Select Committee Report

Manston: one last diversion

One of the few pieces of advice I’ve ever paid attention to is: ask yourself “What’s really going on here?” So… what was the Select Committee about, and why did it spend so much time looking at Manston?

The publicly stated remit for the Committee was to inquire on the “role of smaller airports, and the steps the Government and EU are taking to support them”. In practice, there was little exploration of their role, and much more emphasis on how to support them. In aviation, support usually means tax breaks - in this case the tax is Air Passenger Duty (APD).

The aviation industry has complained about APD ever since it was invented, and regional devolution has made things worse. Northern Ireland’s Belfast airport clearly illustrates the disadvantage of APD in the business it loses to neighbouring Dublin airport. Scotland has the power to drop APD, which would jeopardize Newcastle airport. If Wales does likewise, Bristol airport would be threatened. All the smaller airports in England are getting twitchy, complaining it’s not a level playing field.

The Select Committee provided the aviation industry with a forum to air its grievances about APD. The Committee’s report provides the Department for Transport and the (English) smaller airports with a stick with which to beat the Treasury. In that respect, it’s served its purpose.

So what about Manston?

Manston airport had already closed before the inquiry started. The Select Committee considered Manston as a case study "both to inform our wider recommendations and because the Kent public are concerned". In fact, the amount of "concern" in Kent had been exaggerated by aviation lobby groups, and then magnified by Sir Roger Gale’s access to Ministers and media. Manston turned out to be little more than a diversion.

Inexplicably, the Select Committee failed to take the opportunity to be “informed” by the people they questioned. Alastair Welch had been General Manager at Stansted, and then bucked the national trend in making Southend Airport a success. In contrast, Tony Freudmann (part of the team that wants to grab the site) has been closely involved with more aviation failures than anyone else I know.

It was a perfect opportunity for the Select Committee to find out what makes a small airport succeed, what makes it fail, and what role APD might play. And they fluffed it. Instead, they spent a large portion of their precious time delving into the share-holdings and ownership of the companies that own the ex-airport site.

I got the impression that the Committee Chair, Louise Ellman, didn’t fully understand the questions she was asking on this subject, let alone the answers. I suspect she had been fed the questions by Sir Roger, who in turn had been fed by the “pro-Manston” groups. The Select Committee learnt nothing from their case study of Manston that could usefully be applied to other smaller airports, or to their consideration of the impact of APD.

The Committee’s remit covered 40 or so airports across the country - open, active airports. Why did they spend so much time asking Sir Roger’s questions about a closed airport? For the same reason Minister Hayes came to Kent to re-announce a DfT inquiry while standing next to a parliamentary candidate - electioneering.

Anyway, on with the report…

* * * SPOILER ALERT * *  *

There’s a lengthy rehash of the time wasted on the 2nd and 23rd Feb - Manston’s history and irrelevant questions about ownership. Ann Gloag is invited to publish her commercial arrangements, TDC is dissed for being small fry, KCC and DfT are rebuked for not having been more helpful, DfT is encouraged to play the sensible grown-up, and the Government confirms it has no interest in buying Manston.

In TDC’s place, I would be peeved - central Government has no “right of oversight”, the Council has followed due process, and that should be the end of it. The Committee haven’t considered the possibility that it didn’t take long, and didn’t cost much, for TDC to reach their decision simply because it was so obvious. (Is this 6 month old company, based in a foreign tax haven, with no accounts, and no up-front cash a prudent choice? No.)

In KCC’s place, I would be peeved - yes, KCC did change their minds… because the facts changed. For years assorted owners had been telling KCC that the airport was a sure-fire winner. Then the owner tells them it’s a dead duck. And it’s not central Government’s place to tell KCC how to spend its budget, just as it's not KCC's place to prop up a failed business. KCC's job is to focus on what's best for Kent, and KCC has clearly decided that regeneration is the best available option.

In Ann Gloag’s place, I would tell them to take a running jump.

