News from The Labour Party

Fitzpatrick: Tory transport policy is now totally incoherent

Jim Fitzpatrick MP, Labour’s Aviation Minister, responding to Theresa Villiers’ outright rejection of Boris Johnson’s Thames Estuary airport plan, said:

“Tory transport policy is now totally incoherent. The Tories can’t get their act together when it comes to airports and keep making headlines on the hoof that unravel under scrutiny.

“They opposed Heathrow expansion during the London election campaign. The Thames Estuary airport plan was meant to be their alternative. Now Theresa Villiers has ruled that out – even though Boris Johnson is still lobbying for it.

“After yet another of their ideas fails to fly – when will they replace unworkable plans with serious leadership for the long term good of the country.”

Theresa Villiers says that support for a new Thames Estuary airport will not be considered by the Tories:

“With regard to media debate on the possibility of a new airport in the Thames Estuary, this is not an option at which the Conservative party is looking. Boris Johnson is considering a range of ideas relevant to transport and aviation links to our capital city but this is his own initiative.”
Theresa Villiers (in a letter to Norman Baker MP), Evening Standard, 13 November 2008

Boris Johnson has consistently said he wants a new airport in the Thames Estuary as an alternative to expansion at Heathrow:

“What we don’t want to do is entrench a planning error of the 1960s by further expansion at Heathrow. We should look at whether there’s a solution to the east, in the Thames Estuary. Anything at Heathrow is just compounding a planning error.”
Boris Johnson, Channel 4 News, 18 January 2008

“I am looking at all the airports around the perimeter, including the option of a new site somewhere in the Thames Estuary, that’s something we should definitely look at. What we are looking at is a way of solving this great capital’s aviation needs without endlessly expanding our number one international airport.”
Boris Johnson, Hillingdon Times, 25 September 2008

Labour has also produced further analysis of the Conservative’s confused transport policy [pdf].

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