When they gave BAA permission to build Terminal 5 a number of years ago, I thought the government promised not to build any further runways. Is this a government of false promises? not false promisers but down right liars I say.
Would the conservatives have done any better though? I hear them on the radio this morning promising to scrap the third runway if they get elected. umm!
1997 "BAA continues to proclaim that runway capacity is not an issue. In a public newsletter it suggests that the inquiry hearings had put to rest concerns raised by Friends of the Earth that T5 was a Trojan horse for a third runway: "...some legitimate fears have been put to rest. We now know for example that there will be no third runway at Heathrow - a widespread concern before the inquiry started" ('Heathrow News, Produced For Local Residents by BAA Heathrow', May 1997). "
1999 "BAA continues to say it does not want a third runway: "...Additional runway ruled out forever whether T5 is approved or not" (BAA press conference, 12 March 1999). "
Liberal democrats imply they would stop it too if elected!
Commenting on today’s expected Government announcement to give the go ahead to the third runway at Heathrow, Susan Kramer, who leads the Liberal Democrats’ campaign against the expansion of Heathrow, said:
“This decision was the big test of Gordon Brown’s commitment to the environment - and he has failed. This utter hypocrisy proves that the Government’s green rhetoric simply cannot be believed. Ministers have changed the planning rules to stifle the voices of local residents and they have ducked a debate and vote in Parliament. The refusal to have a proper debate and vote in the House is a sign of absolute cowardice.”
Interestingly, 15 Liberal Democrat MPs have become co-owners of a plot of land in the line of the proposed runway at Heathrow as ‘beneficiary owners’ of the land through Greenpeace’s Airplot campaign:
