Airports Policy

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 11:32 pm on 17 June 1985.

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Photo of Michael Spicer Michael Spicer Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport) 11:32, 17 June 1985

My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock and Burntwood (Mr. Howarth) has given a great deal of thought to the capacity at Heathrow and I shall have further comments to make about it. But whether or not distribution should be left to the scheduling committee, at peak hours there is a capacity problem. The question is not whether or not we should do something, but what we should do, and that problem is with us already.

The urgency of the question is caused by the continuing astonishing growth of traffic in the London system, which has been at an 8 per cent. compound rate during the past 24 years and is now growing even faster. An important part of our case is that this has happened despite the equally astounding traffic growth at many of the regional airports, in particular at Manchester, Glasgow, East Midlands and Bristol. Incidentally, we forecast that regional traffic would grow at even faster rate than in the London system.

Some of my hon. Friends, including my hon Friend the Member for Cannock and Burntwood, have argued that saturation of the London system is more apparent than real. They have said, for instance, that airports in America are able to accommodate a higher landing and take-off rate per hour than does either Heathrow or Gatwick.

Leaving aside the fact that the Americans seem to be prepared to accept longer delays at their airports than our travelling public, the argument ignores one rather important factor, which is the special mix of aircraft at Heathrow and Gatwick, to which reference has been made this evening. The matter is complex, and I do not intend to bore the House with it. The House might consider whether a Select Committee should probe the matter a little more deeply. Broadly, the problem is one that air turbulence left in the wake of large aircraft can seriously destabilise the smaller aircraft following behind.

As the proportion of larger aircraft rises, so the spacing between the aircraft must widen and the total number of landings diminishes. That is the reason—and this meets the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel)—that despite the fact that we have removed the air transport movement limit at Heathrow, we expect ATMs, having risen to 300,000, to fall back to more than 290,000 by 1990 and right back to 275,000 by the year 2000. I hope that that is some reassurance to my hon. Friends, especially my right hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Sir H. Atkins) and my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Barnes (Mr. Hanley).