"Why Sacrifice Your Green Credentials?": Inside Labour's Battle Over Heathrow Expansion
11 min read
A conflict is brewing inside the Labour Party over whether to expand the UK’s largest airport. Noah Vickers reports on the resistance Heathrow will face in its bid for a third runway
When Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in January that the government was throwing its support behind a third runway at Britain’s largest airport, it marked a critical turning point for Labour’s growth agenda.
The party had entered office promising to “kickstart” the economy by “forging ahead” with “nationally significant infrastructure”, but Heathrow expansion was not expected to form part of that mission – not least because Keir Starmer and several of his Cabinet had voted against the scheme only a few years ago.
The debate over whether to build the runway is among the most vexed in modern political history. Heathrow first publicly called for it in 2003. Gordon Brown’s government announced its support in 2009, before David Cameron withdrew that support in 2010. Just two years later, Cameron was reconsidering the issue, and a vote in Parliament was held during Theresa May’s premiership in 2018.
MPs voted by 415 votes to 119 in favour of expansion – but the scheme immediately came under fire from environmental campaigners, local councils of all political stripes and London mayor Sadiq Khan, who together mounted a legal challenge.
In 2020, the Court of Appeal found that the government’s approval of the project was unlawful, as it had failed to take account of the 2015 Paris climate accords.
“Congratulations to the climate campaigners,” tweeted Starmer. “There is no more important challenge than the climate emergency.”
That verdict was overturned several months later by the Supreme Court, but by then Britain was in the throes of the Covid pandemic and the expansion plans were put on ice.
“Perhaps more than any other,” said Reeves, a decision over Heathrow “has been ducked” by successive governments. Saying yes to the scheme would “boost investment, increase exports and make the UK more open and more connected”.
Yet for a party wanting to show voters how it can grow the economy, Heathrow is not a quick win. Flights are not expected to take off from the new runway for another decade at the earliest – and that is only if the planning process runs completely smoothly, aided by the Planning and Infrastructure Bill gaining royal assent at the end of this year.
Even with planning reforms in place, Heathrow says it would only be able to apply for a Development Consent Order (DCO) in 2028, as it would have to carry out a round of consultation first. DCO approval would only come in 2029, and construction would have to begin immediately. Only then, “from 2035”, could the runway be finished and ready to use, according to Heathrow.
For this reason, some MPs suggest that ministers prioritise faster projects.
“It makes sense to focus on what will deliver growth most rapidly,” says Ben Coleman, Labour MP for Chelsea and Fulham. “There may be quicker, easier options for airport expansion elsewhere in London and beyond.”
The timing is also an issue for London’s Labour councils. The boroughs of Wandsworth, and Hammersmith and Fulham were both part of the previous legal effort against expansion. Wandsworth was Tory-run at the time, but the Labour opposition who now run the authority were equally opposed. Both councils say they remain against a third runway, but they also appear to be treading more carefully than before, as each refused to grant The House an interview on the topic with their leaders.
“I think the reason that some are quieter at the moment is that we’ve got London borough elections next year,” says Heathrow’s local MP, John McDonnell, “and the last thing we want is big rows and splits in advance of that. It’s a truism that people don’t vote for a split party.”
Yet the former shadow chancellor fears this approach could backfire, as Labour’s opponents “could make this a local election issue if we’re not careful”.
He also points out that the decision over granting the DCO will be made just as the government is seeking re-election.
“I can’t see what political strategist could think that making this decision just before the general election in 2029, and imposing it on certain constituencies, is a good thing and won’t do us damage,” says McDonnell, who warns it will leave the party vulnerable to attack from rivals on the left.
“It will become the iconic battleground for climate change campaigns in the country. It damages Labour’s green credentials in such a way that – despite all the good work [Energy Secretary] Ed Miliband is doing – we could be in a situation where we go into the next election being campaigned against [on the environment], offering to the Greens or even to the new left party an ideal policy position that they can mobilise against us on.
“Why sacrifice your green credentials when you’re doing so well in so many other policy areas like this, for something that is likely not to be built anyway?”
For the Treasury, the £49bn scheme is attractive because Heathrow is promising to provide 100 per cent of the funding, and the government can meanwhile pitch itself as willing to take tough decisions in its pursuit of growth. The airport insists: “No taxpayer money will be used to deliver a third runway, associated terminal upgrades or supporting airport infrastructure.”
Yet several MPs are sceptical of this, as Heathrow is not simply proposing to build a third runway on its existing premises. Instead, it wants to build it across what is currently the M25, and to re-route the UK’s busiest motorway underneath the runway via a new tunnel.
An alternative proposal submitted by the hotel tycoon Surinder Arora has suggested building a shorter runway which would not disrupt the M25, though it would mean building across the airport’s main access road from the M4. That scheme has been costed at £25bn, though unlike Heathrow’s proposal, it doesn’t include the cost of redeveloping the airport’s central area, which could add £15bn to the bill.
