this argument
when I was last here in the summer. Indeed, I recall it dominated
much of the proceedings.
Q283 Chairman: I was thinking of
education here and awareness.
Mr Darling: The first point is
it is not our policy to stop people from travelling. We are clear,
if you take the car in urban areas for example, that we do want
to encourage people to use public transport where that is appropriate,
but it is not our intention to say in the extreme, "Stay
at home". In relation to general education, if that is the
question you are asking, my guess is that people are much, much
more aware today about the environmental impact of not just travel
but other emissions as well in a way that they certainly were
not maybe 15 or 20 years ago. So I do not think people are at
all ignorant of the effect it has. As I say, what we were trying
to do in the White Paper is to strike the right balance between
planning ahead for the future over the next 20 to 30 years and
at the same time making sure we meet our general objective which
is that polluters ought to pay the cost for the damage they cause.
Things are slightly more difficult in aviation, of course, because
for historical reasons taxation of aviation fuel, for example,
is dealt with by international treaty. That does not apply to
any other form of fuel that we consume. Of course by its nature
aviation is a very international business. I think that most people
in this country are acutely aware of the fact that the environment
has been damaged. One of the reasons we signed up to put ourselves
on a path to reduce CO2 by 60% was precisely for that
reason. You need to look at these things across the piece. Each
sector has got to play its part. Of course, we also need to make
sure we look at other areas as well.
Q284 Chairman: We are just very keen
to help you with your responsibilities in transport to enable
transport, and aviation in particular in this case, to play its
part. When we find in the integrated policy appraisal at the back
of the White Paper one tiny paragraph which deals with the whole
question of climate change and does not make any recommendations
at all or quantify the scale of the problem, might we not be forgiven
for suspecting there is an element of complacency?
Mr Darling: I do not think you
should draw that conclusion. To start with there is an entire
chapter that discusses various environmental implications. Of
course, in addition to the appendix to which you refer, since
that time, as you know, the Government has made available all
the supporting documentation which is in the House Library and
on the Internet and there are quite substantial documents—and
I am just looking here at the aviation and global warming document
which was published in January[4]—so
it is not the only thing. If you have simply directed yourself
to one particular paragraph, no matter what that paragraph was
and no matter where it was, you would not get the whole picture
but if you look at the whole picture I do not accept the general
point you are making which is we did not consider the environmental
impact of what we were doing.
Q285 Chairman: Incidentally, that
supporting information when we last looked was not on your web
site.
Mr Darling: It should be.
Mr Pendlebury: It is not on the
web site and actually there were some reasons for that, partly
to do with the size of the files which was causing problems in
downloading these things. Certainly we can make them available
as widely as we can.
Mr Darling: They are certainly
available in the Library of the House, which is the conventional
means of communicating them to people like yourselves.
Q286 Chairman: They were strangely
difficult to get hold of however when I tried to the other day.
Mr Darling: I will make it my
business to check and see what has happened. It certainly should
be available and that is how successive governments have communicated
to Members of Parliament.
Q287 Chairman: Since you mention
the supporting papers, there is this one on global warming which
has already been referred to and I noticed in that the reference
to ACARE (the Advisory Council for Aeronautical Research in Europe)
on which you base a statement in the White Paper to the effect
that you believe that aviation can achieve a 50% reduction in
CO2 by 2020. Is that all that ACARE said?
Mr Darling: No, but I think the
statement in the White Paper was right. Are you saying we misquoted
them or something?
Q288 Chairman: With the greatest
respect, it was not right because what they also said was that
"the 2020 targets would not be achieved by developments for
the current engine architecture and that more radical changes
will be needed". They went on to say: "To maintain the
same rate of progress as today to 2020 and beyond will require
break-through technologies and consequently higher-risk approaches"
Do you have any idea what kind of technologies those may be?
Mr Darling: It is not our position
that any one thing is likely to achieve the target but in sum
they will help do that. As I think I said to you in the summer
and I say to you again today, clearly there is a formidable challenge
in reducing the emissions and dealing with the effects of aviation.
