Lords Sitting of 22 February 1971

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of of Peterborough.

CITY OF LONDON: EXPOSURE OF MEDIÆVAL WALL
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they can say what steps are to be taken to expose, preserve and display those portions of the mediǽval wall of the City of London which as a result of the war came to light in Noble Street and between the church of St. Giles Cripplegate and London Wall.]
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, my right honourable friend is gladly making expert advice and technical assistance available to the responsible authority, the City of London Corporation, in connection with their imaginative proposal to repair, consolidate and, later, display these remains.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for his quite encouraging reply. Can he possibly give me some idea when something will be done—when the work on the proper exposure will be started?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, progress is necessarily slow. It is a question of fitting in the work having regard to the many and complex factors which arise in the redevelopment of this part of the City and which are not in the control of the Department. It is therefore impossible to say when the work will be completed. We have already seen work started in the Noble Street area, and the next portion to be treated will be the part of the wall running East and West to the South of St.
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Giles. Although timing is not the Deparment's responsibility I should expect that the City, who have to work with the developers and the builders, might approach us this year, in the spring.

SEABED ARMS CONTROL TREATY
2.38 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what Governments have signed the Seabed Arms Control Treaty and what weapons the Treaty bans.]
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States, and representatives of 62 other Governments, signed the Treaty on February 11 in one or more of the capitals of the Depositary Governments, London, Moscow and Washington. Since the list is long I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT. The Treaty bans the emplacement of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction on the seabed outside a twelve mile coastal zone.
Following is the list referred to:
According to information received up to February 17, 1971, the following countries have signed the Treaty in one or more of the depositary capitals:

Afghanistan

Iceland

Australia

Iran

Austria

Ireland

Belgium

Italy

Bolivia

Japan

Botswana

Jordan

Bulgaria

Korea

Burma

Laos

Burundi

Lebanon

Cambodia

Liberia

Canada

Luxembourg

Central African Republic

Mali

Malta

Colombia

Mongolia

Costa Rica

Mauritius

Cyprus

Morocco

Czechoslovakia

Nepal

Denmark

Netherlands

Dominican Republic

New Zealand

Ethiopia

Nicaragua

Finland

Niger

Ghana

Norway

Greece

Panama

Guatemala

Poland

Guinea

Romania

Honduras

Rwanda

Hungary

Sierra Leone

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South Africa

Tunisia

Sudan

U.S.S.R.

Swaziland

United Kingdom

Sweden

United States

Switzerland

Uruguay

Tanzania

Vietnam

In addition, signatures have been appended in Washington on behalf of the Nationalist Chinese authorities, and in Moscow on behalf of the East German authorities.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl the Minister for that reply. Perhaps I should have asked which Governments did not sign. May I ask him whether it is not the case that two nuclear Powers, France and China, have not signed this agreement? Further, in view of the better relations which exist with France since these negotiations began two years ago, would it be possible to approach France to reconsider its decision, because it might also influence China?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the noble Lord is perfectly correct in saying that both France and China have not signed. It is of course Her Majesty's Government's desire that as many countries as possible will sign this document, and it is hoped that France and China will still do so.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask a further supplementary question? While we congratulate the Maltese Government on having initiated these discussions, is it not the case that Malta proposed that all war implements should be excluded from the seabed; and will Her Majesty's Government seek to extend this agreement to all warlike implements?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, as the noble Lord will appreciate, in matters such as this it is important to get agreement on a mutually common ground, and this is as far as this Treaty has gone. But Article 5 of the Treaty commits other Governments to continue to have discussions with a view to seeing whether further progress can be made in banning other weapons.