McDonnell points out that Heathrow is already burdened by nearly £20bn of debt and predicts that “the begging bowl will come to the government”. The airport says its debt level “is entirely appropriate for a stable, highly-regulated utility with a strong business model”. It claims to have “a track record of delivering large-scale, fully privately funded infrastructure on time and on budget”.
While the Labour government has already approved expansion plans at London City, Luton and Gatwick airports, the project at Heathrow is on a much larger scale.
Heathrow expects the third runway to boost the airport’s capacity to 150 million passengers per year, a 79 per cent increase from its current 84 million per year. But MPs point out that the surface transport options for reaching Heathrow are already under strain – partly because the only way of reaching the airport by train is from central or west London, with no rail links providing access from outside the capital.
While Heathrow says it is “exploring the option of promoting a new rail scheme” to the south and west of the airport, the construction of that project is not included in the £49bn package. The airport points out that such a rail scheme would likely have “a much wider benefit” beyond Heathrow, and says it will continue to discuss the concept with the government.
Do we really want to screw other sectors on their carbon budgets, for the sake of the top 20 per cent of earners to have another nice time?
Even if surface transport wasn’t an issue, Ruth Cadbury, Labour MP for Brentford and Isleworth, questions who will benefit most from the 276,000 additional flights enabled by the runway each year.
“What is this market that we are creating?” she asks. “Business travel is not growing… The biggest growth has been high earners going for their second, third, fourth [holiday of the year]. Winter sun, winter skiing, city breaks.”
According to research by the New Economics Foundation, ‘ultra-frequent flyers’ – defined as those who take six or more return flights a year – are indeed “the biggest drivers of the UK’s growth in passenger numbers”. Their household incomes are around 37 per cent higher than the average passenger, they are far likelier to travel in luxury classes, and most of their travel is for leisure, not business.
While Heathrow claims expansion “will mean more choice and lower air fares”, Cadbury – who chairs the Transport Select Committee – argues there is a “massive class issue” at stake.
“Do we really want to screw other sectors on their carbon budgets, for the sake of the top 20 per cent of earners to have another nice time?” she asks.
Cadbury is also doubtful of the project’s economic benefits, claiming that the growth it would bring would amount to a “rounding error”. In her January speech, Reeves cited a study which found that a third runway could increase the UK’s GDP by 0.43 per cent by 2050, though this is lower than the 0.65-0.75 per cent estimated by the independent Airports Commission back in 2015.
Officially, Labour remains committed to its “four tests” on airport expansion, namely that an increase in capacity will be delivered, that the UK can meet its carbon reduction commitments, that noise and local air pollution is minimised, and that the benefits of expansion be felt across the country – not just in London and the south east.
Leonie Cooper, deputy leader of the Labour group on the London Assembly, tells The House that at City Hall, her party is unanimously opposed to the scheme on environmental grounds.
Is there no version of a third runway which could possibly meet all four of Labour’s tests, as far as Cooper can see?
“Well, I suppose if the planes were silent,” she says, “and they weren’t burning fuel that created millions more tons worth of CO2 going into the atmosphere…
“It’s just really hard to see at the moment how it could work, because the surface transport isn’t there, the emission of air-pollutants – I don’t see how we can reduce that any time soon – [and] the emission of climate-impacting gasses isn’t going to change, surely, either.”
The House has also spoken to several Labour MPs, mostly with non-London constituencies, who do believe the scheme can comply with the UK’s environmental obligations, thanks to the development of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). But the SAF industry is still in its infancy, and the government is only requiring 22 per cent of UK jet fuel to be supplied by SAF by 2040.
We don’t want this to be another debacle that we’ve had in policy-making imposed upon us largely by the Treasury
Leading the charge against the runway is Sadiq Khan. In the time since the project was last debated, the mayor has staked much of his political legacy on cleaning up the capital’s air quality – having already stood up to his party’s leadership over his expansion of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (Ulez) in 2023.
“All of the gains we have made by Ulez would be lost by a third runway,” Khan has warned. He has also not ruled out taking fresh legal action against the scheme, as he has pledged to use “all the tools in my tool kit if I think it’s wrong in terms of Londoners’ interest, and indeed the national interest”.
McDonnell believes the mayor will be backed by several of his colleagues in the parliamentary party in making the case against Heathrow.
“There’s that general feeling about policy mistakes being imposed on us by the Treasury,” he says. “The winter fuel allowance debacle we’ve had; we’ve just gone through the disability benefits disaster; and now we’re faced with the two-child [benefit cap and] child poverty issues.
“People are just thinking, look, there’s so many rows going on here and mistakes being made, I think people are saying behind the scenes, can’t we learn a few lessons? We don’t want this to be another debacle that we’ve had in policy-making imposed upon us largely by the Treasury.”
A Heathrow spokesman tells The House that the third runway will be “a project in the national interest”, adding: “The benefits of expanding the UK’s hub airport go far beyond passengers.
“It will reduce airfares, add 50 per cent capacity to the country’s biggest port by value of trade, create tens of thousands of life-long career opportunities at the UK’s largest single site of employment, and unleash billions in private investment into our nationwide supply chain, with 60 per cent of the benefit felt outside London and the south east.”
