Aviation Strategy

Written evidence from Elizabeth M. Balsom (AS 01)

Heathrow Airport

I have just watched your video on the Parliamentary website, and am writing to you as Chairwoman of the Transport Select Committee because more flights to Heathrow are back on the political agenda. Noisy, well-remunerated advocates suggest that an additional 60,000 flights a year could access this ill-sited airport via mixed-mode, despite the cataclysmic effect this would have on the lives of those of us under the flight path. I am writing to you in the hope of bringing home to decision makers just what it is like to live with unrelenting aircraft noise. I feel I am paying for the mistake I made in coming here 31 years ago, when planes were not the disturbance they are now. I would leave, but I have made a life here, and I have nowhere to go. I take the strongest exception to those expansionists whose attitude to me is: Tough put up and shut up.

1.Committee Membership

It is disappointing and regrettable, indeed it is shameful, given the destructive impact of aircraft noise, that Parliament’s committee on this subject has no members whose constituents’ lives are blighted by aircraft noise. Please can you explain why this is? No doubt you know that people in Putney are troubled and confused at the treatment of Justine Greening, a decent, hard-working MP who is widely liked and respected, and whose efforts to protect us from the hell of yet more aircraft noise are valued by us, yet seem destined to be ignored. I have found media reports of briefings against her distressing. Furthermore, the "money talks" modus operandi and mentality which now permeates every pore of our society is alarming and depressing, breeding cynicism and distrust in the political process and public life.

I well remember that during the Labour government’s consultation on the third runway, week after week on the Westminster House, Tom Harris, a member of your committee, would appear to proclaim that a third runway was essential for his Glasgow constituents. Why should a Scottish MP tell people under the Heathrow flight path that we must put up with even more aircraft noise for his constituents? If he’s so potty about planes, what’s wrong with Prestwick?

Friends who lived opposite me moved to Sunbury in Spelthorne constituency five years ago, partly to be nearer their daughter, but principally because they could no longer bear aircraft noise in Putney. Because of the flight patterns, Spelthorne, although near the airport, does not suffer as we do, as committee member Kwasi Kwarteng, a vocal promoter of expansion, is surely aware. I was shocked by his comments in the Evening Standard, July 9, and am grateful to the Standard for allowing me the opportunity to respond. I noted Mr Kwarteng’s comments that people should be paid £500,000 to get out of their homes, so a third, fourth and heaven knows how many runways could be built at Heathrow. This sort of attitude is beyond the pale. Perhaps Mr Kwarteng can come up with a figure for compensating those of us whose lives are blighted by aircraft noise. I am serious when I suggest £1,000 a week. After all, when everyone else is on the make, getting something for nothing, why shouldn’t I get something for something: putting up with aircraft noise.

2.Advocates of Expansion

We are entitled to ask just who are the people clamouring for more flights to Heathrow and why they are doing so. For some inexplicable reason, every time the then prime minister Tony Blair decreed that Heathrow must expand, particularly at PMQs, the phrase cui bono? flashed into my mind. Mr Blair has certainly done well since he left office.

One of the most recent and loudest expansionists is Tim Yeo. I found the following on his website: www.timyeo.org.uk

‘Tim Yeo has pledged his full support to opponents of a wind farm at Chedburgh. He told a packed meeting at Hawkdeon village hall: "I fully understand why anybody in a community as beautiful as this will be concerned. On shore wind turbines are visually a very considerable intrusion on any landscape. This happens to be one of the most beautiful parts of my constituency which stretches from here to the coast."

"I can hardly think of a less suitable place to put up a series of very, very large wind turbines six and a half times the height of the village church here in Hawkdeon. They would dwarf the cathedral in Bury St Edmunds as well."’

Mr Yeo’s hypocrisy was further outlined in the Mail Online 16/8/12. "He’s the Tory who chairs the Commons climate committee but earns £140,000 from green firms. And he wants to carpet Britain in wind farms (except in his own backyard)."

