Oral evidence: The Airports Commission report: Carbon emissions, air quality and noise inquiry, HC 389Wednesday 4 November 2015

Oral evidence, 4 November 2015.

Witnesses

Sir Howard Davies, former Chairman, Philip Graham, former Secretary, Professor Dame Julia King, former Commissioner, and Eirik Pitkethly, former Deputy Head of Secretariat, Airports Commission, gave evidence.

Chair

Good afternoon and welcome to the second public hearing of the Committee’s inquiry into the Airports Commission’s Report “Carbon Emissions, Air Quality and Noise”. This is our second session of the afternoon and thank you to our new set of witnesses, who are taking their seats, for bearing with us. We have had a very interesting session and I am sure this one will be as well. We have with us Sir Howard Davies, the former Chair of the Airports Commission, Philip Graham, the former Secretary to the Commission, Professor Dame Julia King and Eirik Pitkethly. I hope I have the pronunciation right. Welcome all of you. Peter, did you want to ask a question just to get us underway?

Peter Heaton-Jones

I will. Thank you very much indeed for coming. I am sorry we kept you waiting, but we like to talk a lot. Sir Howard, my opening question is to you, and it is a fairly straightforward one, I hope. In terms of the issues that this Committee is concerned about: air quality, noise, environmental impact, do you stand by everything that is written in your report?

Sir Howard Davies

I do not think that I have seen anything since we published the report that causes me to rethink the recommendations in it. Certain policy areas have moved on. At the time the report was published we did not yet have the DEFRA consultation on how they were going to deal with the Supreme Court judgment on air quality, so that is new. I do not think anything else has changed very materially since this report. I should say, however, that the Commission finished and wound up on 1 July and since then I have been doing something else.

Peter Heaton-Jones

I absolutely understand that, but just to clarify, the report that you wrote is now sitting, as far as we know, on the Prime Minister’s desk. Do you want to add anything to it or take anything away from it before he makes a decision based on it?

Sir Howard Davies

No, I do not think I want to add or take anything away from it. We emphasised in the report, and I am sure we will come on to this, that there were certain things about which the Government would need to satisfy itself before it made a decision, and that remains the case. No, I do not think that I have seen anything that would alter the judgment of the Commission, and not just my judgment, it was a unanimous judgment of the Commission. Most of the criticisms that have been made are picking up things that were in the report and giving them a different emphasis from the emphasis that we gave them. No, I think not.

Chair

Thank you, Peter. If we can turn to some of the specific recommendations, Sir Howard. It is interesting that in your approach to carbon emissions specifically the Commission recommended binding conditions on air quality and on noise, and yet not on carbon emissions. Why not?

Sir Howard Davies

Because we regard the framework for carbon emissions as being something that is set by the Committee on Climate Change. We took our cue from the committee, of which Professor King is also a member and was a member of my Commission, so we had a strong link with the Commission and we met them frequently both at the level of the Commissioner’s angle and also of the staff. It seemed to us to be appropriate that we should take the policy framework, so the policy framework set by the Climate Change Commission was extremely influential in our report, most particularly in leading us to the conclusion that we could at this point safely recommend one net additional runway in the south-east of England, because we thought that the implications of a further expansion beyond that would be such as to impose what looked to us to be implausible carbon reduction objectives for the rest of the economy. That was therefore the framework within which we operated, but that was a framework that was something borrowed, something blue. It was borrowed from the Committee on Climate Change because we wanted to ensure that our recommendations fitted into the way they thought about it. Julia, you might want to add something particularly on that point.

Chair

Perhaps you could turn to the issue that worries us, which is without having that binding target, abdicating that responsibility to the Committee on Climate Change, and I can understand your logic on that, it leaves a real accountability gap. The Government could say, “Let us go ahead with this, because it is now up to the Committee on Climate Change to tell us what to do. Your Commission bolted it down, we must have binding issues around air quality, we must do it on noise, but they have left it up to the others. Yes, we can achieve that”.

Professor Dame Julia King

It does not take any different approach from the approach the UK takes in the Climate Change Act, which is that we have a target for 2050 that is economy-wide. The Committee on Climate Change was asked back in 2008 to look at whether it would be feasible to get CO2 emissions from international aviation back to 2005 levels by 2050. That is what we have worked to on the Committee on Climate Change and that is the assumption that is in all of our carbon budgets that have been set so far, and outside other advice from the Government we think that is a reasonable target and we will continue setting our carbon budgets. Indeed the new carbon budget we are currently setting, the fifth carbon budget we are currently recommending the level of will be done on the same basis.

Caroline Lucas

Can I just ask you to remind me what the assumption is in terms of enabling you to do that, to give you the head room to do that for aviation? What extra amount of cuts will other parts of the economy have to take in terms of their emission reduction in order to allow aviation to grow to that amount?

Professor Dame Julia King

The ones that are in the carbon budgets that we have up to 2027 in current legislation, that is up to the fourth carbon budget, and we are currently working on the fifth carbon budget, so it means that by 2050 the rest of the economy will be looking at reductions above 80%, approaching 90%.

Caroline Lucas

How realistic is that? What modelling has been done to know that that is possible? We already know that in a sense it is going to be quite hard to do.

Professor Dame Julia King

We have scenarios and DECC have worked on scenarios as well that demonstrate how that can be achieved. What the Committee on Climate Change does is we look at a whole range of scenarios, taking into account a number of factors, with the predominant one being the cost-effective path to achieving the requirements of the Climate Change Act as passed in 2008. The path that we have that takes the assumption that the Airports Commission use has that assumption embedded in it. All of our calculations of cost are below those that Lord Stern suggested in the “Stern Review” of something like 2% of GDP.

Chair

It is absolutely clear then in saying that the Government should look to the modelling that has been done by the Committee on Climate Change and the recommendations that flow from that, a decision on this would have to be bound by what the Committee on Climate Change says has to be done. If they have specific recommendations, because it is not within your report, the Government is going to have to say that we go with the Committee on Climate Change on this.

Professor Dame Julia King

The Airports Commission has taken the assumptions used by the Committee on Climate Change in all our work into its work. It has not made any different assumptions.

Chair

Indeed, but the very logic of that means that the Government would now have to bind itself to whatever recommendations flow from the fourth budget, the fifth carbon budget, specifically for aviation. So if that Committee on Climate Change says, “Here is what we say has to be done now to reach these targets” the Government is going to be bound by them.

Professor Dame Julia King

That is not quite how our budget-setting works, because we are looking out to 2050. We do not know what technology developments there will be in which sectors by 2050, but inevitably although we produce a number of scenarios they have to have flexible edges. If somebody produces a development in automotive or in HGVs that can significantly reduce emissions more cheaply than some of the other assumptions we have made that clearly would be the sensible thing to do.

Chair

You will do iterations with the Committee on Climate Change and—

Professor Dame Julia King

We will do iterations, yes, and we will continue to do those and we will continue on the Committee on Climate Change to be monitoring the developments in aviation. If something cheap and good comes up there we can relieve pressure on the rest of the economy.

