More on Heathrow

Andrew Slaughter, Labour MP for the northern part of next-door Hammersmith & Fulham (and former Leader of the council there which was one of the founders of the anti-Heathrow organisation that is now the 3M Group) , has written this about the Heathrow decision, which builds upon my comments of Thursday.

When the announcement on Heathrow expansion came on Thursday, after many delays, there were some surprises. Mixed mode - the doubling of traffic and noise on existing runways - has been dropped.

This is good news for millions of Londoners - including those in the southern half of Hammersmith & Fulham, not only because runway alternation will continue granting half a day of peace but because mixed mode could have been introduced almost immediately.

The binding undertakings on noise and pollution and the promised new high-speed rail links are also more than we were expecting even a week ago.

But while I don't doubt the sincerity of Ed Miliband and Hilary Benn, who secured the guarantees that additional flights would not be allowed unless environmental targets were met, I do doubt the honesty of BAA to keep to those promises over the coming decades.

But - and it is an enornmous BUT - all the safeguards and mitigation in the world can't disguise the fact the BAA is intending to build effectively a new airport in the most densely populated area of the country (The capacity of the third runway alone will make it the third biggest 'airport' after Heathrow and Gatwick).

Hundreds of thousands of people living across London will experience sustained aircraft noise for the first time and the pressure on overloaded tube lines and motorways will not be sustainable.

Personally, I believe that the logic of Runway 3 is so faulted that it will never be built and I intend to continue to campaign against it. There are legal challenges underway and the planning process is far from clear. In the current economic climate it looks like a white elephant and the coalition against it is expressed in the 130 MPs from all parties who have condemned it.

Curiously, only 30 Tory MPs have signalled their opposition (compared with 50 Labour), supporting a story in the Financial Times today that many shadow cabinet members are secretly in favour.

Heathrow expansion threatens our quality of life in west London and the wider environmental interest of Britain and the world. It demands the broadest coalition to oppose it.