Dithering and incompetence is destroying Heathrow’s global status

If anything sums up Britain’s dwindling status as a destination for foreign capital, it is surely the failure to build a third runway at Heathrow airport.

Other countries must look at the UK and wonder what happened to a nation whose Victorian forefathers were responsible for scores of wildly ambitious infrastructure projects – from the railways and the London Underground to thousands of miles of sewers and scores of magnificent bridges, tunnels and viaducts.

True, we have the Elizabeth Line, which is undoubtedly an impressive feat of engineering and has transformed travel for many Londoners. But for every success story there are numerous costly white elephants such as HS2, Hinkley and the Garden Bridge, one of many crackpot schemes Boris Johnson dreamt up in his freewheeling days as the mayor of London.

At least his idea for a £110bn floating landing strip in the Thames and a proposed 28-mile bridge connecting Stranraer in Scotland to Larne in Northern Ireland never came close to reality.

One presumes there are respected architects who occasionally still wake up with a start during the night wondering if the latter was ever a serious proposal or they had merely dreamt it.

However, vanity projects aside Britain seems stuck in a state of paralysis when it comes to the sort of construction schemes of national significance that countries like China seem able to finish in months, or even weeks.

The two main political parties are guilty of dithering and incompetence on a colossal scale, which is destroying Heathrow’s ability to act as an international hub and holding back growth. Airlines such as Virgin Atlantic are so fed up with the delays that they are beginning to make alternative plans, its boss Shai Weiss has told The Telegraph.

While we’ve spent decades dragging our feet over vital extra capacity at the UK’s most important airport, the Chinese repeatedly put us to shame with their ability to get things done, building among other things a 819-mile-long high-speed train between Beijing and Shanghai in three years.

Assembled by a 130,000-strong army of engineers and labourers, it slashed journey times between its two biggest cities from 14 hours to five hours and carries more than 50 million passengers a year.

Here, it is more than two decades since Alistair Darling, the then-transport secretary, published plans for a third runway at Heathrow, prompting airport bosses to lay out an ambitious £14bn plan for a brand new 3.5km runway and accompanying taxiways that would make it better able to handle the tens of millions of additional passengers anticipated over the coming years.

An incredible seven prime ministers later, not a single grain of earth has been cleared to make way for expansion.

It is no coincidence, therefore, that the following two things have happened: Heathrow passenger numbers have risen steadily – from 67 million a year to a peak of nearly 81 million in the last year before Covid struck; but the airport has none the less tumbled down the world rankings as rivals such as Dubai have grown at light-speed, overtaking Heathrow.

This is precisely what the former heads of the government-appointed Airport Commission, Sir Howard Davies and Sir John Armitt, warned would happen in 2018 when the pair wrote to MPs urging them to vote in favour of a proposal to expand Heathrow three years after the commission unanimously voted in favour of a new northwest runway at Heathrow.

It has slipped from the second busiest hub at the turn of the century behind Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson to fourth place, having been overtaken by Dubai and Dallas. Transit traffic has shrunk, going to other airports that have more capacity.

Heathrow remains one of the few major hubs with just two runways. Chicago O’Hare has eight, Dallas Fort Worth has seven, Amsterdam Schiphol boasts six, while Charles de Gaulle, JFK, Frankfurt, and Tokyo Haneda each have four.

Sir Howard told me earlier this year that he still believes the case for a third runway is strong. “I remain of the view that if you want to expand long-haul airport capacity in the London region then Heathrow remains the best answer,” he said.

True, there have been many attempts to stop it in the courts – but the Supreme Court gave the green light for a third runway in 2020 after MPs had heeded Sir Howard’s call and voted in favour by an overwhelming majority of 415 to 119. Yet with the legality of construction removed, some industry figures have given up hope of it ever seeing the light of day.

Willie Walsh, former British Airways boss, thinks it will never get off the ground.

Mr Weiss says the airline is now switching its attention to smaller UK airports such as Bristol, the carrier’s secondary hub in Manchester, and is even considering a return to London Gatwick.

Heathrow, meanwhile, is stuck in a constant state of limbo.

There are many factors preventing progress. Opposition from locals and environmental campaigners remains fierce. The pandemic also harmed the case for expansion, and Heathrow has gone backwards in the hands of absentee foreign shareholders who have prioritised dividend payments over investment and lumbered it with a costly debt mountain.

Additionally, it has fallen out spectacularly with the airlines and alienated customers with poor service and an attempt to squeeze them with higher charges.

But the reluctance of both sides of the House to back a third runway has created a vacuum that its critics and opponents have been only too happy to fill.

At the moment, Labour has no official position on Heathrow expansion other than four loose “tests” dating back to the Corbyn era that require the scheme to meet air quality, noise and climate change requirements, as well as having a strong economic case.

With the Opposition once again characteristically vague on a matter of great national significance, Heathrow’s future seems destined to remain unresolved under Sir Keir Starmer.