I made the point about having to strike that balance between people's
needs and doing that. If you take engine technology, for example,
there is no doubt engines are much cleaner than they were 25 or
30 years ago and quite recently the industry signed up to a further
reduction in the amount of nitrogen dioxide they use, but you
would not rely on engine technology alone to achieve your ultimate
objective. There is a whole range of things.
Q289 Chairman: There seems to be
a degree of scepticism within the industry about these technical
developments which are supposed to be going to happen to enable
the impact of aviation on climate change to be reduced. I have
got something here from the Royal Academy of Engineering who also
refer to the ACARE study and they say: "It is not yet clear
what form these new technologies might take, but without such
advances it does appear that if growth in aviation continues"—which
of course it will under your scheme—"the contribution
aviation makes to global warming is likely to rise." How
do you square that statement with what you actually put in the
White Paper? What you did was refer to ACARE and said they say
you can get a 50% reduction by 2020; that is simply not correct.
Mr Darling: We are not saying
because of improved engine technology the adverse effects created
by increased aviation will be sorted out. What is undeniably the
case is that engine technology has improved but there must come
a point where with all the improvements in the world you cannot
go that much further. Some way down the line if we move to hydrogen
fuels there might be another step change, but that is really beyond
the time-frame that we are contemplating here. As I say to you,
what we sought to do was to strike that balance that I have referred
to and all the information is available, and this has been a pretty
open process and people—you noted yourself—can get
at what the information is. My argument is not that aviation is
not a problem in terms of emissions and clearly there are things
that need to be addressed and things that need to be done—and
you are almost coming at this from the point of view (and it may
be simply your line of questioning, I do not know whether you
believe this) that the answer is that we should either stop flying
altogether or stop it where it is or whatever. I think that approach
would not work either. The correct approach, in my view, is to
look at all these problems and try to sort them out problem by
problem. Some of them are more difficult to solve than others.
Chairman: Just for the record, I can
assure you that I do not think anyone on this Committee is talking
in terms of stopping people from flying or halting aviation in
its tracks, that is not where we are coming from at all, but we
are concerned about the proposed growth trajectory. That is what
we are interested in and seeing how we can mitigate that.
Q290 Mr Challen: Can I follow on
from that with a question about technologies because in this paper,
one of the 27 that supported the White Paper, at the end in Annex
E it virtually rubbishes all the other technologies that have
been mentioned. Hydrogen, for example, would have many disadvantages,
biofuels are too difficult, and on fuel emissions the RCEP[5]
finds no serious suggestion of really major change in engine design
for the foreseeable future. It does not go into others, perhaps
a few improvements will be found, but there is nothing to substantiate
the idea that technology, as in George Bush's imagination, is
going to save us from the consequences of great expansion in consumption.
Where are these technologies that are going to help us out of
this fix?
Mr Darling: We did not, as far
as I am aware, consult George Bush when we drew up these proposals.
Q291 Mr Challen: It is his policy.
Mr Darling: In relation to technologies,
as I was saying to the Chairman, I think we can over the next
few years look forward to a steady improvement and more efficiency.
What I was saying to him was in terms of a step change to something
radically more efficient and less environmentally damaging, like
hydrogen fuel cells for example, for cars we reckon that is at
least 20 to 30 years off and for aviation my information is that
it is probably longer than that. For us to have predicated our
argument on that new technology or something radically different
being available on a much closer timescale would have been misleading.
Nobody is in the business of rubbishing technological advances.
Indeed, I think I made the point during my statement to the House
on 16 December that there had been quite substantial advances
made in that engines were much "cleaner" than they were,
say, 25 or 30 years ago.