ALDABRA: PROPOSED CALL BY U.S. TRAVEL SHIP
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have consulted the Royal Society with a view to allowing a small party of American ecologists and U.S.A. members of Nature Conservancy and W.W.F., aboard M.T.S. "Apollo", chartered by Raymond and Whitcomb Company, New York, to land for five hours at Aldabra on February 24, 1971.]
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, we have been in continuous touch with the Royal Society about this matter and their view is that such a visit to Aldabra should not be permitted on the basis of the information which is at present available to us. We therefore feel that landing permission should not be granted. The President of the Raymond and Whitcomb Travel Company was informed on February 5 of the reasons for the present refusal, which were in the interests of nature conservancy, and that the Royal Society were quite willing to meet representatives of the firm to discuss the matter more fully if the firm had any further plans to land groups on the island.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that reply, may I ask him whether he does not feel it is being a little unreasonable when, in effect, it is naturalists, ecologists and conservationists who are concerned in this question? Does not my noble friend think that they are well aware of the risks involved, such as avoiding contamination, not disturbing the reef fauna and also taking care of the breeding colonies of birds? I should have thought that these were situations of which these gentlemen were well aware, and I should have thought that possibly Her Majesty's Government would reconsider their previous refusal.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I think my noble friend is in error at one point, because the facts which he stated were not made available to the Royal Society. In fact, they have requested information from this travel company as to who the members are, because they are concerned that such landings as are made should be restricted to people who have an interest in nature conservancy, and are not just tourists. But the information which the Royal Society asked for has not been forthcoming.
LORD MERRIVALE: But, my Lords, is it not a fact that Her Majesty's Government have received a telegram stressing that those members who wish to land are in effect bona fide ecologists, naturalists and so forth? My Question specifically referred to those gentlemen; and I was only asking for a limited party to be allowed to disembark and not for the total complement of tourists aboard the ship.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I understand that the application was for about 100 people and that two names were mentioned: a Mr. Johnson Stoddard and a Miss Leila Lenz, and that Her Majesty's Government were unable to find confirmation of the fact that the interests of these two people were basically scientific.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, I am sorry to weary the House, but how is it that Houlder's World Holidays are able to advertise a three-weeks cruise which will call at Aldabra? This seems a little unrealistic.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, permission is granted to the "Lindbland Explorer" to call at Aldabra; and reliance on the future protection of the island's ecology is placed on the presence of a ship's scientist and qualified tour leaders.
LORD BURTON: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Earl can say what creatures inhabit this lonely island which he is so desirous of protecting?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the creatures are as fascinating to the layman as they must be to the naturalist. They include giant tortoises, of which there are some 80,000, and apparently it is the last breeding place of the flightless rail. It also houses frigate birds, boobies and upside-down jelly fishes.

MALAYSIA: DEATH SENTENCES ON POLITICAL OFFENDERS
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make representations
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to the Government of Malaysia with a view to securing reprieves for three persons sentenced to death on charges of possessing firearms and ammunition, similar to the representations made to the Government of Spain in respect of Basque Nationalists sentenced to death.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (LORD ABERDARE): No, my Lords. The two cases are quite different.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while not thanking the Minister for that reply, may I ask whether it is not now becoming clear that international intervention to reprieve death sentences for offences which have political motives is now becoming recognised? Did we not do this in the case of the Jews involved in hijacking in the Soviet Union and in the case of the Basques? Will the noble Lord indicate why this case is not similar to the intervention which Her Majesty's Government made in Spain?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I could not accept the first part of the noble Lord's supplementary. As for the reason why it is different in this case, I would point out that all the three persons referred to in the Question have appealed to the Federal High Court of Malaysia. These appeals are likely to be heard in March. I think it would be improper at this stage to make any intervention.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I think it would have been helpful if the noble Lord had given that supplementary answer at the beginning and also had indicated to my noble friend that this is an internal matter and that we should leave it with the Government of Malaysia, a Government in which we can have supreme confidence.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that supplementary reply, which I appreciate, may I ask whether he is aware that many of us have a high regard for the new Prime Minister in Malaysia and his Administration and that we do not want to intervene in an unacceptable way? But is he also aware that these three prisoners are all young people in their early twenties and that one of them is a girl of 22? While I am not asking Her

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Majesty's Government to intervene immediately, would they indicate to the Malaysian Government that it would be in accordance with humanitarian opinion in the world that when their appeals have been heard, reprieves should if necessary be granted?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I much appreciate the noble Lord's deep concern in these humanitarian matters: but I think it would be quite wrong for me now to make any comment on anything which is still sub judice in Malaysia. We have a great sympathy with the Government of Malaysia which is a Commonwealth country. They have a well-established judicial system and we have great sympathy with them in dealing with the armed terrorism with which these three people were involved.

EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY: CARIBBEAN POSITION
VISCOUNT GOSCHEN: My Lords, I should like to inform the House that at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend Lord Ferrers will be making a Statement on the Common Market discussions with the Caribbean Governments.
May I also inform the House that light refreshments will be available this evening in the Guest Room?

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

PERSONAL BILLS COMMITTEE
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, that the Lord Wilberforce and the Lord Diplock be appointed to the Committee in the place of the Viscount Simonds and the Lord Cohen.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

THIRD LONDON AIRPORT: THE ROSKILL REPORT
2.50 p.m.
LORD MOLSON LORD MOLSON rose to move, That this House do take note of the Report of the Commission on the Third London Airport. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name. I have expressed the Motion in a general way in order to facilitate a frank and full expression of opinion by your Lordships on this matter, which is of the greatest importance to many of our fellow countrymen; and in order to give guidance to the Government, who have undertaken not to come to any final conclusion on the matter until after debate in both Houses of Parliament.
My Lords, I am quite clear in the views that I hold. At an earlier stage the Council for the Protection of Rural England, of which I am Chairman, expressed their views to the Roskill Commission in no ambiguous way. They said that a third London Airport should not be at any inland site; that it should be at Foulness; or if that proved, for technical reasons, to be impossible, it should be at some other off-shore site. This third contingency no longer arises. The Roskill Commission say:
"There is no technical barrier to the construction of an airport at Foulness."
In another passage they say:
"Foulness is the site which is easiest for air traffic control."
So, we are confirmed in our choice of Foulness.
I now turn to another matter which is very relevant to the consideration of the site of a third London Airport, although I think the Roskill Commission regarded it as being on the fringe of their terms of reference. I refer to the interests of those living near existing airports in the London area. As Chairman of the C.P.R.E., which is an all-embracing body, I was asked, about a month ago, to preside at a meeting of representatives of almost all the defence organisations concerned with airports. If your Lordships will bear with me I will read out the list of the organisations concerned; it will, I think, indicate how many people and what various areas are seriously concerned about existing aircraft noise.
There was the Bedfordshire Airport Resistance, called BARA. There was the Gatwick Anti-Noise Executive, called GANE. As many of your Lordships will know, they are spending large sums of money on being represented at the public inquiry at present taking place regarding the lengthening of the one runway at Gatwick. There was the Kew Association for Control of Aircraft Noise—KACAN, we call it—which is representative of a large number of London residents who are already seriously troubled by the noise of aircraft using Heathrow. There were the Luton and District Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise; the Wraysbury Anti-Aircraft Noise Action Group; the Local Authorities' Council for Aircraft Noise; and, of course, there was the Wing Airport Resistance Association, which is particularly concerned with our debate to-day.
My Lords, it was not easy to obtain complete agreement at a meeting of organisations representative of such entirely different areas, but in the end we did arrive at agreement and were able to pass a resolution. I will not read the whole of it to your Lordships, but I will refer to three sentences and then seek to underline the significance of each of those sentences. First:
"A third London Airport is urgently needed to cope with increased traffic and to reduce nuisance at existing airports."
There are many people, including, I know, a number of your Lordships, who feel that there is no need for a third London Airport; or at any rate, that it could be postponed for the time being. Some go on to say, as indeed Mr. Crosland said in a speech made outdoors this last weekend, that it may well be that the existing airports could be expanded and could take all the increase in traffic that we can foresee. My Lords, those who are living in the vicinity of the existing airports around London regard that solution as wholly unacceptable. Noise, which is at present a very great nuisance and which inflicts on them physical suffering and financial loss, is likely to go on increasing until their living conditions are almost intolerable. It is for that reason that this meeting passed a resolution that a third London Airport is urgently needed.
The resolution went on, secondly, to say:
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"There should be no physical extension of existing airports."
I have already indicated that the people in the vicinity of these airports are suffering very much indeed; and, of course, if there were more runways and more aircraft—and especially if there were more night flights taking off after midnight—what is already a nuisance will become an intolerable burden. Thirdly, the meeting was in total opposition to any internal airport and agreed that Foulness was the most suitable site.
On what grounds are we urging the Government to reject the recommendation of the Roskill Commission, having regard to the time and care which they devoted to the matter and the scientific research which the Commission undertook? My Lords, we ask for the rejection of the Roskill recommendation for three reasons: first, because the Commission gravely underestimated the importance of environmental considerations; secondly, because they greatly exaggerated the supposed importance of the convenience of air travellers and airlines; and thirdly, because they assumed that there could be no direction, no issuing of instructions, as to what routes should be followed by aircraft.
I begin with the environment. I know that it is sometimes said that we are now unduly concerned about the environment. But, my Lords, people to-day really do care about the environment. They are not prepared to tolerate Victorian squalor and dirt and noise. I will not say much about the Vale of Aylesbury. Professor Buchanan, in his Dissenting Note, has described the Vale of Aylesbury and all that it contains, and described it so well that I could not equal his language. I hope that most of your Lordships will have read that Dissenting Note. I will only summarise what he says by saying that to build an airport there would be "an environmental disaster".
But there are three points that he makes which I will repeat in order to emphasise them. For the last thirty years it has been accepted by successive Governments and by all the local authorities concerned that there should be a Green Belt immediately around London, and an outer country ring. That has been

