London’s lack of air capacity is an international embarrassment. A can-do Labour government should push through where the Tories failed and build a third runaway at Heathrow, says James Price
As I downed a peculiar American concoction that promised to help me sleep (no, not Jack Daniel’s) for an overnight flight back to Blighty recently, the captain’s voice came over the plane intercom: “Good weather conditions and efficient boarding means that we are ready to leave Chicago early. Unfortunately, because London Heathrow is so congested, we can only be 20 minutes early at best.” Maintained so well through the anti-British teasing of my American in-laws over the 4th of July weekend, my stiff upper lip crumbled. O’Hare has eight runways. Heathrow has two. How we must look to the rest of the world.
Lee Kuan Yew, one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century, knew how important it was to get airports right. Changi International in Singapore was built four years ahead of schedule. It involved the demolition of hundreds of buildings, swamps being drained, thousands of graves exhumed and land reclaimed from the sea. As a result, this tiny island has three runways.
The 20-minute drive into Singapore was designed to make arriving a pleasant experience for visitors, and the whole project was described by LKY as the ‘best S$1.5bn investment we ever made”. And in his memoir, you can hear the relish as he describes how the relentless competition from Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and others forces Changi to constantly improve.
Outside the European Union, Britain should be competing with places like Singapore. Small, nimble. and forward-looking states are also ones that need to be global hubs. Singapore gets this. So too, does the UAE, and it’s no surprise that Dubai boasts another of the best airports in the world. True, it only has two runways, though these run 24 hours a day, its third terminal is the second biggest building in the world, and yes, they are building a new, five-runway airport with 400 gates to be completed in a fraction of the time we have been debating Heathrow’s third.
Even inside the EU, the Netherlands, with its competitive corporate taxes and high human capital has understood the power and benefit of a hub airport. Schiphol outside Amsterdam has five runways and is the world’s third busiest airport by international passengers (behind Dubai and Heathrow), with two to three times as many passengers travelling through it a year as there are Dutch living anywhere in the world.
The competition is fierce, and the prize is huge, but the opposition is also powerful. The principal objections to a third runway at Heathrow (or any extra capacity, for that matter) are cost, residential complaints, and the environment.
The first should be easy enough to solve – the potential investment opportunities are enormous, and the City of London seems ready to help the Chancellor, as reported in this paper two days ago. As for residential complaints and Nimbyism in general, wonk land can help. The Adam Smith Institute has suggested that some of the money raised by Air Passenger Duty could be used to pay those residents most affected as a sensible way to deal with the externalities of noise, congestion, and local air quality. In the longer term, technology that quietens planes and filters urban air will come along and improve things further.
The sacred cow is the environment, of course. Labour’s willingness to use the government’s fleet of private jets to conduct its business (and fly Sir Keir Starmer to watch the football) and their official signalling of support for growth are is highly encouraging. Add in a complete U-turn on ‘nutrient neutrality’ and it sounds like Labour are copying David Cameron’s old exhortation to ‘cut the green crap’.
Whilst they may find it politically necessary to criticise this positive, can-do attitude from the government, the Conservatives will be quietly thanking Labour for taking the decisions they found too difficult. Of course, Labour tried to block these things when in opposition, but that’s politics.
Rather than get mad, the Tories should think about why and how Labour are managing to stand up to their supporters in the green lobby, whilst they caved to their own interest groups. And as any Instagram #girlboss account would say, “Catch flights, not feelings”.
James Price is a former government advisor