So Mr Yeo expects other MPs’ constituents to put up and shut up when they object to more aircraft noise, yet supports his own constituents’ objections to a development that will adversely affect them – despite accepting consultancy fees from "green" companies. This is contemptible.

I hope your committee will consider whether MPs whose constituents are unaffected by the noise generated by Heathrow airport should have any voice in a development that will devastate the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of people in west London. We should be told whether they have any financial relationship with the aviation interests demanding expansion. It really is unconscionable that any civilized society should expect a large chunk of its citizenry to tolerate the intolerable.

3.Impact of Noise

How many constituents of MPs pushing for Heathrow expansion are woken by planes at 4.40am as we are? Here in Putney planes continue until 11 pm and some airlines like Emirates want to land throughout the night. Planes fly over my house every 90 seconds at 2000 ft. As soon as one has gone, another takes its place. Think Phil Spector’s "wall of sound". I have double glazing, but they are still audible. Outside, you can‘t hear what someone a few feet away is saying. Gardening is stressful; it is impossible to enjoy a summer's day. Please don’t believe the spin that planes are getting quieter. I often wonder if Willie Walsh goes to plane makers and says: "gimme the noisiest thing you’ve got."

Has anyone affected by aircraft noise every appeared before your committee to give personal testimony of what living with the noise is like? The screech as the planes pass over my house is indescribable. You need to experience it. If you are in the garden talking to a friend, you have continually break off conversation as a plane passes over. I remember an incident when my gardener, a man in his 50s with no hearing problems, was pruning a rose in my small garden. I went to the kitchen door and shouted "David, don’t forget there’s a rose at the front." He turned, came into the kitchen and said: "couldn’t hear you. A plane was going over." He was all of 10 ft away from me. I remember one June afternoon in 2008 when a friend brought her then two and a half year old daughter to visit. We went outside. To my surprise the little girl suddenly pointed skywards and said: "noisy aeroplane". She continued to repeat this as the planes kept coming. A small child, unaware of the political dimensions of Heathrow expansion, was struck by the noise of the planes.

The third runway is a totemic slogan that slips easily off the tongue. What matters is that Heathrow airport should not be expanded, via mixed mode, more runways, or any other trickery the expansionists come up with. When the inspector gave the go-ahead for T5 he did so on condition that aircraft movements at Heathrow should not exceed 480,000 a year, because to go beyond this would inflict on intolerable burden on the quality of life of those under the flight path.

Please could your committee get expansionists to justify why we should be expected to endure more when the devastating effect of aircraft noise has long been recognised?

Please could your committee address the implications of studies by Professor Stephen Stansfeld on the deleterious impact of aircraft noise on children’s learning (e.g. at Munich’s airports), and against this background seek justifications from those who seek to increase the number of flights?

Please could your committee explore the opposition of residents under the Frankfurt flight path (admittedly hundreds of thousands fewer than under the flight path to Heathrow) to more flights, and their objections to night flights (FAZ 27/6/12) not least when airlines like Emirates are seeking to fly into Heathrow at all hours of the night. Obviously my concern is my quality of life in Putney, but it is time for the aviation industry and its supporters to recognise the havoc that it wreaks. People are fed up with aircraft noise.

4.Regional and Other London Airports

At all events, I question the need to focus so much airport expansion on Heathrow. On September 8, Radio 4 news reported that French detectives investigating the Annecy killings flew into London City Airport.

On Feb. 5, the day when Heathrow cancelled hundreds of flights because of a dusting of snow, a friend's niece flew into Manchester airport on time from Islamabad with Qatar airlines. She was on a British Council programme at northern universities and had neither need nor desire to visit London. In December I met up with English friends who live in Adelaide. Because of family business in Stafford it was convenient to fly to Birmingham, again with Qatar. Not everyone in the whole wide world wants to fly to Heathrow.