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preserved. It would surely be shocking if at this time we decided to build an airport in the middle of that outer ring. Consider for a moment what it involves. It involves bulldozing flat an area 5 miles long and 2½ miles wide, or three-and-a-half times the extent of Heathrow Airport as it is at the present time. It would subject 50 square miles to severe noise nuisance—and that means something that is really intolerable for people to live with—and 350 square miles to outer noise nuisance. In the second place, an airport of this size would require approximately 65,000 workers. That would involve what in the rather inelegant modern planning jargon is called "over-heating of the area" where the airport is to be placed. That means that there would not be enough labour to satisfy the requirements of the airport, and therefore it would be necessary (here I come to my third point) to build a town of some 275,000 people, thereby bringing the London conurbation and the Birmingham conurbation into proximity and doing away with the remains of rural countryside in the Midlands.
These considerations were present to the minds of the Roskill Commission, and they confirmed this general result when they said:
"Our collective and subjective judgment on the planning issues is that an airport at Foulness may be preferable."
If your Lordships have followed my argument, you will now wonder why the Roskill Commission then proceeded to say that they reject Foulness as the best site. They do so, they say, for two reasons: first, because the costs are higher, but secondly, and mainly,
"The greatest disadvantage of Foulness arises from its relative inaccessibility for passengers and freight by reason of its geographical position."
It is difficult to take this argument seriously. They themselves state that the distance from King's Cross to Cublington is 48 miles, and from King's Cross to Foulness is 56 miles. In these days, what is eight miles? So far as time is concerned, they tell us that it takes 39 minutes at present to get to Cublington and 44 minutes to get to Foulness. And it is because of eight miles and five minutes that they reject the proposal to site the airport at Foulness.
The second reason why we ask the Government to reject the recommendation of the Roskill Commission is the over-importance attached to the convenience of air travellers. A remarkable sentence at page 130 of the Report illustrates their line of thought where they say:
"We see no reason why the pursuit of leisure should not allow a flight to Rome to see the Sistine Chapel but should permit a car journey to Audley End or Waddesdon Manor."
That is an extraordinary comment to make. No one has ever proposed to prevent people travelling from this country to Rome to see the Sistine Chapel. All that is under discussion is at what place a change should be made from a motor car or a train to take an aircraft for flying to Italy. So far as a car journey to Audley End of Waddesdon Manor is concerned, anyone going to either of those places observes traffic regulations and follows a route which has been provided by the public. One is surprised that the acute mind of a High Court Judge should have allowed an illustration of that kind to be used by the draftsman of the Report when in point of fact it is so misleading, so inaccurate and, I might say, so silly.
I come to the third point. Underlying the whole of this argumentation there is the assumption that air travellers and airliners are going to be left free to choose exactly where they want to embark and what line they wish to follow. This is exactly what all those of us who are opposed to the recommendations of the Roskill Commission refuse to admit. If air traffic is going to create a nuisance injurious to neighbours and damaging to the environment, it must be under the general control of the community as a whole. Their idea is really pre-1947, when the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, whom I see sitting opposite, introduced the Town and Country Planning Act which exercised general control over the use of property.
There is another important consideration which again the Roskill Commission appear to have thought lay outside their terms of reference. It is the hope, I understand, of the Port of London Authority to build a port at Maplin Sands; and, in any case, it is the intention to reclaim those sands. I will not go into detail, because the noble Viscount,