Chair

Am I right in my understanding that it is not simply that the Government should have regard to what you are putting forward in terms of this critical issue of airport capacity expansion, but because the responsibility in effect has been given to the Committee on Climate Change whatever iterations you come up with the Government would be pretty darn stupid, and flying in the face of the evidence and the experts to say, “Well, we are not going to go with it”?

Professor Dame Julia King

With my Committee on Climate Change hat on, I would love that to be the situation.

Chair

It has to be, does it not? It has to be.

Professor Dame Julia King

The Airports Commission has followed exactly what the Committee on Climate Change has recommended in making its recommendations and we iterated very extensively and sometimes in quite challenging ways, because the models we have been using were not designed for this purpose.

Chair

You touched on the issue of the different scenarios, the five different scenarios. Did you ascribe a probability to the likelihood of achieving each of those scenarios, and what was that?

Sir Howard Davies

By the scenarios you mean the assessment of the costs?

Chair

Sorry, the demands, yes.

Sir Howard Davies

No. The scenarios, “Low cost is king” and so on, were used as sensitivity tests that were really designed to understand the likely dynamics of different expansion options. In other words recognising that we are trying to look at what aviation demand and the pattern of aviation demand would be over the period from now until 2050. That is inherently an uncertain activity. There is a central statement that is an assessment of need that drops out of the Department for Transport’s forecast, although we have adjusted it somewhat, but we did not want to make a recommendation that would be completely invalidated if other things happened. We looked at various other things that could happen—very rapid growth in emerging markets, or a very rapid growth in low-cost airlines as opposed to legacy airlines—just in order to see whether we were misleading ourselves by taking one central forecast. They were not to do with the climate change. On the carbon front we had two scenarios, a carbon-traded and a carbon-capped, so those are two ways of meeting the carbon constraint, one of them being that there would be an international agreement on carbon trading, which would get you there, or the alternative, if there were no such international agreement, would be an absolute cap on emissions from aviation. We thought we had better look at both of them, since we cannot know which of them is going to eventuate. Then against that we also set these five scenarios about how the industry would evolve but that was more to look at the robustness of a conclusion that we eventually reached on which airport had the strongest case.

Chair

If I can explore that just a little bit further. The headline carbon price that was quoted in the Commission’s report was £334 per tonne of CO2 by 2050. This figure assumed, if I am correct, no airport expansion and followed the most likely demand scenario. Should it be a concern for the Government that this has led to a carbon price at the very top end of the models used for policy forecasts?

Sir Howard Davies

The carbon prices that appear in the report drop out of the model. They were not assumptions that we made about carbon prices, but we tried to model the sensitivities of aviation demand in relation to carbon prices. The headline conclusion we reached is that in fact it is remarkably insensitive, and this is particularly true at Heathrow, in the sense that the people’s perceived economic or indeed other value of flying is such that they will continue to pay at quite high levels of carbon prices, which has an implication on cost, but we were not making a central assumption about what the carbon price was, Julia, were we? That was just something that came out of the model.

Professor Dame Julia King

No. In the carbon-traded we used £200, which is the same value we had used in a lot of our modelling for 2050 for the Committee on Climate Change, but the other ones are just something that comes out of the model. They are a parameter in the model. They are such high carbon prices that we would have to say we do not understand what behaviour would do at those levels of carbon prices, so I do not think it is entirely sensible to regard them as in any way real carbon prices.

Chair

Okay, because one of the things that has been intriguing us is what the impacts of that high carbon price would be on the wider economy. You seem to be suggesting to me do not put all the weight on that particular figure, yet if it is that figure the costs on the wider economy and on regional airports and on flights could be significant.

Sir Howard Davies

We tried to model what we think the impact on the regional flights would be in these scenarios and in all scenarios in fact regional airport movements continued to grow. There are about 83 million passengers at the moment and I think on the smallest increase of our various scenarios they go up to about 140 million during the period, with some others being higher. They would be higher of course if you had no further expansion in the south-east. But we think that regional airports can continue to grow in this circumstance, albeit it is fair to say that they would grow less if you have Heathrow. But that is inherent in the modelling that we did earlier about what would happen if you did not do any expansion under the south-east, what would the consequences be? You would get more growth at regional airports, but you would also get a much less efficient distribution of flights, you would have more smaller half-full planes going from place to place and overall it would be environmentally disadvantageous because you would be sort of using airports that were not the ideal airport for that particular traffic. That was something we did for our interim report, in fact.

Chair

When we had Civil Aviation in front of us, we asked them the question, “If you were to assume that was the figure, what would it do to the cost of an aeroplane ticket?” They just could not answer it. Have you turned your attention to that at all, that if that were the figure, what would it do to a ticket price? You are saying there is a real customer demand here that would drive the elasticity on this.

Philip Graham

There was a figure in the interim report with not an identical but a similarly high carbon price. In my head, I think it was around £50 on a long-haul ticket.

Chair

£50 on a ticket?

Philip Graham

On a long-haul ticket. Of course the impact on the ticket depends upon the amount of carbon that is generated by a journey, so the impact would be greater on a long-haul ticket than a short-haul ticket.

Sir Howard Davies

I seem to remember now. I think we had better check these numbers. I am sure the clerk will do so, but on a long-haul flight that was, say, a £400 flight, it would be about a £50 supplement on it, yes.

Chair

Your assumption is that is workable?

Sir Howard Davies

Yes. The evidence seems to suggest that there would still be demand for the type of capacity that Heathrow would be offering even if prices went up in that way.

Professor Dame Julia King

Can I just add, we were not suggesting those as figures of a carbon price. It was absolutely critical for us to find a way to model in a carbon cap scenario to check that there was still value in having the additional runways. We were forcing the model to do something that was absolutely at an extreme, because we needed to know as a kind of backstop position that if we said this was a good idea, even in that extreme scenario this still made sense. The conclusion was it did. It was not that we are suggesting that would be the carbon price. There might indeed be a number of measures with a lower carbon price, but other constraints that would achieve the end.

Geraint Davies

If we assume the £50 on £400, which is a 12.5% increase in price, that is still a lot lower than the taxation of petrol or diesel as well, in fact, in cars, isn’t it? We are still in a situation where there is a massive relative subsidy to aircraft, even after the carbon pricing. Do you think there is room for much higher carbon pricing in the interests of the environment?

Sir Howard Davies

This took us into territory that was not absolutely central to the choice that we were asked to make and the decision that we were asked to make, but I have to say there are some bits of gratuitous observations in the report that no one has told us off for making yet, although I think the Chancellor might at some point. But, for example, we came to the view that APD was quite a good tax and that it was serving to constrain to some extent the demand, and particularly the very price-sensitive demand. Within the kind of environmental constraints and climate change constraints, it would seem odd that you want to remove a tax like that, which may have a deterrent effect on the marginal flight, which has little or no economic value, if you like, maybe in a sort of Budapest stag party market, is influenced to some extent by that, I think. We believe that it is perfectly reasonable to do that, but I would emphasise that this was really rather the five of us, after two and a half years embedded in this, that is how we came out and we were a little bit off-piste at that point.

