Just where is the UK’s transport policy, asks business travel journalist Stanley Slaughter...
The UK government last week published something called a Scoping Document on developing a sustainable framework for UK aviation.
In his foreword to the document, the transport secretary Philip Hammond said the coalition government since coming to power had begun to make “real progress” straightaway by cancelling the planned third runway at London Heathrow Airport and by “making clear our opposition” to additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted Airports.
He went on to say that the government “makes promoting sustainable aviation one of our five structural reform priorities, with a specific objective to adopt a sustainable framework for aviation in the UK by 2013”.
There are two problems here. First, many businesses and business leaders, both in the UK and abroad, would not regard cancelling the third runway – in effect stifling growth of aviation in south east England – as progress. They made that abundantly clear in 2010.
Secondly, Hammond’s plans for a sustainable framework for aviation by 2013 – three years after the coalition took office – does not seem like it is as much of a rush as the word “priority” might suggest.
He was told as much by UK industry leaders in a letter to The Times last week. Signed by, among many others, John Griffith-Jones, UK chairman of KPMG and Andreas Goss, ceo of Siemens, the letter said: “There is, as yet, no plan to secure the UK’s international connectivity.”
It adds: “Our main airports – particularly in the south east – are blighted by overstretched infrastructure, where the slightest disruption results in thousands of passengers queuing in the terminal and dozens of aircraft circling overhead.”
Put more bluntly, what the industry leaders and many in the travel industry are now saying is that Britain has an aviation system regularly prone to chaos and the government seems in no hurry to do much about it.
It would seem axiomatic that having cancelled the previous administration’s plans to build extra runways, which would at least have eased the worst of Heathrow’s daily congestion, it would make quick moves to offer an alternative.
International connectivity, to use the current phrase, is essential both to the expand trade and assist the men and women who travel the world to win that trade – the business traveller.
Given that the government is basing its hopes of economic recovery significantly on the growth of trade, it might seem that an aviation policy was step one.
It would be bad enough if aviation was the only concern, but there are now doubts hanging over the UK’s plans for a high speed rail network.
Already 30 years behind other countries like France and Germany, Britain’s tentative steps have run into trouble because the selected route is through areas of natural beauty and this is opposed by both environmentalists and local residents.
But there is also a small but vocal lobby which claims the whole scheme is a horrific waste of money and that the £32bn earmarked for the London-Birmingham track would be better spent on improving the existing track and services.
There are no signs yet that the government is having second thoughts on this but it is also early days.
It seems inconceivable that a country whose economy has for hundreds of years depended on vibrant trade is now in such a muddle over the very thing which facilitates this trade: transport.
What is urgently needed, not in 2013 but now, is a policy which aims to improve UK airports so they do not close down after a snowstorm and ensure business travellers an efficient but secure passage through terminals to a plane that takes off on time and goes to the cities which they need to visit to further their employer’s business.
The usual chaos at Heathrow has been a major contributory factor to the drop from 200 destinations to the present 183 in the past six years, while at the same time carriers have reduced their use of the airport.
The great environmental issue of cutting carbon does need to be taken into account – this was one of the main reasons why the Conservatives decided to cancel the third runway. Planes are getting cleaner and more environmentally friendly and bio fuels will play a growing part of the fuel mix (although they are unlikely ever to replace completely the current use of oil).
However, there does need to be a far more efficient use of planes by airlines. Planes which take off with a handful of passengers are doing no one a favour.
It would, of course, be ridiculous to suggest that the government, having set itself so strongly against new runways in the south east, has not got a firm idea of what to do next.
But so far it has given little if any hint of where its thinking lies. Delay risks Heathrow, for example, slipping further and further down the list of airports that passengers and airlines wish to use. For some time it has not been an airport which passengers have visited with enthusiasm.
Gatwick and Stansted also need to improve their passengers’ experience.
But most of all, the UK economy needs to see an aviation policy which helps trade. At the moment it does not have one.