The unrelenting 50-year Heathrow saga is a symbol of ‘can’t do’ Britain

Blower cartoon - 29th January 25
Blower cartoon - 29th January 25

Rachel Reeves is expected to give the go ahead for a third runway at Heathrow Airport. But hang on a minute. I have in front of me an archived copy of The Daily Telegraph from June 2018 with a headline reading: “Heathrow expansion: Third runway approved.”

More than that, there was a vote in parliament in which 415 MPs voted for the airport’s expansion with just 119 against, a majority of 296. Yet here we are, nearly seven years later, back to square one.

It is useful to remind ourselves what happened in the meantime. No sooner were the plans announced than the opposition cranked into action. Lawsuits were filed to stop the destruction of homes and environmentalists compiled data about air and noise pollution to demonstrate how another runway would breach umpteen green commitments made by successive governments.

Boris Johnson, then MP for a west London constituency certain to be impacted by the expansion, said he would lie down in front of the bulldozers. Then he became prime minister and put the kibosh on the whole project.

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Nor did this farce only begin in 2018. That decision was based on a report from the UK Airports Commission chaired by Howard Davies and set up by the Coalition amid a five-year moratorium on any consideration of London airport expansion.

The previous Labour government also dillied and dallied, as had every other administration back to the 1970s when it was first mooted that London needed a third international airport to be built to the east or north of the capital.

In 1971, the Roskill Commission proposed a site at Cublington in Bucks to serve London with a four-runway airport. This was rejected by the Heath government for reasons lost in the mists of time and an alternative at Maplin Sands in the Thames Estuary was chosen instead. The Maplin Development Act 1973 was passed by parliament only to be scuppered by the oil-price shock that year, whereupon it was agreed to expand Stansted instead as a hub. That never happened either.

Recent history is littered with stories of half-baked infrastructure schemes either going nowhere or costing far too much. But nothing is more emblematic of this country’s inability any longer to do grands projets than the Heathrow saga.

From being supremely good we have become uniquely bad. It took Brunel just six years to complete the Great Western Railway from London to Bristol after the Act of Parliament was passed in 1835. The preparatory legislation to build HS2 went through in 2013, yet the now slimmed-down line won’t be finished until 2033 at the earliest. This is procrastination on a grand scale.

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If the speculation is correct, Ms Reeves will say Heathrow’s expansion is to go ahead and this time we really mean it. She and Sir Keir Starmer are telling departmental ministers that all policies deemed to be “anti-growth” must be ditched (does that include the Chancellor’s Budget, which has done more to dampen activity and flatten morale than anything?)

To call this grandstanding a triumph of hope over experience would be an understatement. Opposition to Heathrow is fierce among people who live near the airport but is especially so among environmentalists. Stopping it will become an iconic struggle for the climate emergency lobby. Is this group of ministers going to face it down?

The third runway was initially blocked by a legal ruling that ministers had not taken fully into account the UK’s climate change undertakings, a judgment later overturned in the Supreme Court. But Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary and the High Priest of net zero, is adamant that if Heathrow is expanded it must be within the carbon emission targets set out in law and if it isn’t then it won’t happen.

He told MPs on Monday that he believed the two were not mutually exclusive because the emissions could be offset elsewhere. But where, exactly? He could not say. It is evident to everyone except the delusionists at the top of the Government that these two “priorities” cancel each other out.

Net zero is not the only obstacle. The cost is eye-watering as it is with every major project in this country.

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The upgrade and modernisation of Brunel’s Great Western line, for instance, was delayed by two years and costs rose from £874 million to £2.8 billion. The delivery of the new trains was late and they were the most expensive of their kind in the world.

HS2 started off at £32.7 billion and is now north of £100 billion. High-speed lines have been built in France, Japan and Spain at a tenth of the projected cost.

A proposed tunnel for the A303 under Stonehenge, estimated to cost £183 million when first proposed 20 years ago, was priced at £2 billion before the Labour Government finally killed it off.

Heathrow’s third runway is estimated to cost around £14 billion, but that is at 2014 prices. The original plans envisaged a car park that would cost £700 million – more than was spent building a fifth runway at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Why is everything so expensive here? You would be lucky to get change from £50 billion now. The M25 will have to be closed, entire villages demolished, reservoirs filled in, builders found at a time of acute shortage of skills, political and legal challenges faced down.

It is supposed to be funded by the private sector; but why would investors take the risk on a project which has been stymied by political and legal controversy for 50 years? If the market was left to decide, would it really opt for another runway at Heathrow?

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Far more likely would be a bigger expansion of Stansted (forget Gatwick as just getting there is problematic, as passengers found yesterday when a landslip severely reduced the railway connection). It would be (marginally) less contentious, cheaper, the rail link is good and connected into London’s network and the airport could become the hub for flights from the Far East and India, with another runway for short-haul traffic.

Instead of the Government dictating what should happen while expecting the private sector to pay for it, the state should get out of the way and see which attracts the most interest. I somehow doubt it would be Heathrow.