Chair

One final question here on carbon emissions, and it is to do with the indicative policies, the range of indicative policies that you refer to. There has been a lot of debate around the evidence we have taken about whether those indicative policies would be achievable in practice. Can I just ask, to give us some confidence in it, how much consultation did you do on those indicative policies that might get us to this place and how much modelling do you do? How confident can we be in them that these will be achieved in practice?

Sir Howard Davies

Sorry, I think the only modelling we did was related to the demand for aviation, and looking back at the past experience and the impact of price—and of course there have been significant changes in price, because the oil price goes up and down and so on—that caused us to think that even if you had to operate a very high carbon price in order to achieve the 37.5 target, that you would still have demand that would render the additional airport expansion in the south-east economically justifiable and indeed advantageous. We do not ourselves, but I do not know if the Committee on Climate Change does modelling of impacts on the rest of the economy of the plausibility of different types of decarbonisation. I think it is not much beyond—

Chair

It is the things like the operational efficiencies at zero cost to the industry, the increased use of biofuel, all of which—and there are others I could refer to—have big question marks over them. That is what we are trying to get at, these indicative policies, how optimistic are they or how realistically they can be achieved.

Professor Dame Julia King

In our review about meeting the UK aviation target from the Committee on Climate Change, we go into some detailed discussion of that. The team for the Airports Commission have valued pretty much in line with our central scenario in our report published in December 2009 for biofuels, taking into account that you do not get the full benefit of biofuels, they are only looking at about half of the CO2 savings from the percentage of biofuels. Sustainable Aviation have some much more extreme scenarios with very high levels of biofuel and things in them, which might be possible, but we have not gone for incorporating any of those. Those are not policies, those are ways of achieving the reduction. There is then an issue of what policy would achieve that, and because we are talking about predominantly international aviation they have to be at least Europe-wide, if not global.

Chair

Do you think that there is more modelling and more discussion to be done on this, and if so, who should be doing it? It is the Committee on Climate Change, with your other hat on?

Professor Dame Julia King

It is part of the Committee on Climate Change’s role, but also it needs to be done at EU and international level and that is something we should be arguing for very strongly, because the amount of biofuel in aviation kerosene is not an issue for the UK.

Peter Aldous

Your report used a level of CO2 emissions that was 15% below the last published Government figures forecast, which I think were in 2013. That was due to the role of larger, more efficient aircraft. I just wonder what level of take-up of those aircraft did you assume and by when?

Sir Howard Davies

Yes, we did. Our figures do differ slightly—15%, as you say—from the 2013 figures. That is largely to do with the evolution of the fleet with planes getting larger, on average. In each category of plane, the next generation plane tends to get a bit larger, so it is not just shifting up to 380s, it is in each category they are a bit bigger, so we get some more efficiencies there. The assumptions that we made about the future fleet are, I think, quite conservative assumptions, because we only assume that the planes that are currently in operation will take up a larger proportion of the fleet. You can model this reasonably reliably for at least a decade or so because there are order books of these planes and they are in service, you know how efficient they are in terms of fuel and you know pretty much when airlines are going to bring them in, particularly at an airport like Heathrow, where they have fairly tight constraints on the kinds of planes you can use and where the market is such that people tend to use their best new planes at Heathrow because of the sort of business mix and that is the market they use them on. We took only the assumptions about what was pretty much clearly going to happen and we did not make any assumptions about new planes currently to be invented that might be more efficient, which may well happen. The history of the past would suggest that that will happen, but we have not made that an assumption, I don’t think.

Philip Graham

We used the information that was out there about the ways in which these planes have historically been taken up and exactly as Howard says, the rate of take-up that you see from order books and so on. I think we used that to identify a sort of trend rate of improvement in terms of load factors, because it is not simply the size of the plane, it is how efficiently the plane is used and how many people you get on to it and how much or little spare capacity there is on the plane. There was a sort of trend rate built into the forecast, but that was relatively conservative, we think, because it was based very much on patterns that we had seen and order books that are in place.

Peter Aldous

You might say I should not be asking this question to you, but the Government’s figures were only published in 2013, why didn’t they take these quite sensible assumptions?

Philip Graham

We did a specific piece of work in 2013, after the Government’s forecast had been published, to review these assumptions.

Peter Aldous

So the Government got it wrong?

Philip Graham

No, the Government did it on the basis of the best information available at the time. We went and did a further piece of research and had some improved information.

Peter Aldous

Just moving on, what were the features of the carbon trading arrangements that the Commission assumed for the carbon tracked scenario?

Sir Howard Davies

The carbon trading tax, the CT.

Peter Aldous

Carbon trading scenario, sorry, yes.

Sir Howard Davies

I am afraid all reports have bit of jargon in them now. It has a CC or a CT. Eirik, I think you can answer the detail of that.

Eirik Pitkethly

Yes. We assumed the same assumptions that DECC make in their policymaking documents that up until 2030 it would be through the European Emissions Trading Scheme, and the carbon price that applies through that is the one we used. Then beyond 2030, there would be a global agreement that led to a fully liberal global carbon market. The carbon prices that are generated through that assumption are the ones that are linked to a global abatement potential and how you would meet a global 2 degree target.

Peter Aldous

Did you assume that aviation would be able to buy in credits from other sectors?

Eirik Pitkethly

Absolutely.

Peter Aldous

You did. What assumptions did you make about the availability of these credits?

Eirik Pitkethly

That they would be fully available, that it was a fully liberal global carbon market.

Peter Aldous

To what extent do the proposals currently being discussed by the International Civil Aviation Organisation meet the assumptions that you adopted?

Sir Howard Davies

I guess they do not get there completely, because this would be a first stage, but what Eirik was talking about is what we assumed beyond 2030.

Eirik Pitkethly

The key difference is what we assumed was that the entire world is engaged in a global carbon market, that all the economic sectors are participating in that market and that all the abatement potential from all of those sectors is there to be accessed by all participants in the market. It is a stylised assumption in that sense.

Philip Graham

It is important to note that both the carbon traded and the carbon capped approaches to managing this are, to some degree, the extremes of a range. Carbon traded, as Eirik said, assumes a complete liberalised global market. Carbon capped assumes no one has done anything and the only way to achieve this is for the UK to impose a sector-specific cap all on its own. As we say in the report, I think that the more likely outcome is somewhere between those two.

Mr Peter Lilley

I confess I am totally bemused by all this. I can see that you can make a choice between airports on the grounds of the number of people affected by the noise at one airport versus the other or the cost of all the infrastructure required to go to one airport or another, but the idea that you make a choice on the grounds of having specific carbon targets for airports is Gosplan economics. I am sure, Sir Howard, when you were at the Treasury you would have laughed it out of court. Hang on, I can hear in my memory the sort of laughter you would done, because I was there too. But there is established economic logic that having multiple targets is less efficient than having a single target. If you have a single target in the whole economy of how much carbon you emit, we have to get it down, so we have committed ourselves to 50% by 2050. Just reduce the amount year by year, let the price set and it will be up to the airport operators to work out how many people are going to travel in those circumstances or not. Only Gosplan did this sort of thing. Why are we going back to this?

Sir Howard Davies

The main use of our carbon analysis was to answer the question could we afford to have expansion of aviation capacity, because undoubtedly if you expand at constrained airports, you will allow more flights in the high-demand areas to occur than otherwise would occur. What we did not want to do was to say we agree that Heathrow should expand or Gatwick should expand, but then to find that in fact you would have to constrain that expansion to the point where it would be uneconomic to use it because you were bumping up against your climate change constraints, which are expressed in legislation. It is fair to say that on our travels, when we went to visit other airports, everybody else looked at us slightly blankly on this and that nobody else considers this at all, because they do not have legislated climate change targets like we have. The key thing we were trying to do is to say is it reasonable to say that we could allow these airports to expand and that they would not find themselves then subsequently told, “You have a lovely new runway, but you cannot land anybody on it because you are going to be constrained in some way that is implausible and will suppress the demand”. It was not used to determine the eventual choice that we made of location, except in a very marginal sense, that because the suppressed demand at Heathrow is so high, we believe that Heathrow would fill up more quickly than Gatwick, so it was relevant in that narrow point. But primarily it was not, so it was not used in the Gosplan way to decide where a runway was going to be, it was to decide whether you could have a runway within the legal framework within which we have to operate in this country.

Mr Peter Lilley

What percentage of the total national carbon budget were you assuming this airport would consume?

Sir Howard Davies

What emerges from the model, if you have a new runway at Heathrow, then the amount of carbon on an unconstrained basis that aviation would consume would go up from something like 39 point something to 43 point something, so it is not quite at 10%, but it is somewhere around there as an increase if it were unconstrained, if you like. That is roughly the size of it, but in terms of the total carbon—I was coming on to that—at the moment, from memory, aviation represents about 6% of total carbon emissions in the economy, but because of the easier decarbonisation of the rest of the economy, particularly of combustion engines, it is easier to convert diesel trucks to biofuels than it is to convert aero engines. Lord Stern said to me once that the last barrel of oil will be burnt in a jet because it is the high-octane nature of it, and Julia knows this better than I do, but it means that that is the most difficult bit to convert. Over time, the proportion of carbon emissions represented by aviation goes up, so by 2040, on our estimation, it is somewhere like 24%, it is about four times as big. Aviation is a very material part of the total emissions of the economy, it is about a quarter, whereas if you just looked at it today, you would say, “What are you worrying about, a 10% increase on 6%?” You would not regard that. But looking that far ahead, it is significant.

Chair

We will move on now to the issues of air quality, and I think, Caroline, you wanted to lead us off on this.

Caroline Ansell

The Commission’s appraisal framework contained an objective to improve air quality in the vicinity of the airport, yet the proposed scheme was considered adverse against this objective, even with mitigations in place. Why then did the Commission not propose a greater level of mitigation to allow the scheme to at least meet the objective? If I can also ask too that arguably one of the most sensitive parts around plans to expand airport capacity would be during the construction phrase, yet there have been no assessments made around air quality impacts in that regard or mitigation, so I wonder if you might comment on that also.

Sir Howard Davies

We did make some assessment of the air quality implications of construction, we did not go into detail about mitigations, although we do refer to things that were done around Terminal 5. We probably just felt that was a bit far for us to go.

Philip Graham

It was qualitative rather quantitative and the advice we had from the expert adviser we had on air quality was that there are established methods in place for containing and managing the pollution implications of construction sites.

Caroline Ansell

But this would be a significant project, would it not, over a very extended period of time?

Philip Graham

It would be a significant construction project, but the advice we had was that even for large-scale construction projects there are methods in place to manage the air quality implications. It is much more difficult to manage the air quality implications over a longer timeframe of an airport when it is in operation, so that was the period that we focused on.

Caroline Ansell

So more mitigation then around the scheme itself?

Sir Howard Davies

Yes. Around the scheme itself, what we focused on was how you could ensure that the scheme could be delivered without delaying compliance with the Government’s obligations under the European directives, because we identified that the Heathrow north-west runway scheme, which we eventually recommended, would have reduced air quality and increased the NOx in one particular place above the highest level that is currently in London, which is on Marylebone Road. What we focused our attention on was whether you could produce mitigation measures in the airport itself or around the airport that would be sufficient to make that a permitted development, if you like, without causing difficulties for our European obligations. We concluded that there were mitigants that could be identified: the use of electric power on stands so that engines are not switched on until the plane leaves. At the moment, there is quite a lot of engine running on the stand in order to produce air-conditioning and so on; it could be done via electricity. There could be changing taxi routes and electrical vehicles to taxi planes around, such electric vehicles on the airport itself. We identified a number of mitigations that we thought would be adequate to achieve that objective. We also said that there could be other mitigations that we did not feel we had the ability to absolutely recommend, but which were possible, which would reduce the NOx around the airport even more. The most dramatic one would be a kind of congestion charge around the airport, so we looked at the implications of, say, a £20 charge to go to the airport, whether it would apply to just the kiss and fly market or whether it would apply to taxis as well. That would also have quite a significant impact on air quality around the airport. But we did not think that we could make it a condition of the scheme, if you like, but it is certainly something that a Government could do.

Caroline Ansell

I understand that. You say that those possible further mitigants did not make it to recommendation sort of status, and yet we heard earlier that your top recommendation, which was around scheduled night flights, that Heathrow has not in fact at this point come to a position on that. I think there is a real cause for concern around the standing of recommendations, not least then other potential strategies. Your final report states that none of the air quality receptors around Heathrow, which would have implications for human health, are forecast to exceed air quality limits in 2030, yet Hounslow Council were able to point to modelling suggesting that up to £10.8 million costs for additional medical appointments could be incurred. How can these statements be reconciled?

Sir Howard Davies

What we were taking was an absolute level at an individual receptor and there is a level that is deemed to be directly damaging to human health around that area. We looked at the number of properties that would be brought into that. In fact, there was rather more at Gatwick than at Heathrow on that standard, only 14 properties were deemed to be damaging from that point of view. But that is not quite the same point as saying that the broader issue of air quality in the whole area is one that is having health consequences, which I do not think was something that we could analyse.

Caroline Ansell

Yet air quality is absolutely central to the argument around health and wellbeing.

Sir Howard Davies

Yes, but the airports, in fact, on air quality in the whole area of Hounslow is by no means the most significant thing. The fact is that there is the M40 and the M25 and the NOx from those things are very dramatic. We were trying to focus on how much worse or better the airport would make it.

Caroline Ansell

Dramatic and would be potentially increased with an expanded Heathrow?

Sir Howard Davies

We argued that the increases would be modest and could be mitigated, but obviously we could not recommend moving the M4.

Caroline Ansell

I understand that and I understand the idea around “modest”, although today Heathrow did not rule out a fourth runway. They said it was not a question for today, which I think will cause some consternation among the local population.

