Archived press release

Government airport plans: bad news for us all

23 July 2002

"We will ensure that the future of the aviation industry is a sustainable one" (Government policy document “The Future of Aviation”, December 2000)

Friends of the Earth today slammed the Government’s plans for airport growth across Britain, calling it “proof positive that the aviation industry is out of control”. The options for airport growth, set out in a series of regionally based consultation papers published today, include:

• A new airport at Cliffe in Kent
• A new runway at Heathrow (despite the promises made by BAA at the Terminal 5 Inquiry)
• Developing Stansted into a “hub” airport, with up to three new runways
• A new freight/low cost flight airport at Alconbury (near Huntingdon), which will revive the successful battle of local people to prevent previous plans for expansion
• Regional developments in Cardiff, Manchester, Birmingham or East Midlands, and Bristol.

Transport Secretary Alistair Darling repeated the Government’s 1998 promise that the aviation industry should cover its environmental costs. But it doesn’t – and the Government has no known plans to change the tax regime to ensure that it does.

Key problems with the plans include:

1. It is wrong to plan for expansion without any moves to ensure that the industry pays for the costs it imposes on society, in terms of noise, air pollution, road traffic, climate change etc. Across the EU these costs are estimated at about £10 billion a year. In the UK one in eight people are already estimated to be adversely affected by aircraft noise. Airports should also be required to meet air and noise pollution limits imposed on other industries.
2. The current forecast growth in the industry assumes that it keeps its tax breaks – including the absence of any tax on aviation fuel. These are estimated to be worth about £7 billion a year, enough additional money, for example, to help pay for a cheap and efficient public railway. Key tax breaks include:
   • no tax on aviation fuel – worth £5 billion a year
   • no VAT on air tickets or fuel – worth £2.6 billion a year
   • Duty free goods are worth £0.5 billion a year
   • The industry pays only £1 billion in air passenger duty (recently cut from £20 to £5 a head)
3. Meeting the forecast demand of 400 million air passenger movements a year by 2020 and 500 million by 2030 (up from 180 million today) would require a new airport the current size of Stansted every year for the next 30 years.
4. A particularly absurd element in the regional studies is the plan for more internal flights in Wales, to substitute for inadequate North-South surface transport links, rather than spending increased tax revenues from civil aviation on improving those links
5. The decision not to proceed with expansion at Gatwick before 2019 – because of a legal agreement - shows the type of campaign objective which local people at other threatened locations will now work towards.

Commenting, FOE aviation campaigner Paul de Zylva said:

“Today’s announcement is terrible news for the environment and for local communities across the country, and proof positive that the lumbering monster that is the aviation industry is well and truly out of control. Before planning for a massive expansion of airports around Britain, let the aviation industry stand on its own two feet and pay its way. That would provide billions of pounds that could be spent on health, on education, or on running a decent public transport system.

This announcement and the regional studies that go with it are the biased result of lobbying and political insider dealing by an industry that feeds off giant tax breaks from compliant Governments. In that sense, Mr Darling is quite right to say that doing nothing is not an option – successive Governments have done nothing for decades to bring the aviation industry under control.”

Notes

1. FOE, the Aviation Environment Federation, the Council for the Protection of Rural England, the National Society for Clean Air and Transport 2000, supported by the leading individual airport community campaigns - have formed AirportWatch, to oppose the industry’s plans for expansion. In the next three months the AirportWatch Roadshow will be holding meetings at every major airport expansion location. The coalition’s report “Flying into Trouble” can be downloaded at www.airportwatch.org.uk.

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust