Heathrow - More Political Prevarication and Delays

Ready to Split?

The FT today reports "deep splits" between the coalition parties over whether to build a third runway.   Actually both the Conservatives and Lib-Dems went into the last election rejecting the third runway option which the Labour government had already approved.  In the honeymoon period after the election there was no surprise when HTR3 was cancelled by the coalition having secured a number of West London seats. 

Now with increasing pressure from the industry, business and the unions as well as from evidence from positive independent academic studies the Tories are having to reconsider their position. Meantime the LibDems seem absolutely to have set their faces against any runway capacity expansion in the South-East. Unfortunately they are not saying how they would propose to maintain, let alone increase, the current UK economy's level of overseas trade without that extra capacity.   Hence the split.  

Its clear from the FT article today http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6bfb7010-c37b-11e1-ad80-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1zSEfGVCN  that as usual, delay rather than dispatch is the watchword on Westminster delivering a clear aviation policy, particularly as far as HTR3 is concerned.

A Government paper calling for evidence from the aviation industry as a whole about how to preserve the UK as an international hub is already three months overdue.  Sadly it now looks as if the Government will throw the ball back to the industry when that paper does come out the aim of which is to establish ways to preserve the UK as a leading aviation hub.  This also perhaps means that Government will be calling for a delay of several years before conclusions are arrived at from evidence supplied by the aviation industry.  The delay is presented as being in order "to give the industry time to develop properly costed responses".  This is so ironic in that the industry is absolutely clear that Heathrow is already a major European hub and that in order for it to continue as such it needs more capacity to compete with the likes of Frankfurt which has four runways.... 

The problem with politics is that politicians think in terms of the next election and how best to get a majority government.  This mind-set leads to short-term tactics driven by political expediency.  These criteria do not deliver the best strategies for ensuring long term economic success.  By delaying feedback from the industry for another couple of years and pushing back final decisions on airport strategy until potentially after the next election, the UK not only risks, but already is, being left left behind by its European rivals when it comes to connectivity to the growing markets of the Far East and South America. 

We all have to hope that the Eurozone crisis will be sorted out eventually.  That may take several if not a decade, years to achieve.  Sadly the delay in taking the vital decision about increasing UK airport capacity in the South East means that even if they do come up with a strategy,  lead times for runway expansion are typically at least five to seven of years.   Consequently, with surplus capacity already a fact in European competitors' airports,  by then the UK will be ill-placed to compete and will continue to loose ground to competitors for access to BRICS markets.