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A reported plan to approve a third runway at Heathrow and an expansion of Gatwick and Luton airports has been labelled “desperate”, as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, faces opposition from within Labour to the decision.
Reeves is poised to make a swathe of announcements intended to increase economic growth in a speech later this month, including giving the green light to airport expansions.
The long-mooted plan to build a third runway at Heathrow, which is Britain’s busiest airport, is expected to be approved by Reeves, along with bringing a second strip at Gatwick into full-time use and increasing the capacity of Luton, according to Bloomberg.
The chancellor has been searching for policies that will turbocharge growth, predicted to be 1.6% this year, as she also searches for deep spending cuts to make up for a rise in borrowing costs and a dip in the pound earlier this month.
Reeves is expected to make the decision to allow Heathrow’s expansion despite opposition from the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, who is understood to be against the plans which have long been opposed by green campaigners.
Miliband is responsible for keeping the UK within its carbon budget – the amount of carbon the country can afford to emit while still having a chance of meeting net zero emissions by 2050.
The seventh such budget is coming out this spring, written by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which has previously decreed that “there should be no net airport expansion unless the carbon-intensity of aviation is outperforming the government’s emissions reduction pathway and can accommodate the additional demand”.
Reeves will also face opposition to the decision from London’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan. A spokesperson for Khan told the Guardian: “The mayor has a longstanding opposition to airport expansion around London – linked to the negative impact on air quality, noise and London’s ability to reach net zero by 2030.”
The move will also be unpopular with many backbenchers, both those with constituencies near the airports and those who campaign on climate action.
Clive Lewis, the MP for Norwich South, said: “The CCC has called for ‘no net airport expansion’ in the UK. That’s because it’s completely incompatible with the government’s own net zero strategy.
“If these airport expansions go ahead then it looks increasingly like the Treasury is putting ‘growth’ above all else including our climate and nature commitments. It may or may not squeeze out some anemic GDP growth. But it will most definitely come at terrible cost to the environment and this government’s increasingly shaky record on it.”
Doug Parr, the policy director at Greenpeace UK, said: “Resurrecting the idea of a third runway at Heathrow in the hope that a strip of tarmac will nudge up the UK’s GDP smacks of desperation. The economic benefits are dubious at best while the environmental costs in climate damage, noise and air pollution are certain.
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“Expert analysis has shown that the uptick in air travel over the last few years has failed to boost UK productivity or GDP growth while business journeys by plane are in long-term decline.”
Reeves is expected to argue that the government is bringing in a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) mandate that will require planes to use greener fuels, with 2% of total jet fuel to be SAF by the end of this year, and this will offset any expansion.
Other mooted growth-boosting schemes include the Lower Thames Crossing road tunnel and a Universal Studios theme park near London.
The chancellor has long supported a third runway at Heathrow, voting for it in 2018 while the prime minister, Keir Starmer, voted against.
The Treasury and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero have been contacted for comment.
