A Third Runway for Heathrow?
Geoff Hoon, the transport secretary has announced that Heathrow will get a third runway. Building should start in 2015 and be complete by 2019. there have been news reports that the government will speed up the planning process so that this runway might be ready in 2015 but that surely is on the understanding that any legal challenges can be dealt with quickly and the words “quickly” and “our legal system” don’t seem to go together. So is this going to happen?
Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are against it and so, we were told earlier, were about 50 Labour M.P’s. After the announcement, it was said that some those 50 had been swayed by concessions on the environment and landing patterns.
Whether it is necessary to have a third terminal or not, it seems to me unlikely that it is going to happen at least in the next six years. Why?
Because it would require Labour to be re-elected in the elections that are less than eighteen months away. That seems unlikely at the moment. If there is a hung parliament and they rely on the LibDems it would seem unlikely that the LibDems could reverse their thoughts and agree to the runway. And if the Conservatives are elected, it seems that David Cameron or Therese Villiers, the shadow transport secretary couldn’t change their staunchly argued views or such a short period.
So it is possible the go-ahead is probably not going to get anywhere until after the 2015 election.
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