Business Travel iQ
The UK's most senior civil servant, cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, has apparently advised Government ministers not to comment on the Airports Commission recommendation that a third runway be built at Heathrow to deal with the shortage in UK air capacity.
The reason apparently is to minimise any possibility of a judicial challenge to any decision.
The review and recommendation process has already taken many years. Any judicial challenge would add even more before any work could begin.
The anxiety shows how seriously Westminster is taking the issue of airport capacity.
The principles upon which transport infrastructure decision-making is based have been reviewed and revised quite seriously recently.
The discussion about HS2 brought the need for faster rail links in the UK into question for reasons such as less need for business travel (more meetings being held via alternative technology) and the fact that the ability to work on trains means that business's need for quick connections are not as vital as they might have been in the past.
The air capacity issue has not been debated around speed. Instead it has been debated around whether pressure on demand is real or imagined and into that has slipped confusion about the purpose of airport capacity. Locations matter. Creating an airport somewhere where it seems there could be less voter opposition also means that there could be a dearth of travellers, not to mention airport workers and, errr, the airlines themselves.
Airports are not merely about asking the residents of one area to travel to and from another. They're about moving people round the world. Many of the people who use Heathrow are not holidaymakers embarking for two weeks of Med sun or tourists wanting to visit London. They are instead international travellers making connections through this country. These connections not only provide many jobs but they mean that British locations are more easily accessible and thus more attractive destinations for international companies' European offices. This means jobs — and prosperity.
Many in the M25 corridor bemoan the potential for more traffic that a third runway could bring to that region. That traffic may bring pollution and noise (although far less with modern aircraft than has historically been the case). Noise and pollution are also, however, part of the economic activity, and hence prosperity, which that part of the country has undoubtedly enjoyed.
A desire not to want more flights is perfectly understandable. But keeping one thing the same never guarantees that everything else will also stay so.