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Lord Simon, the Chairman of the Port of London Authority, is here, and I am glad to see that he is going to speak later in this debate. One matter stands out a mile and is perfectly plain: if the Maplin Sands are going to be reclaimed from the sea; if there is going to be a seaport there as well as an airport, the economic cost to the country of reclaiming those sands and building the necessary rail and road communications with London will be divided between either the two ports, or possibly three undertakings if, in addition, an industrial development area is built there.
Just before coming into this debate I received a communication from the Clerk to the Essex County Council, written last Thursday. It is extremely relevant to this matter. I will not read the whole of the letter, but I will merely quote this:
"The mass of evidence collected by the County Council over the past six years indicates that in the national interest the third London Airport should be sited at Foulness, subject to conditions aimed at securing proper environmental standards."
The next paragraph says:
"An airport at Foulness would be welcomed"—
that is, by the County Council—
"from a planning point of view (a) to correct a present imbalance of employment in South Essex, and to provide for a sound employment base for the proposed major growth area here, and (b) to ameliorate the effects of aircraft noise at Southend airport resulting from its probable closure."
What is the issue before the country and the Government? On the one hand it is first to reclaim land from the sea; secondly, to avoid all destruction of the existing countryside; thirdly, to ensure that the noise nuisance is chiefly over the sea; fourthly, to provide new development and new employment for the local people of Essex and for the East Enders of London. Or there is the alternative recommended by the Roskill Commission: first, to invade London's outer country ring; secondly, to bulldoze flat an area of the Vale of Aylesbury equal to London inside the railway termini; thirdly, to make 50 square miles of rural England intolerable by severe noise; fourthly, to bring 270 square miles within the outer noise nuisance; fifthly, to suburbanise all the Midlands from London to Birmingham.
I appeal, through your Lordships' House, to the Government and to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister created a Department of the Environment. Here is an opportunity for the Department of the Environment to justify its existence. But particularly I would recall the speech made by the Prime Minister to the Countryside in 1970 Conference held last October. I should like to refer to two extracts from the speech:
"We shall have to try to ensure that the requirements of technological progress, and the increasing demands for leisure and refreshment, are harmonised with the desire to preserve what all of us value in the English countryside."
In the same speech he later said:
"One has to bear in mind that in the long term it might often cost less to pursue a policy which could be more costly in the short term than to go ahead on a cheaper plan, and then to pay to correct some piece of devastation, or some new form of pollution."
My Lords, those were the Prime Minister's words last October. This is a clear case in point, and I appeal to him and to the Government, with confidence, that he will in this matter take the right decision. I beg to move.
3.16 p.m.
LORD GREENWOOD OF ROSSENDALE: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Molson, has stated his case with characteristic clarity and fairness. I know that all of us are grateful to him for giving us an opportunity of discussing this most difficult problem and doing it in the presence of noble Lords with great experience in the fields of local government, aviation and planning. Certainly no one in the country knows more about planning than my noble friend Lord Silkin. I do not think I either anticipate or exaggerate when I say that I believe the views that are expressed by your Lordships today will be of the greatest value to the Government in reaching what everybody agrees to be a most difficult decision.
The setting up of the Roskill Commission was discussed between the then Government and the Opposition, and also with the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, as a Cross-Bencher. There is no secret about the fact that I should have preferred a planning inquiry commission on the lines which at that time were included in the Bill which was before Parliament, and which later became the Town and Country Planning Act 1969.

