Third London Airport (Roskill Commission Report)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 4 March 1971.

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Photo of Mr David Renton Mr David Renton , Huntingdonshire 12:00, 4 March 1971

I disagree with the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) on many of his points, but I will ease the minds of many hon. Members by saying that it would not be right for me to take up time by answering all his arguments.

I welcome the candour with which the right hon. Gentleman spoke about the terms of reference. I agree with him that it is probably right for us to think more in terms of a two-runway third London airport than the four-runway airport which he envisaged at the time the Roskill Commission was appointed. The appointment of the Roskill Commission was welcomed by both sides of the House and, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly said, there was consultation between the Front Benches before its appointment and its terms of reference were established.

The Government were wise to defer a decision until the matter had been fully debated in both Houses. There was a most valuable debate in the other place, and I believe that we are likely to have an exceedingly valuable debate in this House today. I hope that the Government will not then long delay the decision and that the decision will be made in the light of what has been said in both Houses of Parliament. My right hon. Friends may well find that a fairly clear consensus will emerge above the controversy.

Although in the opinion of so many people the Roskill Commission reached the wrong conclusion, it must be said that it carried out the most formidable logistical study in depth ever undertaken in this country and, as the right hon. Gentleman said, probably in any country. If genius has been rightly described as "an infinite capacity for taking pains"—though that is a somewhat cynical description—I would say that the Commission has made a brave attempt indeed. The information it has gathered is of value to Government and to Parliament in expressing their views on this matter. The information may well form a provisional pattern for the kind of approach which needs to be made to some of our modern problems. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings) will be dealing with The weaknesses of the way in which cost benefit analyses were used by the Commission and I do not propose to deal with that matter other than in a general way.

The Commission cannot be blamed for not being provided with a national airports policy. It was asked to assume the need for a third London airport and to inquire into the timing of it. In doing so, it proved conclusively, in my opinion, that there is a need for a third London airport, although I agree with the right hon. Member for Grimsby that it should be a two-runway airport.

I will briefly set out my reasons for thinking why the Commission proved that to be the case. Heathrow is already handling 250,000 flights a year. The noise of those flights affects 700,000 households with 2½ million people living in them within the 35 NNI contour. That nuisance is already unbearable. We should urge the Government to reduce the use of Heathrow. With overloading, it has a capacity of 330,000 flights a year and it could reach that figure in three years' time. It could outgrow its capacity before many years have passed.

Gatwick, Luton and Stansted already produce a big enough noise problem for people who live round them, even without their flight capacities being enlarged in in any way at all by more intensive use of existing runways or by making new runways which would in any event have bad environmental results.

Therefore, it would be utterly wrong to solve the problem of the undoubted growth of air traffic in London and the South-East by a greater use of existing airports.

It is also not a solution of the problem—and here I agree with the right hon. Gentleman—to say that somehow we should compromise and get an airport which would be of use to the Midlands and the North of England as well. This is a South-East problem. We have only to turn to Table 12, on page 192, and to Table 10·5, on page 103, to realise that some 70 per cent. of the traffic now and if Foulness is chosen, 80 per cent. of the traffic in 1981, would arise from London and the South-East. Those figures prove the need for a third London airport.