Wednesday 18th January 2012 | 06:00

Stewart Jackson: Government must demonstrate urgency on its airport capacity policy

Writing exclusively for PoliticsHome, Conservative MP Stewart Jackson says that the Government must demonstrate "the same degree of urgency on its airport capacity policy as it has done on High Speed 2 – or face the economic costs".

Whether or not one agrees with the Government’s £32 billion HS2 policy or not (and many Conservative MPs do not or are at best ambivalent), Transport Secretary Justine Greening’s swift and confident decision making, following on from the mammoth public consultation on the project, has shown leadership as well as commendable alacrity. It demonstrated a policy coherence and vision which is encouraging, even if the data on which it is predicated is woefully inadequate, lacks robustness or is just plain wrong. The legislation will not be brought forward for at least another year and no contracts will be let in this present Parliament.
 
Let’s not forget that HS2 was the quid pro quo for the Conservative Party’s volte face on the third runway at Heathrow – a policy we supported prior to the 2005 General Election but resiled from five years later for pragmatic political reasons.
 
This inevitably meant that potentially the party had a big black hole where an aviation policy once was, a hole it is yet to substantially fill.
 
Quite rightly, many business people and Treasury civil servants committed to developing a plausible growth strategy are asking: Would that the aviation industry and airports in particular were the subject of simfeilar government largesse and political commitment to HS2 or at least the latter?
 
According to an Oxford Economics paper last year, aviation contributes £50 billion a year to the UK economy, it pays £8 billion in tax per annum and it supports 1 million jobs. At the same time, technical innovations mean that the industry has become cleaner, quieter and smarter and the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme will this year ensure that the industry meets its commitment to pay for its carbon emissions.
 
The government’s National Infrastructure Plan published on the 29th November recognised airports as key infrastructure, specifically as “... gateways to international trade” and committed the government “ to improve road and rail connectivity to major….airports.”
 
All fine and dandy except that we haven’t built a new runway in the south east of England, one which could accommodate a large airliner, for 70 years!
 
Air travel has been the fastest growing mode of transport over the last 50 years but as a result of the worldwide economic downturn it peaked in 2007 but Heathrow remains a world leader in many regards with its place as the UK’s main hub airport. In terms of destinations with at least a daily service, it serves more long haul destinations than any other European Union hub and as aircraft at Heathrow have more seats, on average, than the other three biggest European hubs, it handles more passengers. Heathrow is operating at near full capacity by both measures of capacity (runway utilisation and terminal passenger’s capacity) whereas other non-London UK airports are at just 30% of their runway capacity, suggesting that the latter could accommodate a higher proportion of the future demand for air travel. At present, the government forecasts that that air passenger numbers will grow from 211 million passengers per annum (mppa) in 2010 to around 335 mppa by 2030 and 470 mppa by 2050.
 
These projections suggest that if there is no further increase in runway capacity, the three largest London airports (Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted) will be at full capacity in 2030 and that will inevitably lead to pressure on airport provision across Southern England as a whole within twenty years (and well before HS2 in its entirety is completed)!
 
The Coalition Government did commit in late 2010 to undertake a review of UK aviation policy but this will not be completed for at least another year and it is a real fear by key industry players such as Willie Walsh and the Civil Aviation Authority, in their report this month “Aviation Policy for the Future”, that in the interim, we will lose routes, jobs and growth opportunities to our main European competitors, particularly Frankfurt and Amsterdam Schiphol airports respectively. Frankfurt has just opened its fourth runway and Paris Charles de Gaulle and Schiphol are all increasing the frequency of their connections to the vital growth economies of Asia and Central and Latin America.
 
What is more, political uncertainty will undoubtedly cause inward investment in the UK to be adversely affected, without a clear and quick decision on what if any location will be the UK’s international airport hub and its commercial connectivity. Air passengers will the inevitably too face route restrictions and above inflation rate fare price rises in time.
 
Chancellor George Osborne has recently spoken of the need for a decision on UK airport capacity to be settled and he surely concedes the desperate imperative and implications for UK growth. It’s time the government, with the Department of Transport and Treasury in the lead, demonstrated the same political courage and ambition in confronting this most difficult policy problem, as they did with HS2.
 
For the UK aviation industry, it’s the last call and the gate is fast closing. The Coalition Government must act fast in the national interest.
 
Stewart Jackson is the Member of Parliament for Peterborough and was a Communities and Local Government Opposition Spokesman 2008-10