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A planning inquiry commission would have had in my view certain advantages. But the decision was in favour of a judicial Inquiry, headed by Mr. Justice Roskill. I congratulate Sir Eustace and his colleagues on the speed and thoroughness of their work, and I thank them for making the Report so immensely readable. Nevertheless, I have misgivings about their recommendations, and about some of their methodology. I very much doubt whether the same machinery will be used again—especially if, as I think probable, the Government reject the advice that they have received.
It would be wrong however not to express regret that so many people made up their minds before the full Report was available, and some even before what I thought was the misguidedly premature publication of the findings without the closely reasoned arguments which led the Commission to make them. Indeed, the character in Alice in Wonderland—I cannot remember whether it was the Red Queen or the Duchess—who called:
"Sentence first, verdict afterwards"
was a model of temperate objectivity compared with all those people—some of them in another place—who came down firmly in favour of Foulness before they had read the arguments that were submitted by Roskill.
It may be that the Commission's terms of reference were too narrow. If that is so, I accept my own share of the responsibility. But, in mitigation, I hope that your Lordships will remember that at that time the British Airports Authority regarded the need for a third London airport as much more urgent than has been shown to be the case. It may also be that Mr. Justice Roskill interpreted his terms of reference rather too rigidly. That has certainly been suggested in a number of newspapers and periodicals. It has also been suggested that the large number of counsel involved in the hearing tended to slow down the proceedings, and that the experts and the barristers were often on different wavelengths. But that is not a criticism to which I attach great importance, although the cost must be added to the more than £1 million that the Government themselves spent.
What really worries me, and worries me the more I study the mass
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of evidence which accompanies the Report, is the reliance the Commission place on the cost/benefit analysis. Cost/benefit analysis has proved its value in many fields—in transport, in education and in defence—but in the case of a third London airport many of the factors are not quantifiable, as the Commission, after a rather shaky start, came to appreciate. I think that the matter was put into its right perspective by Keith Richardson writing in the Sunday Times on January 24. He argued that the constructional costs were easily quantifiable but that the impact of noise and the extra cost to passengers using one site instead of another (to which the noble Lord, Lord Molson, referred) were much more difficult to assess in monetary terms. He summed it up in these words:
"What it amounts to … is nothing more than adding apples to pears and trying to give the answer in oranges."
The Financial Times complained in the Roskill context that the technique has three major limitations: first, the assessment of particular costs and benefits can seldom be more than approximate; second, some costs cannot be assessed at all; third, particular costs cannot be added up to give totals which can be validly compared with one another to produce an indisputable answer. I believe that the Commission made a valiant attempt, and they deserve our appreciation, but in an investment as great as this, with all its consequences for the whole future of our people, I hope we shall not be unduly influenced by financial arguments whose validity has been challenged and which are in many respects of only marginal significance.
To turn to the sites themselves, I know that your Lordships will be sympathetic to those whose homes are threatened and whose way of life is in danger. It is perhaps unusual for your Lordships to hear Kipling quoted from this side of the House, but perhaps I might remind the House that:
"God gives all men all earth to love,
But, since man's heart is small,
Ordains for each one spot shall prove
Beloved over all."
My Lords, all these sites considered by the Roskill Commission are dear to the people who live in and around them. I am sure that we must make allowances, even for the near-hysteria which characterised some of the first reactions to the