Sir Howard Davies

We have recommended that a fourth runway should not be built at Heathrow for a variety of reasons. We think that it could not be managed in air traffic control terms. The National Air Traffic Control Service said to us that more than 800,000 traffic movements in one location in London in the south-east would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to manage. You would get up to 760 with one runway, so the marginal impact of a fourth runway would not be economic. Also, I have to say, looking hard at the locations of different runways around that site, we rejected the south-west runway on the basis that it would have damaging consequences for the reservoirs and so on around there. It is the case that we have not built a new runway in the south-east since the late 1940s, but we also have not built a new reservoir since the 1940s. We simply do not see how you could replace that capacity. From our point of view, we cannot see where you would put a fourth runway on anything like an acceptable basis, nor do we think you could manage it in air traffic control terms. Furthermore, we also reached the view that the appropriate combination of airport capacity around London was one that emphasised competition. You have to balance competition and concentration in this market, because concentration does give you some advantages in terms of connectivity and hubbing, but competition clearly also brings you other advantages. The customer experience, the passenger experience is undoubtedly improved by competing airports and of course there are different catchment areas for those airports and so on. We think that looking further forward you would want to, if you could develop further airport capacity consistent with all your climate change obligations and so on, do it somewhere else, because you would not want to concentrate all of that capacity in one place. So for reasons of operations, of practical location, but also reasons of competition and serving different markets appropriately, we do not think Heathrow gets anywhere near being a candidate for a fourth runway. That is why we argued that you should rule it out.

Caroline Ansell

I think Heathrow might see it differently, particularly when the local population are remembering, at the time of lobbying around Terminal 5, that idea, “We will never seek a third runway”. So you can understand perhaps some of the concerns.

Sir Howard Davies

That is why we suggested legislation for them do it.

Caroline Ansell

One very last quick question around a very key date. The Commission uses 2030 as the key date against which air quality is to be considered. The Government’s latest consultation uses 2020 as the target date for compliance. What impact would this have had on the Commission’s findings had it been known at the time, and remembering your answer to my colleague’s initial question around your report going forward?

Sir Howard Davies

We have not had the capacity to look in detail at DEFRA’s consultation paper, although I have looked at it quickly. We did not assume new measures in our report. We focused on what we could see today and what would happen and what we could recommend related specifically to the airport expansion, to get down to that. We did note that since the Government were under an obligation to produce a plan following the Supreme Court judgment—they had that obligation anyway, arguably—that that could also help. I would say that this could only be helpful in terms of the case for airport expansion, but we do not have the capacity, since we no longer exist, in spite of appearances today, to analyse that further. The Government, I think, will need to do that.

Caroline Ansell

The Government should do that. Thank you.

Zac Goldsmith

I want to come in on the air quality. Just before I do, you seem to be implying that NATS advised you a fourth runway would be dangerous. Is that so?

Sir Howard Davies

Not exactly.

Zac Goldsmith

Can you just clarify? I had not heard that point and I would be interested in just a brief elaboration.

Philip Graham

I do not think “dangerous” would be the NATS phrase, because NATS would not operate—

Zac Goldsmith

By implication.

Philip Graham

The point is NATS would not operate the airspace in a way that was dangerous. So taking into account the fact that they will not operate in a way that is dangerous, they will only operate it in ways that meet the relevant safety criteria and the operational criteria, their view was given how congested the airspace is in the south-east of England, the number of significant airports in that part of the world, that trying to get more than 800,000 movements into a single site would be very, very difficult. The only way you could do it, to maintain safety, would be to start stripping things out of other sites. If you look at other airports, the busiest airport in the world at the moment is Atlanta, which I think is just over 900,000 movements, so not hugely more than that, but they do not have another airport for 200 miles, so it is a very different kind of challenge.

Sir Howard Davies

Sorry, just the specific reference is in 14.116—I am sure that will be etched in your mind—and what we say specifically is, “NATS advises that a maximum of 800,000 air traffic movements per annum could be supported by an airport that operated four independent parallel runways within the congested airspace of London and the south-east”.

Zac Goldsmith

So colleagues of ours in this House who believe that this is one step towards a mega hub at Heathrow will be disappointed if that is the position of NATS? That was your very clear message, was it?

Sir Howard Davies

Yes.

Zac Goldsmith

No matter how much demand there is politically, three runways is as far as it goes?

Sir Howard Davies

That is what we think, for the reasons I have set out: for the NATS reason, for the location and the sort of topography, we do not think it possible, but also just as a general view. We think a competing airport system is right for London.

Zac Goldsmith

I saw the decision during the course of the Airports Commission, you moved from talking about the mega hub effectively towards emphasising competition, but is it not the case that in the report itself, the data in your report suggests that significant additional activity at an expanded Heathrow would happen at the expense of neighbouring airports, so in other words, a third runway alone—let alone a fourth runway—would have some impact in terms of inhibiting competition at competing airports like Stansted and Gatwick? Would you agree with that?

Sir Howard Davies

Heathrow is attractive to certain types of travel, but it will be relatively even more expensive to land and take off there than it is today. Today it is, by the distance, the most expensive airport for landing charges, and it would become even more expensive with the third runway. It would become much more expensive, and therefore although, as I say, the demand suggests that at the moment Heathrow would fill up quite quickly, it would still leave a lot of space for other places. Yes, I would certainly not deny that growth at some other runways, probably not so much Gatwick, because Gatwick does not have a lot of opportunity for growth, only if it had another runway, of course, but if it does not have another runway, it does not have that much opportunity for growth. But Stansted would grow more slowly. I think that is likely, yes.

Zac Goldsmith

Just my last one on air quality. You touched on this partially. You said in your view a third runway should be conditional upon expansion of Heathrow meeting our legal obligations on air quality and you have said in the report that you think, based on everything you know, that is possible. But surely the VW scandal changes that profoundly, surely it is the case that some of the key assumptions on which you base your confidence that Heathrow can meet those air quality targets have now been proven to be fraudulent. One can only estimate the likely air quality impacts of expansion by taking a view on the likely contribution of cars in the future, but if the cars in the future are dramatically more polluting than the cars we thought we would have in the future because of the fraudulent behaviour by VW, does that not reduce and chip away at the confidence you have in your air quality statements in the report and should the Government not look again therefore at that air quality section in the report and perhaps redo some of the maths?

Sir Howard Davies

I do not think it does, because what we were looking at was actual measurements and actual modelling, so we were not assuming that all the VWs going along Bath Road were going along in test mode with their whatever it is, bit of software tweak, working. They were emitting what they were emitting. I think that that does not really apply. Also, in terms of future emissions, we were not assuming anything beyond—what is it, EP6?

Professor Dame Julia King

6B or it might have been 6C, yes.

Sir Howard Davies

So we were not assuming—

Zac Goldsmith

I understand that.

Sir Howard Davies

—further improvements and nor were we doing any—

Zac Goldsmith

May I interrupt you, sorry? Just on the point on Euro 6, so you had to therefore the calculate the contribution of Euro 6 vehicles going into the future, but we now know that many vehicles that are Euro 6 are 50, 60, 70 times more polluting than we were led to believe Euro 6 vehicles would be. I am assuming when you made your calculations, you were not taking a view that the Euro 6 vehicles were 50 times more polluting than the manufacturers tell us they are, in which case—I am not pointing my finger at you on this, clearly it is a VW scandal, it is a fraud, it is a crime—the data you have is based on that scandal and that fraud and that crime and therefore the data needs to be revisited, surely.

Professor Dame Julia King

Can I make a point there, which is that the measurements in the UK—and there is quite a lot of research on this—have suggested that the NOx values generally in the UK have been typically in the range of four to eight times the values on tests. Now, we can all rail about the flexibilities that Europe has allowed manufacturers to use on tests that are inappropriate, but they are not at the 50 and 80 level they have seen in the US. We have been seeing an improvement in NOx and, in a way, the perverse benefit of the VW scandal is that it has flagged this up and it is driving some much stronger statements from the automotive industry about moving to both hybrid and indeed electric vehicles. I think we will also see a move back to higher efficiency petrol engines as well.

Zac Goldsmith

Just for the record, because you may want to take this away, the information and the evidence that we had from Transport Minister last week—I think it was last week—was that they were looking at multiples of, I am sure he said, 40 or 50. Chair, you can correct me.

Chair

We will have to check the transcripts.

Zac Goldsmith

I am absolutely certain that is what we were told.

Professor Dame Julia King

That was certainly what they have said in the statement.

Zac Goldsmith

In which case, these things that you presented—

Professor Dame Julia King

I did not know that we had seen that in the UK.

Zac Goldsmith

No, I understand, but if it is correct—

Professor Dame Julia King

There is a lot of academic research comparing the test emissions and on-road emissions.

Zac Goldsmith

Understood. I am just trying to establish one point: if the figure that I have just given you is broadly correct—and we can check the minutes and check with the Minister—does that not support my thesis that the air quality estimations in your report will need to be revisited? If there are many, many multiples of difference between the tests in the laboratory and the reality on the road and Euro 6 vehicles that are in the pipeline at the moment are going to massively miss the goal in terms of air quality targets, does that not put a question mark over your own mathematics in relation to air quality? Surely it must do.

Professor Dame Julia King

I would have to ask the team exactly what went into the calculations for that.

Geraint Davies

It was my understanding, having checked with the Department for Transport officials, we are talking about a scale of 20 times as opposed to four or five or 50. 50% of new cars are diesel and we know that something like 10,000 people are dying in London from diesel emissions and that these cars are continuing to belch stuff out on the road. In your evidence, you said the tests you would use were simply to ensure that Bath Road would be no worse than Marylebone Road. The issue here is that Marylebone Road is much worse than we thought it was and people are unnecessarily dying through fraud. I realise the industry may adapt and respond in its selfish way, but how can we have any confidence in going ahead with this third runway when there is so many people living in London when there is an option in Gatwick, given all that?

Sir Howard Davies

I am getting a bit puzzled now, because I do not think that it is that Marylebone Road is worse than we thought it was, because it is what it is, because there are receptors there that measure what the NOx levels are at Marylebone Road and Bath Road. I understood Mr Goldsmith’s point to be a slightly different one, which was, “What were you forecasting about the future in the light of this?” Eirik, perhaps you could help us on that second point.

Eirik Pitkethly

Yes. On the second point, we did some sensitivity testing around this and our projections were based on not the test cycle, but the test cycle adapted to real world conditions, which used real life data measurements to calibrate. So whether or not that picks up on the differences that the VW changes have made, I do not know, I do not have that information in front of me, but certainly across the fleet of vehicles currently driving in the UK, their real world performance was used to calibrate what we assumed would be possible with Euro 6A and B. We also did not assume any benefits from Euro 6C vehicles coming in, because we felt that there was enough controversy about that, about how well they were performing—these are vehicles that are due to start coming into the fleet in the next couple of years—that our core assessment was based only on Euro 6A and B. We did sensitivity testing on what would happen if you assumed that Euro 6C made things worse and we did sensitivity testing if they made it better as well.

Geraint Davies

Can I pursue this, because my understanding is that we have evidence to show that 10,000 people dying of these particulates and that children’s lungs have a 10% lower capacity in low emission zones in particular in London because of the failure of the real world to comply with the tests. You seem to be saying, if I understand you correctly, if Bath Road meets these very bad standards, which presumably are below EU standards, we can go ahead.

Sir Howard Davies

We were saying that the tests we were planning were, “Would this development delay compliance with the directive?” and our conclusion was that there were mitigations that could be put in place that would mean that it would not delay compliance. I think the broader point about NOx in London as a whole and in areas of high concentration, particularly Marylebone Road but also Bath Road, is one that is a broader issue for the Government, which we think it now has to address.

Geraint Davies

But if there is much more risk in terms of the emerging evidence, does that make one want to rethink about the Gatwick versus Heathrow decision on this?

Sir Howard Davies

This is one factor in our appraisal framework, and there many others. One would need to look at the balance again, but I would not have the capacity to do that, but I do think the Government will need to satisfy itself on this particular point. Clearly some things have moved on, as Mr Goldsmith and others have pointed out. The Government will need to satisfy itself that this can be safely done.

Geraint Davies

Finally, if the demand for vehicular traffic because of the expansion of Heathrow and other factors increases on the M25 and the M4 and that increases congestion—and the average car is more congested and emitting more particulates and we did not anticipate how many particulates of factor 20 those cars were emitting—did you model all that, the worst-case scenario of the worst congestion with the worst diesel outputs?

Sir Howard Davies

We modelled the impact of the airport on congestion around the airport, yes.

Philip Graham

Yes, exactly. We modelled not simply the level of traffic there might be in a general sense, but the way in which that traffic would move around the particular roads around the airport, the M25 and the M4. So to the extent that it is likely that that would drive additional congestion that was caught in the modelling, and so that will have been picked up in the end results.

Geraint Davies

Can I finally ask something on noise? Obviously, there is an issue about the number of people affected by the noise of more planes coming into Heathrow, in simple terms, is much, much less than the same planes going into Gatwick, isn’t it? So how did you weigh that out?

Sir Howard Davies

Yes. The absolute numbers of people affected around Gatwick are clearly lower, though there are other issues to be taken into account, because Gatwick is otherwise quieter, so the impact on people is greater for the noise there. But noise was something that we took a lot of time on, and that is why the particular construction of the package that we recommend in relation to Heathrow has an awful lot of noise related dimensions to it. First of all, we thought there should be a noise authority. We think there should be a noise envelope around the airport, which has been agreed in some other places, Manchester and also Amsterdam. We thought there should be a very, very significant set of mitigations and compensation packages. The airport itself has proposed a package that is quite large, but we argued that on a continuing basis a noise levy should be introduced that could fund the kinds of compensation and mitigation schemes that are difficult to fund otherwise. We also recommended, as you know, the removal of flights from the core night period of 11.30 pm to 6.00 am, and the nature of the third runway we recommend is such that early morning planes can land there and will be much higher, appreciably higher, as they go over central London because they are landing further to the west and also a bit further to the north. The combination of all of those things means that the airport would be, with a three runway operation, less noisy than it currently is today. Indeed, on some of the metrics, it would be less noisy than even if you had a two runway operation in 2030, because of the different configuration of runways. So we did take this into account, and proposed a whole set of measures, some of which perhaps the airport is not so enthusiastic about.