Q292 Mr Challen: Might I suggest
that one alternative that has not been looked at here is the issue
of dirigibles where you do not need runways and you do not need
airports. This has not been looked at, and perhaps it might be
laughable but it is a technology that was used unsuccessfully
at first but it has now seriously developed and there is no mention
anywhere in the White Paper, as I recall, of that technology that
could perhaps fix many of the problems faced in the context of
global warming. There is a major gap and I hope you could give
a commitment perhaps that that would be looked at in the near
future?
Mr Darling: All I would say to
you is at the moment most people who fly tend to fly in what you
might call a conventional aeroplane.
Q293 Mr Challen: So we cannot possibly
approach their behaviour and try to manage it as we are trying
to do with cars? A lot of people in cars do not like public transport
but we have to tell them that there are alternatives. Could that
not also be applied to aviation?
Mr Darling: Up to a point. For
example, within the UK within this country, as I said to you when
I was here in the summer, I think there are very powerful arguments
for people choosing to travel by train as opposed to aeroplane,
particularly in England where when the West Coast Main Line upgrade
first stage is finished this year, the journey time between Manchester
and London will be just about two hours. That is much, much more
attractive than going out to Manchester airport, flying down to
Heathrow and coming in, whereas in the past two or three years,
when the work has been going on, people have said it is quicker
to do the flying. Obviously in a whole number of ways it has improved
so they could take the train. Similarly, since the Channel Tunnel
Rail Link first stage was opened in September, it has seen a dramatic
increase in passengers and when I last checked this the Channel
Tunnel Rail Link had 60% of the travel market between London and
Paris. This is an example of where people do have a choice and
do have alternatives. When you are talking about people flying
to America or the Far East it is less easy to see (certainly with
America) what alternatives there might be. I am certainly not
against choices, I am not against new technology as and when it
comes along—you would be absolutely mad to be against that.
What I think, though, the Government has a duty to do is to, as
it did here, to look ahead over the next 20 to 30 years and say
what is likely to be around and what is the correct response to
that. As I said right at the start, people can have different
views on that. Simply because you look at an argument and say,
"Well, I am not entirely convinced by it", that is not
to rubbish it nor is it to turn your face against things that
might happen in the future that might cause you to take a different
approach.
Q294 Mr Challen: I will have to look
at the Department's web site and see if there is any work being
done on the form of transport I have just suggested which could
be very suitable for short haul journeys in Europe and cause far
less climate change damage than perhaps the conventional form
of air travel. The Department has predicted a three-fold increase
in passengers per annum compared to what we have now; 180 million
now to 500 million passengers per mile (mppa) in 2030. The White
Paper is trying to satisfy 470 mppa. That rather suggests that
you are just predicting and providing but this is not something
which you have really accepted you are doing, is it?
Mr Darling: No, I have never accepted
that argument. Let me just set out our approach to it. Firstly,
my view of predict and provide is you are building runways on
spec. You are saying, "Let's build them and we hope they
fill up."
Q295 Mr Challen: You would need a
business case to do it, would you not?
Mr Darling: Remember that unlike
the rest of public transport, the aviation infrastructure is to
be built by the private sector not by the Government, so whether
it is Stansted, Heathrow, Birmingham, Edinburgh, wherever, it
is going to be paid for by the private sector. If you take the
South East of England you have a situation where already Heathrow
(certainly), Gatwick (approaching) and Stansted (rapidly) are
reaching capacity. We are talking about building a runway at Stansted
which will not be ready until the beginning of the next decade
and at Heathrow there are big environmental issues to be sorted
there. I hardly think it is fair to accuse us of predicting and
providing in the South East. In the Midlands and Scotland what
we have said is if our predictions are right this is what we think
may be necessary. Remember this is a framework document. It is
not saying you are definitely going to get all these things, there
is still the need for planning permission of course, but what
we are saying is this is the framework, this is what we think
might be necessary and we will proceed accordingly. If, for example,
the demand did not materialise or people found different ways
of travelling then they would not build these extra runways because
there would be no commercial case for having done them.
