Thanks for the link to the Transport Committee video Bagso
Some well articulated words at point minute 45 Jason McCartney about "The North" and its contribution to this debate.
Pity it took "Mr Yorkshire" to raise the profile of The North AND primarily Manchester........ I despair !
Think you are being unfair Bagso here. The way it works (or certainly used to) is that prior to the meeting, a list of themes and questions is drawn up by the Committee's expert adviser(s) for discussion internally. The advisers are usually the ones you see sitting on the left of the committee table as you are looking at the Committee. Then there is general agreement on who is going to follow what lines to give every MP a chance to ask something - especially where they have the interests of their constituents at heart.
So I suspect there was an agreement that the Yorkshire MP started off the North regional issue and this was then followed up by Graham Stringer on the bilaterals issue - one he has been involved in ever since he went into parliament decades ago.
Of course some on here say that there aren't any bilateral issues affecting MAN, but as someone pointed out here recently, it is thought that EZY won't start a MAN- LED which I believe they have rights for, until the rights for LGW - LED are sorted....
Mr Davies and Tonto became somewhat confused at this point !
They certainly did and Stringer extracted not only a commitment from them to share their legal advice on Open Skies etc with the Committee but also to provide further details of how these bilateral issues could be addressed as it would help the Commission. Howard Davies was obviously on the lookout for assistance here from his answer.
So hopefully MAG will be able to assist although you would have thought that they would have put something forward in the first place. Maybe they did and it got lost in all the other issues.
[quote]No idea who the clumsy somewhat flustered "office junior" is supposedly supporting Mr Davies.[QUOTE]
He is Mr Philip Graham who is the senior civil servant working as the head of the Commission secretariat. I think he works for DfT. Presume he wasn't expected as no name tag had been prepared for him, but there were a few anxious glaces at him from Howard Davies when he was unsure....
Whilst finding out who this character was I came across the link below which makes for some interesting reading. It's the judgement on the legal issues surrounding Geoff Muirhead's role on the Commission and his involvement after MAG bought STN. A good bit of bedtime reading!
Some highlights covers the fact that the Commission met MAG officials a few times last year and the fact that
"the purchase plan for Stansted did not rely on additional capacity"
about which there has been conjecture on this board for a while.
It also points out that "On the 19th of July 2013 MAG submitted their document entitled Capacity for Growth to the Commission. One point was
to support the growth of Manchester to the capacity of its two existing runways and a throughput of 55 mppa.
It's about time the master plan was updated; last published in 2007 I think. The generally accepted view is that a Master Plan should be updated every 5 years, so hopefully we will hear some more on MAN's proposed infrastructure developments soon.....
http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resource...ross-v-sst.pdf
Plenty other little gems in there too!
Nighty night!