High-speed controversy

Planning, 10 October 2008

Opposing a third runway at Heathrow Airport and a second at Stansted will certainly boost Tory leader David Cameron's green credentials, drawing a clear line between his party and the Labour government on the issue of airport expansion.

But whether a high-speed rail network, as the party has proposed instead, will be enough to solve the growing capacity problem and ensure the UK's position in the global economy is hotly debated. In her speech to last week's Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers proposed to make Heathrow the first stop on an extended high-speed rail (HSR) network.

Unveiling plans for 300kph trains, Villiers urged businesses to think "very carefully" before getting involved in Heathrow expansion. A future Tory administration would not be bound to honour the current government's undertaking, she warned. Villiers sees a strong business case for HSR and believes that international experience shows its major benefits.

The Tories would look to build a £20 billion HSR network between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. They would back a scheme along the lines of engineering firm Arup's proposal, linking Heathrow to the main rail network and building a high-speed link to King's Cross St Pancras. Work would begin in 2015, with completion due by 2027.

Unsurprisingly, the move has been denounced by the government. As transport secretary, Ruth Kelly insisted that Heathrow expansion and rail links to the north are both needed to meet rising demand. She claimed that even if all flights between Heathrow and Leeds-Bradford and Manchester are replaced by a fast rail route, the airport will still be operating at 97 per cent capacity.

The business lobby agrees. London First chief executive Baroness Valentine, whose group represents 250 firms in the capital, says: "London could lose its crown to New York or to the increasingly influential Dubai or Shanghai. Ruling out making Heathrow bigger is a bad decision for a global city and the UK economy."

Heathrow operator BAA says HSR will only form one part of the solution to the UK's long-term airport capacity needs. "Our overseas competitors are investing in airports and rail," it notes. "France, a long-time leader in European HSR, has a hub airport at Paris with twice as many runways as Heathrow. Spain has just opened a high-speed line between Barcelona and Madrid and doubled the number of runways at Madrid Airport to four," it points out.

British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh says the Conservatives are "all over the place on aviation" and questions HSR's green credentials. "The trains are heavy beasts and use a lot of electricity. French TGV trains are low on emissions because they use nuclear-generated electricity. The benefits from the HSR network will not be felt until 2027 - or many years later, if the history of other major UK rail projects is anything to go by."

But Villiers told Planning: "Walsh believes that our proposals would take too long, yet a third runway would also take many years to deliver. Even the government says it will not happen before 2020. As well as a deeply controversial planning process, environmental groups are likely to challenge the plans in the European Court of Justice under EU air quality rules. That could hold up construction for years."

This summer, Cameron slammed the government's approach to weighing up the case for a third Heathrow runway (Planning, 20 June, p6). "The government seems hell-bent on pressing ahead without a proper and rigorous analysis of whether it is needed," he said. He believes that the priority should be making Heathrow better, not bigger.

Meanwhile, London mayor Boris Johnson has come out against growth at Heathrow and is instead proposing an island airport in the Thames Estuary (Planning, 26 September, p6). Villiers poured cold water on the idea in her speech last week. "He will be researching different options, including building a new airport in the Thames Estuary, but this is not something we are looking at," she made clear.

For the Green Party, this internal debate reinforces doubts about the consistency of the Tories' aviation policy. "The Tories do not seem to know what they think about airport expansion," says leader Caroline Lucas. "Their leaders say one thing to catch the headlines, but Conservatives on the ground are likely to want to do the opposite."

But the Campaign for Better Transport trusts the Conservatives to honour pledges on Heathrow. "If they go back on this, they will have the two million local residents who will be adversely affected by expansion on their back. I do not think that they would have taken this decision lightly," says the organisation's climate campaigner Richard George.

George thinks that Walsh's fears over the green credentials of high-speed trains are misguided: "With sustained investment, there is no reason why high-speed rail could not be powered primarily by renewable energy. If the aviation industry is so concerned about the perils of climate change, perhaps it would like to join the call for aeroplane emissions to be included in the Climate Change Bill," he suggests.