Chair

Could I just return for a moment to this issue of the way in which you are judging that there will be compliance? The key issue that Geraint put to you, which is that as long as Bath Road is no worse than Marylebone Road, that is the basis on which we will be judging whether there is compliance. I guess our question, it is a fundamental question, is, is this a sustainable way to manage pollution, to allow breaches in one area so long as there is another area that is worse?

Philip Graham

It is important to note, the test of compliance is not whether the Bath Road is more or less polluting than the Marylebone Road. It will be in future, when the airport is built and operational, whether we are complying or not. That is the test of compliance. The question that the Commission was asking at this point is, how can we make an assessment of the realism that this airport will be compliant at that point 20 years in the future? It needs to do that without knowledge of the totality of the Government and industry and local authority’s strategies for achieving compliance in the future, not least because the Supreme Court has made its judgment that the Government needed to publish a strategy, but that strategy had not yet been published. So the basis on which we tried to reach, essentially, a probabilistic judgment of is there a good chance of achieving compliance, is looking at the Marylebone Road, which is the worst area; thinking, well, the Government, to meet the requirement that has been placed upon it by the Supreme Court, is going to need to get the Marylebone Road to compliance. So are we, through this project, likely to be getting you to a point where there is a bigger problem than that that needs to be solved? The answer is no, but is this compliant or not? That is a question for the future, when this is open.

John Mc Nally

Air quality, as we have heard today and we are all aware of, is a huge concern to everyone. Public health is obviously of paramount importance to local communities, and particularly those that are directly affected. I think that probably some of them are sitting here. To protect these communities from further air pollution, if this expansion is to go ahead, I think the question that the communities would want an answer to is, first, how do you anticipate the recommendation on air quality in your report being enforced and, secondly, who should ultimately be responsible for determining whether capacity should be released?

Sir Howard Davies

I think that it is the Government’s responsibility to ensure compliance with European directives and it will, no doubt as a result of the current consultation, produce a set of policies on low emission zones and so on, which we believe it will need to do anyway, and which will improve air quality around the airport.

John Mc Nally

Okay. Excuse me, but in the notes that I have I think you have said that it should be a planning condition. Is that a Government planning condition, or is that a local authority planning condition?

Sir Howard Davies

As we say in the last chapter of the report, we talk about how this would be implemented. Because of the high economic significance, we assumed that this would be subject to either a hybrid bill in Parliament or a national planning statement, because it is the sort of application that if it were made locally would immediately be called in by the Secretary of State. So, under the last Parliament—

John Mc Nally

I understand that.

Sir Howard Davies

—a procedure was agreed. So this would the national planning—

John Mc Nally

So that is the process that would happen?

Sir Howard Davies

Yes.

John Mc Nally

Yes. Okay, that is clear. What about the first part of the question?

Sir Howard Davies

I am sorry, I thought you said, who was responsible?

John Mc Nally

No. How do you anticipate the recommendation of air quality in your report being enforced? Who is going to enforce it?

Sir Howard Davies

This may be going beyond my understanding, but my understanding here is that this is a DEFRA policy, but there are local air quality management, LAQM—

Philip Graham

There is a local air quality system that the local authorities are responsible for, but compliance—

John Mc Nally

Can I just interrupt you? That is one of the concerns I think you have, because there are so many Government cutbacks coming now, the positions and officers and people in jobs that police these things are getting thinner and thinner on the ground, and that raises huge concerns. I can only tell you that because in my own situation back home in Falkirk, where the SEPA people are under severe pressure monitoring the water equipment. I am making that transition in my mind from there to here. That is what causes concern. I am sure that causes concern to you as well?

Sir Howard Davies

I can understand that concern, but all I can say is I think it is the Government through the LAQM process.

Luke Hall

We touched earlier on noise envelopes and were talking about some of the conditions around them. I just wondered, first of all, can you just clarify the exact definition of that envelope? Also, I see that there are a few examples of ways in which the envelope could be set that have been laid out in your report. I just wonder whether there is any specific recommendation from you as to which of those should be implemented or which would be the most effective?

Sir Howard Davies

No, there is not, and the reason that there is not is because we think that this should be done by a new community engagement group, which is, again, something we found in operation at Frankfurt but also particularly at Amsterdam, where the local community and the airport are sort of bound together in a group that makes these decisions. There are some irreducible dimensions of noise with airports, but then there is also a robbing Peter and paying Paul dimension, because you can move noise around through different flight paths and different operating procedures. There is also a respite dimension to it because you can move arrivals around the time of day. One of the things that appealed to us about the third runway option that we eventually went for was that this gave you an opportunity for a very reliable respite, because you could move your landings around, and so on. What we think is that this noise envelope should be set with the local community, because what we have encountered in the course of the work, although this more a Civil Aviation Authority responsibility than ours, is that unpredictable changes in noise patterns are very, very annoying to people because they suddenly find that they have overflying. But if you can give people certainty, I am not saying they will run up a flag and say everything is terrific, but that they appreciate that to a large extent. There are also all kinds of subtleties about the timing of respite and how the respite moves around, and what the predictability is. There are issues in relation to schools and so on. So we think that this very much should be a locally owned envelope and, indeed, it might vary from time to time. I think it does in Amsterdam. So we just tried to give an illustration of what we meant, but we certainly would not feel that we had the ability to second guess the needs of the individual local communities around the airport.

Luke Hall

Thanks very much for that. One more question. Forgive me if it was already explained. So it should be set by the community. We understand the point. I just wonder if you think that should be set or a consultation process with the community should happen before a decision is made? Or whether that is something that should be ongoing after the decision, if it was approved, for instance?

Sir Howard Davies

I do not think you could realistically set it. We argued that an independent noise authority should be set up about 18 months ago. So part of the building blocks of this better noise regime is an independent aviation noise authority, which does the measurements and advises people on what noise actually is. Because if you get embedded in this area you discover there are all kinds of disputes about what the noise measurements should be, what they are and so on. So we felt an authoritative independent agency should be put in place first, and that would give you a basis for discussion. I am not sure that you could sensibly put in place a noise envelope before you even made a decision, although I think you could say that that will happen and you could legislate to ensure that it would happen, because it would depend on patterns of utilisation of the airport and it would vary over time. You would not want to set one in 2016 that would come into effect in 2026, because you would need to look at the types of planes that were landing and where they were landing, and so on. I do not think you could set it completely, but I think you should certainly, as part of the Government’s approval process, say that that will happen, and put in place the statutory things you need to do to create a context for it.

Chair

Can you just confirm that part of your recommendation was that the noise envelope, when it is constructed, should include not just aggregate, average noise levels, but individual noise levels as well?