Q296 Mr Challen: I assume that the
Department's research that led to this prediction has been based
on some solid appraisal. At what point of growth would the Department
find it unacceptable, would it be 600 mppa or 700 or 800? Have
you drawn the line here? What happens if it exceeds those predictions?
Mr Darling: No, our approach was
to look at all the information we had, to set out what we thought
might happen. We consulted, as you know, for over a year. The
general consensus was that our predictions on the information
we had were probably about right. Where there was clearly a difference,
there were people who responded to us to say, "Yes, this
may be right but we think you should do things to stop it rising
that far." There were one or two who said they thought even
more people would fly. My approach on this was of course I looked
at these predictions and of course I looked at the pressures we
are likely to face, but a lot of my approach was driven by the
fact that you test those predictions against what you can see
happening in different parts of the country. If the figures do
not work out that way, if the demand, for one reason or another,
does not look like it is going to materialise, then the runways
will not be built because nobody is going to put up that sort
of money. Building an extra runway and terminal capacity is extremely
expensive.
Q297 Mr Challen: If nothing else
is done and there is a further increase in cheap fare traffic
then clearly growth could go through the roof. The integrated
policy appraisal appended to the White Paper refers constantly
to the Government "encouraging" growth, so clearly you
want to see more growth. It is not so much predict and provide,
it is promote and provide, is it not?
Mr Darling: No. The Government
certainly wants to see economic growth and the Government wants
to see people increasingly become better off and more prosperous,
and the consequence of that is they will probably want to travel
more for business and for pleasure. Obviously, it is in our interest
to provide people choice where that is appropriate, and I mentioned
for example what you can do within the UK, but I sometimes find
that predict and provide is used in a pejorative sense by people
who think you should not be doing this at all. I really think
generally the approach we have taken is a reasonable one given
the pressures that we face. That is not for one minute not to
accept the extremely valid points that are made by you and by
other people about the fact we have got to have regard to the
environmental impact of flying. The two things go together, they
are not distinct. Of course people who do not like the policy
anyway will seek to rubbish us and say, "Of course they did
not consider the environmental impact"; that just is not
right.
Q298 Mr Challen: I draw a distinction
between predicting something and promoting something and this
White Paper seems to encourage and promote growth in air travel.
It does not do anything to limit it. I do not see very much in
the White Paper that actually seeks to manage this growth. We
have seen the consequences of predict and provide in road transport,
which we are now trying to manage.
Mr Darling: Unfortunately, we
did not do too much predicting or providing in road transport.
Q299 Mr Challen: Unfortunately we
got it wrong. I dare say all the predictions were exceeded by
the actualities, and that could well happen here, so what is the
Government doing to try and restrain that growth so that the growth
in aviation and particularly carbon emissions does not sweep out
of the whole arena everything else that the Government is trying
to do with climate change to reduce the UK's emissions.
Mr Darling: Our policy is not
to stop people from travelling. You mentioned the roads for example,
and I think again successive governments either did not predict
or due to various restraints chose to ignore their predictions
and they certainly did not provide. That is one of the reasons
that we have so many congested roads. Our policy must be to enable
people to move around and to travel but to do that in a way that
takes account of the environmental consequences of that. I know
because we spent a lot of time (which I do not propose to go over
again, especially since the Chairman has assured me in relation
to your own beliefs and intentions) in arguing these things last
time, but our policy is not what is crudely termed "demand
management". I know you have heard quite a lot of evidence
on that fairly recently. Where I think we do need to do more is
in areas that were set out in the White Paper in relation to the
charging depending upon the emissions of individual aircraft,
the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and to continue the
argument at international level because that is where these things
are governed about the need to make sure that aviation, like everything
else, meets the cost of the pollution it causes. That is a more
fruitful way of going rather than saying let us try and limit
the number of people who fly and therefore the number of aircraft
that are in the sky.
4 It was later pointed by out by DfT that the actual
publication date 10 February, though the document is dated January. Back
5
Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Back
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