I trust your committee will examine the potential for developing regional airports. Germany has important airports in addition to Frankfurt: Dusseldorf, Munich, Cologne, Berlin; I realise that Germany is both a larger land mass than the UK and a federation, but there must surely be lessons here. However, one lesson the expansionists should learn from Germany is that residents under the Frankfurt flight path, albeit hundreds of thousands fewer than under the Heathrow flight path, are no more welcoming of aircraft noise than we are.

5.Economic Case

According to WTO figures (FT: 11/4/12), Germany exports eight times more to China than the UK, ten times as much to Russia, twice as much to India (which should be our own backyard). Do expansionists expect me to believe this is because Heathrow has only two runways? Did Dassault win the Indian airforce fighter aircraft contract because Cde G has more runways than Heathrow? I suspect something more fundamental is going on, and this will not be rectified by concreting over yet more of west London.

Perhaps my scepticism was formed ‘in the late 1970s and early 1980s when I worked at the National Economic Development Office with responsibilities for the food and drink manufacturing sector. My colleagues covering a range of industries and I did not see our task as the much derided "picking winners" but in trying to identify why many British companies across the industrial spectrum were less efficient and competent than foreign counterparts and why many, particularly in food manufacturing, seemed reluctant to get involved in exporting. Our balance of trade was negative in most sectors.

Most of the companies I knew well have either folded or are in foreign/private equity hands: Cadbury, Rowntree, Bass, Allied Lyons, Courage, Scottish & Newcastle, United Biscuits, Huntley & Palmer,, Unigate, Greenall Whitley, Avana. Only Unilever is still standing and independent. The passing of ICI and British Steel into foreign hands suggests this pattern may be replicated throughout British industry.

It is immensely encouraging and reassuring that the CEO of Exova Group (letters 15/5) believes this situation can be rectified by building a third runway at Heathrow. and that if this is built, British exports will soar. Based on my experience and looking back over the past 35 years, my reaction is "pull the other one" ’. (Letter published in The Times 18/5/12, reprinted in The Week.)

Expansionists peddle the "hub" argument which some of us find hard to understand. I know Heathrow is a virtual shopping mall, with more shops than seats for passengers, but do people actually buy more suitcases, shoes, booze etc when their hold luggage is already in transit and cabin baggage is limited? I understand that transit passengers need cafeterias, but even seasoned travelers tend to be most concerned about getting to the gate for their next flight than getting out their credit cards. How much money do transferring fliers actually spend, and how much of this filters down to UK plc? I am not interested in the financial health of Spanish companies except in so far as that country’s dire economic plight impacts on the UK.

6.Sharing the Riches

Please can your committee explore how I, as a pensioner with a small fixed annuity (I lost money in Equitable Life), whose savings are generating zilch and whose value is being eroded by QE, can share in the exponential growth in wealth the expansionists claim will result from ever more flights to the ill-sited Heathrow. After all, as we know, many of the people who take the decisions affecting our lives are on "nice little earners" from this interest or that. Why should I lose out?

We're a pathetic country if the only way of meeting its country's aviation needs is by imposing further misery on hundreds of thousands of its citizens. We rightly despise other countries that act in similar fashion; Stalin’s collectivisation of the kulaks comes to mind. Aircraft noise is not a joke. When I came here in 1981 planes were not an issue; now they represent an ever present degradation of my quality of life. The prospect of more flights via mixed-mode is unendurable. At the very least we need our half day respite.

One recent night, about 11.00 pm, I was cleaning my teeth, getting ready for bed. The planes had been overhead, non-stop since 3.00 pm. For some inexplicable reason I was suddenly jerked back to being a very small child when, as I was getting into bed, my mother would say, "say your prayers". It occurred to me that if I still got down on my knees before getting into    bed I would say, "Please Jesus, Take the noise away". It really is that bad and the noise is getting worse. I’m not alone in feeling this. I trust your committee has the scope to reflect on this.

18 September 2012