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SC Report by NoNightFlights

Brazier's assertions

Telling it like it isn't

Following the horrifying revelation that one of our elected representatives has been misrepresenting us, I have unleashed the merciless Mrs Earplugs. Blessed with eternal youth, bionic implants and the ability to kick-box without scuffing her Manolo Blahnik's, Mrs E now has the bit firmly between her razor-sharp teeth. We're not at DefCon 5 (unbridled bloodlust), but she's getting that restless, questing look in her eyes.

As an antidote to the heavily skewed, unfounded and wishful PR prattle that the ever-supportive Brazier presented to Louise Ellman (chair of the Transport Committee), Mrs E sent her the following:

Julian Brazier has written to you claiming that there is widespread public support for more use to be made of Manston airport (Kent International Airport). There isn’t.

Thanet County Council supports the airport and so does Kent County Council. Canterbury City Council, who represents a large constituency under the flight path, has significant concerns about the way in which the airport is regulated and monitored now, let alone what the impact might be were it to expand.

The last public consultation about Manston was carried out by MORI in Thanet in 2005. Focus groups included those most affected by the flight path, i.e. Ramsgate residents. Of those:

• 67% opposed airport expansion;
• 78% thought noise and air pollution would be big problems;
• 90% wanted night flying hours to be restricted.

Thanet District Council says more recent public consultation shows support for the airport. However, they have declined to release the report that would demonstrate this, even when requested to do so by the statutory body set up to lead consultation on Manston, i.e. the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee. Claims that there is widespread support can not be substantiated. Claims that there is widespread opposition can. Roger Gale MP and Paul Carter (Leader of Kent County Council) are fond of saying that Manston has one of the longest runways in the UK (it hasn’t, thirteen other airports outstrip it) and that it is surrounded on three sides by sea so the impact on people is minimal. A quick look at the map will show you that the runway runs almost exactly East to West. Depending on the wind, planes come in on a straight line either over Ramsgate (pop. 39,600) or Herne Bay (pop. 35,200). That’s a lot of unhappy people on the flight path. In a recent meeting of Herne Bay councillors, there was unanimous cross-party support for the proposal to get a more balanced debate going about the pros and cons of Manston and to prevent the impact of the airport on Herne Bay from getting worse. This agreement transcended the normal party political divide and can not in any way be described as support for Manston to expand. Local opposition is in response to a number of issues:

• Manston operates in an unregulated and unmonitored way, with sub standard noise monitoring; a willingness to allow unscheduled flights to land any time day or night; and an unwillingness to levy fines for planes that land outside the S.106 agreement because the Chief Executive does not want the airport to get a reputation as being “difficult”. I can substantiate all this with emails from the airport itself should you need to see more
• Neither Ramsgate nor Herne Bay is successful. They are both slightly shabby seaside towns whose most sustainable hope for a more prosperous future is tourism. Nobody will visit and spend money in a town or on a beach under a flight path
• Manston’s PR machine talks about the hundreds to thousands of jobs that will be created if the airport expands. Close inspection shows the vast majority of these jobs to be indirect jobs – jobs that already exist elsewhere in the UK which Manston will notionally be supporting by purchasing fuel etc. The number of real jobs that could be created is tiny. So, we have an airport whose growth plans will blight many lives whilst possibly creating a small number of jobs. As an economic decision about the best thing to do for an area, the airport makes no sense
• The airport is built right on top of an important aquifer. Whilst the Environment Agency has recognised how critical it is to preserve this aquifer (you will be aware that the South East is the UK area with the biggest mismatch between population size and available water), the airport’s owners have done nothing to ensure that the correct measures are in place to protect it from pollution. It is already contaminated and an expanded airport will worsen the situation considerably
• None of the infrastructure exists to support expansion. A single carriageway road comes out of the airport and the nearest public transport is three miles’ drive away
• The airport has been in private ownership for years. Two previous owners have failed to make a go of it. Infratil are still losing money there after four years of ownership. It’s just not a sensible place to have an airport.

So, there is no widespread local support for this airport. What you are hearing is the view of the few that have access to the media - MPs and the airport’s PR consultants. If you tap into the world to which ordinary members of the public have access - blogs; parish councils; local environmental groups – you will see massive opposition to the airport. I would love to see a more balanced debate on the airport’s future instead of being told by politicians who have not consulted the public that we all support the airport. Anything you can do to encourage this would be great.