I almost feel like just republishing a Hansard of one of the dozen debates we have already had on this subject over the past number of years. We just need to get real. The reason we are having this debate is that the former Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West and Pudsey (Rachel Reeves), when developing a speech for growth, wanted an example, and she just went for the third runway. At the moment, however, I cannot find anyone in Government who privately thinks, seriously, that it will go ahead. That is where we are at. This is the “Monty Python” dead parrot sketch all over again.
Given that we are having this debate, I will remind people, as I always do, what the third runway means in human terms for my constituents, because that is my job. This has been mentioned, but 4,500 homes will be demolished or rendered unliveable by noise and air pollution. We think now that 17,000 people will be displaced to ensure the profits of a company owned by a whole range of foreign multinationals. A number of schools will be closed. I held my first third runway meeting and set up the third runway action group in 1983, in Harlington school. We had to demolish and rebuild that school elsewhere because the noise and air pollution had made it impossible to teach in. This expansion will push the runway near to the school that we built some distance away. We are going to lose our schools. We are going to lose our whole community.
Before anyone votes on this issue, come down to Harmondsworth. Come and see the village. Members should not vote on this unless they have been there, because otherwise they will not know how this is devastating beautiful villages. Harmondsworth has just won London in Bloom. We have a church that is 1,000 years old; the barn of the medieval church, which we believe is the biggest in Europe, will be 50 yards from the airport runway. This is absolute devastation. Where are my constituents going to go? Where are school pupils going to be taught?
On top of that, we have been breathing this poisoned air for more than a generation now. We have done survey after survey about the scale of respiratory problems and the cardiovascular impacts. Before anyone votes, come down there and talk to some of the people about what it means. People say, “Oh well, people will move.” We have generations of families who have lived there, and young families who have moved in. Why? Because Governments promised us that there will be no third runway. At one point in time, there was cross-party agreement. No wonder we feel betrayed.
My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) has set out all the arguments. The fact that we are even considering this issue in this debate is a monument to Heathrow’s lobbying capacity and the corporate capture of different political parties over time. I have a lot of time for the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—he is generous with his support on a whole range of issues—but every one of the points that he raised, which are basically from the Heathrow briefing material, has been shot through completely.
My hon. Friend the Member for Putney mentioned the economic benefit. In the Government’s own figures in the consultation, that has reduced 10 times, to 0.05% of GDP, and even that is now in doubt. On the number of jobs, when the fifth terminal was developed, we were promised, I think, 50,000 jobs. We did not get anything. What has happened in our area of west London is that as Heathrow has developed, our industrial base has moved out, gone to other, cheaper regions. What have they been replaced by? Warehousing. We have lost skilled jobs and got unskilled work and exploitation.
On the wider health implications, I warn hon. Members and the Government about ultrafine particles. When I was a youngster, I left school and went to the shop floor. I worked up north in a place near Hebden Bridge. Hebden Bridge is where they manufactured asbestos. We had suddenly discovered asbestos. At that point, people were campaigning to keep the factory there for the jobs and all the rest of it.
The effects of ultrafine particles are the asbestosis of the future. Look at the research. The Government have now set up a committee of experts to look at this issue, and it will report in three months’ time, possibly after we have been asked to make a decision. What we know about ultrafine particles is, first, that they come from aviation fuel in particular and that they spread across not just the surroundings of the airport, but at least 10 km around where there are emissions from aviation in particular. That means that we now have evidence from the working group of ultrafine particles in central London.
What do ultrafine particles do? They penetrate our bodies, get into the lungs, the heart and all the rest of it, and we are now discovering the cardiovascular disease and different cancers that are occurring. They also penetrate the brain. We are worried about what they are doing to our children, who are growing up breathing these ultrafine particles.
I warn the Government: this is a bit like asbestosis. We have to recognise that once this impact has been pointed out to us, if we continue to inflict it on our population in London, we will be held responsible as a Government for enabling it to happen.
We have already raised all the issues that have been brought forward today, including noise. We had a session a month ago with the noise experts, who now tell us that the Government’s level is too high. The threshold of damage to people’s health is so much lower than that, and we are well beyond the European limits. We need to shake people up, because we do not even know the flight paths yet. All we can do is look at what has been said in the past, and we know that at least another 900,000 people—nearly a million—will be affected by the consequences of noise and air pollution.
When we debated this issue last time, we were told that there is an urgent need to deliver the project for the good of our economy, even though we now know that it will cost us 15,000 jobs. Where will those jobs be lost? From regional airports. Members should have a look at the New Economics Foundation analysis. On top of that, we are told that there is a sense of urgency, but what did we hear a fortnight ago? Heathrow has delayed expansion by another five years.
I come to the cost escalation. Since we have had this debate over the last couple of years, the costs have doubled. It is expected that £15 billion is needed to pay for the transport infrastructure, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Putney said, Heathrow is not putting in a penny. Hon. Members know that Heathrow will come to two groups to pay for the infrastructure: taxpayers and passengers. This is such a con and we have to throw it out, once and for all. I do not want to be here in a couple of years’ time.
There is now no rationale for proceeding with Heathrow expansion. We need to come back after the consultation, and I hope that the Government will say, “Enough is enough.” We must kill off this project, once and for all. We cannot just keep coming back and wasting resources on all this. I think there is a responsibility on all our shoulders, particularly now, because we know so much more about the detriment not just to our individual constituencies, but to the economy overall and to the health of millions of people.
The message to the Government should be to just kill off Heathrow expansion. Let us finish this ritual that we have purely because of the lobbying impact of Heathrow airport. We have to stand up and represent our constituents, not corporations that will rip off us in the future.