It is wholly unsurprising that AIRPORT MANAGERS would come out in support of a project which may result in their facility receiving afew additional flights. But what about the bigger picture? What would senior council figures in Liverpool favour if instead offered a couple of billion pounds to completely replace the bottleneck which is Lime Street Station, constrained by Victorian cuttings and tunnels, half the size it really needs to be? Do that and they could accommodate more frequent rail services to London (in line with Manchester, perhaps), rail services direct to Scotland (which they currently cannot squeeze in), and - even - that desperately coveted direct link to HS2? Now that would beat three flights daily to LHR ... for a fraction of the cost.
How would senior council figures in Sheffield react if instead of being offered 'trickledown' from a third LHR runway they were to at last gain a transpennine motorway (Liverpool, Manchester and North Wales would really benefit from that as well).
Obviously, I could go on with a dozen similar examples but these two long-stalled proposals demonstrate the point. If six billion in public funding (the number came from the 'Runways UK' debate, BTW) were to be blown on LHR expansion, that money cannot then be made available for projects of merit in the regions. It can't be spent twice. And let's face it: the regions are long overdue their turn in the sun. The SE appears to have a conveyor belt of multi-billion-pound infrastructure projects being approved one after another; in the North, we're still awaiting our first one-billion-plus publicly funded innovation. Will the North be next up, or will it be LHR R3, Crossrail 2 [27.5 Billion for that one - WOW!], or more underground extensions first?
It is great to see the fantastic infrastructure now enjoyed by London and the SE. I don't begrudge it. But public money comes from taxpayers nationally and the largesse needs to be equitably spread around. What about the 70% of the population who live outside the SE?
The argument that six billion of public funding contributed to R3 at LHR can be justified because it benefits all of us is hogwash. We have long memories. The Channel Tunnel was going to benefit all of us up here ("not just London") because the big northern cities were going to get daily trains direct to the continent as well. Our regional business leaders supported that proposal too but we're still waiting for payback. I suspect we'll be whistling in the wind for many years more yet. No sign of that promised Manchester Piccadilly to Gare du Nord Eurostar which was promised in return for northern support.
Sir Richard Leese put it best at the recent Manchester Airport 'Runways' event: "In my experience, trickledown really does mean a trickle!"
Let's face it, infrastructure spending in London benefits London. The 'trickledown' we see up here is microscopic. Indeed, wealth is extracted from our regions as London heats up still further. Business planners favour the shiny state-of-the-art facilities provided in the SE. They aren't queueing up to ride to their new HQ on our 'Pacers'. The time has come for London to pause and digest it's existing (fantastic) recently-added innovations. We're long overdue seeing the PUBLIC portion of infrastructure spending head into the regions for a change.
"Minister, what have you done for Middlesbrough recently? Stoke? Barnsley? Blackburn? Sheffield? ..."