Sir Howard Davies

You mean individual events?

Chair

Yes.

Sir Howard Davies

We found the best approach to looking at noise was to look at a balanced scorecard, if you like, of the noise impacts. There are some people who say you should look at average noise during the day, others argue that it is the night noise that is particularly important and should be given a higher weight. Then there are the incidents of noise that go above a particular level, and that annoys people too, when the noise is unusually high. So a noise envelope would need to take all of those things into account.

Margaret Greenwood

Following on with that, we have heard calls for any envelope to measure the noise using WHO levels. The Commission did this at 54 decibels. From your consultation work, would you feel that this is a more accurate reflection of serious noise than the Government’s current measure of 57?

Sir Howard Davies

We used a number of different measures. We used 54, we used 57 and we used “incidents over”.

Philip Graham

We used all the way from 54 up to, I think, 63. We did it in increments because we wanted to understand how the picture changed, and particularly whether the picture changed at different levels of noise. We did not try to define a single measure that was the threshold of annoyance or—

Margaret Greenwood

Okay. Thank you. The last survey of social attitudes to noise took place 30 years ago. Do you think an updated survey would have given your recommendations on noise further credibility?

Sir Howard Davies

We seemed to be seeing things more recent than 30 years ago, I have to say.

Philip Graham

There was a more recent exercise that took place that was not subsequently adopted into policy. You would have to talk to the Department of Transport about the reasons why that was not the case, but there was a more recent exercise that took place.

Sir Howard Davies

But it is something that the noise authority could do and, indeed, I think I speak for all the members of the Commission, we were rather disappointed that that was not taken up after our interim report. Because I think if the Government had begun to set up such an authority—which is something borrowed from France, where they have a noise levy that they administer—you could start to get some clarity on a lot of the debates about which particular noise level, who it should be measured by, and what social attitudes would be. So we were rather disappointed that nothing has happened on that. We recommended it in fact at the end of 2013.

Chair

You have been very generous with your time, but we have one final question, if we could. Geraint?

Geraint Davies

In the final report on noise, you emphasise that the noise from an expanded airport would not exceed 2030. But in earlier documents you said that the noise from 2030 and 2040 would be noisier than the two runway airport in those years. I was just wondering whether you could explain that seeming change.

Sir Howard Davies

It may not have been about the north-west runway that we eventually adopted, but also it certainly would not have taken into account our decision to recommend no night flights before 6.00 am, so that would affect the noise figures as well.

Philip Graham

Could you repeat the question?

Geraint Davies

The long version of the question is, why did the Commission choose in its final report to emphasise that it would be possible to ensure only that noise from an expanded airport in 2030 did not exceed current levels, when in earlier documents it said this comparison was not required and an expanded Heathrow in 2030 and 2040 would be noisier than a two runway airport in those years? You seem to have changed your position.

Philip Graham

I do not think we have changed our position. We have always, as the basis for our assessments, in terms of the monetised assessment of noise, the comparison between options, looked at the relative performance of an expanded airport, whether that is an expanded Gatwick or an expanded Heathrow, versus a future Heathrow or Gatwick without expansion. All of that data is in the final report, and more detailed versions of it are in the detailed technical reports, but that is the approach that we used in the final report to judge the different options against each other. What the Commission has noted is that, having moved towards a view that Heathrow should be the recommended option, with that option taken forward, the noise impacts, even by 2050, would be, against a large number of metrics, lower than those today and, as Howard has noted, against some metrics lower even than those of an unexpanded airport in future, because of the different ways in which you can configure takeoffs and landings with the runway further to the west. But the basis for comparison was very much done on the basis of what the difference is between a non-expanded and an expanded airport in future, because that is the best way to judge against a level playing field.

Geraint Davies

But just so we have this clear, if we did not expand Heathrow and expanded Gatwick, obviously over time the current noise levels at Heathrow would go down because of other mitigating circumstances and changing technology of the aircraft and sizes, and whether they are braking, and stacking and all the rest of it. So they would go down. So the counterfactual would be either a reduced noise from an existing Heathrow or a new Heathrow with an extra runway that, if you like, started off at least with lower noise levels than currently from the two runways and ended up with significantly higher than if we had not had a third runway?

Sir Howard Davies

Not necessarily. Not necessarily. If you look, we set out in the report the comparisons between the existing runway, under existing configuration now, and a new one with three runways, but also what the “do minimum”, as we call it, scenario would look like. On some noise measures, a new three runway airport would in fact be less irritating than an existing two runway airport, partly because of the different configuration of the flights. You could put them further to the north and overfly fewer people. You have the flights coming in at higher level, so some of the flights that are coming in low over central London in the morning would not be coming in low over central London in the morning, they would be coming in over less populated areas a bit further to the north and they would be higher. So on some of the measures a three runway airport is less noisy than a two runway airport at that time. Furthermore, you would not in fact get any of the very significant compensation and mitigation measures that Heathrow are prepared to envisage now that they have volunteered because of the additional profitability of having a third runway. So you would have an existing two runway airport, which is about as noisy as a three runway airport in future, but without any of the noise compensations and still with night flights, because you couldn’t possibly not have night flights if you did not have an expanded airport. So, overall, I would argue, and we believe strongly, that a two runway airport in 2030 is not as good as a three runway airport in 2030 for noise on almost all the considerations.

Chair

So if the Government were to say soon, “We are going to go ahead with this. We are going to work through the details. We are going to go ahead”, do you think the Government should ensure that the three model runway should be better than the projections if we had a two runway airport?

Sir Howard Davies

On most of the projections it could reasonable say that. I would have to look carefully at precisely all of them.

Philip Graham

I think it could say that in relation to most metrics at night. During the day, the picture is very much more mixed. But in terms of what Howard is saying, the bigger part of the picture is the overall relationship and impact in terms of noise, taking into account compensation, taking into account night flights, taking into account the mitigatory measures that would be put in place. That would be a big part of what would need to be specified by the Government.

Sir Howard Davies

If I could just bring this to a sort of down home reality, if you like, we were very impressed when we went to visit some primary schools right around the airport. They were going to be very noisy whether it is two runways or three runways. They are very inspiring people and they say, “Look, we could make this school a lot better, but what we need is not just the double glazing that people have been prepared to put in, but it needs a significantly different air conditioning system because the double glazing cannot be shut in the summer because you do not get the ventilation. We need outdoor play areas that have insulated roofs but open sides”, and so on. These are people who have very, very clear ideas about how you could make those schools much better. A three runway operation would provide you the funding for that kind of thing. If that does not happen they are not going to close, because they are totally embedded in local communities around the airport and they are going to remain very noisy. So there are some genuinely positive things that could be done with this pot of money that can arise as a result of the enhanced profitability of a new airport, which would make big differences in some crucial facilities around the airport.

Chair

Thank you very much. Thank you for the generosity of your time and with your answers as well. Mr Pitkethly, Mr Graham, Professor Dame Julia King, and Sir Howard Davies, the former chairman of the Airports Commission. Thank you all very much. Oral evidence: The Airports Commission report, HC 389 1