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Report. Nor, in my submission, must we be prejudiced for or against a site which has, or has not, a middle-class, professional, highly coherent group of citizens who know how to use the mass media to the best advantage.
On Friday, by courtesy of the Ministry of Defence, I visited Foulness—and perhaps I should declare what I think is an infinitesimal interest in that I regard my home as being on the estuary of the Colne but, I am happy to say, unaffected by Foulness. It is not without interest that the Thames Aeroport Group referred to its Foulness site as the "Rolls-Royce situation". In the light of subsequent events, that was not a happy choice of words. The island, its saltings and the Maplin Sands are wild and beautiful; they are classified as grade 1 by the Nature Conservancy. To me they have in a unique degree the peculiar beauty of the unspoiled parts of the Essex coast, like the estuaries of the Colne and the Blackwater and the Pyefleet Creek.
The Island was first used by the War Department in 1805, when General Shrapnel was developing there the shell that bore his name. In the church, a little ironically, there is a monument to the right honourable George Henry Finch, who was not only Lord of the Manor of Foulness but also, for years, Member of Parliament for the County of Rutland, which your Lordships will appreciate is also under sentence of death in the White Paper on Local Government Reorganisation submitted by the Party opposite. Also a little ironically, at the nearby parish church of Little Wakering there is a tablet saying that the tower was built in 1416 by the Bishop of Norwich
"in gratitude to God for the safety given at Agincourt."
I have no doubt that there are many people in the villages around who are praying that the same safety will be given to them on this occasion.
One's judgment of the beauty of the area, with its wide horizons and clear skies and white weatherboarded houses, is inevitably subjective, but one's appreciation of the planning problems can be, and must be, much more objective. Your Lordships may find it useful to read the views on these expressed by Dr. Burns and his colleagues in their Strategic Plan for the South-East. Although the South-East Economic Planning Board and the
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joint conference of local authorities (I see the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, in his place) favoured the site, I would say, in my personal judgment, that there is a real danger of overcrowding in the area; that the disturbance caused for many miles around by the provision of adequate access by rail and by road will be great, and that its remoteness from the Midlands will cause real problems. The Ministry of Defence will have great difficulty in finding alternative sites for its operations. And we cannot dismiss lightly the danger of a bird strike, remembering that 175,000 birds have been seen to cross the Maplin Sands in the short space of 45 minutes. Nor can we throw lightly aside the difficulty which the British Airports Authority clearly envisage of making the site a viable proposition. The effects of dredging and building may well have effects upon the coastline and upon the estuary of the Thames; more people, in both Kent and Essex, will be affected by noise than is generally realised; and an airport at Foulness means greater traffic at Luton and greater noise inconvenience to the people living in that area.
I have spoken at some length about Foulness because it has not so far found many friends and because so many people have chosen it as their first victim, but I will be briefer about the other sites. Nuthampstead I think we need not discuss at all, and I will deal very briefly with Cublington and Thurleigh. I do that not because I regard them as less important, but because Cublington's case has been so strongly pleaded by the noble Lord and because it has received so much attention already. Let me say that I yield to no one in my admiration for the churches at Stewkley and at Wing, and I restimulated my admiration by going to see them once again back in the autumn. But the site proposed is not in the most beautiful part of the Vale of Aylesbury and the proximity of Milton Keynes has made it much less of a rural backwater than was previously the case. And, in contrast to Professor Buchanan, for whom all of us have the most profound respect, it is not without interest that Dr. Burns in the Strategic Plan for the South-East, in writing of Cublington, should say:
"The airport site is within a countryside area but it is not within an area shown in the Strategy as of regional significance either for agriculture or for amenity."

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There are, however, in my view, three very strong arguments against the site. First, there is the real danger of overheating; that part of the country does not need economic stimulation. Second, it would mean that there was a vast are of aircraft noise stretching from South of Gatwick to North of Northampton and Huntingdon, with only small areas of comparative peace between the three London airports. Third, and perhaps of less enduring significance, it would involve some restructuring of Milton Keynes.
If I may now turn to Thurleigh, I regard that as a much more impressive candidate for the Third London Airport; and it is interesting that local public opinion polls have shown a majority in its favour, and that 31 local trade unions have supported the proposal. It is, among other things, much more physically suited than Cublington because it is much flatter. The noble Lord said he was a little confused about some of the conclusions that Mr. Justice Roskill had reached. I share his confusion because I find, for example, in Chapter 13, paragraph 52, that the Report says:
"… our collective and subjective judgment on the planning issues … is that Thurleigh is to be preferred perhaps only marginally—to Cublington."
Later, in paragraph 57, the Report says:
"… the planning and environmental factors point to Thurleigh."
But, of course, as in the case of Cublington there would be a real danger of over-heating. I will therefore content myself by saying that if we need a third London airport Thurleigh is surely a very strong candidate.
The real question, my Lords, is whether we do need a four-runway third London airport. I doubt it very much, after studying the Report and the various actions it has provoked. Mr. Crosland, to whose speech the noble Lord, Lord Molson, referred, made his position clear on Saturday. He believes that there is a need for some new airport capacity in the South-East in the early 1980s, but that the case has not been proved for a new four-runway airport in the immediate future. An admirable article by Ian Nairn in the Sunday Times yesterday drew attention not only to the large number of supporting airfields that are
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available in the South-East, but also to the need for a national airport policy.
In referring to Mr. Crosland, the noble Lord, Lord Molson, touched on the question of the capacity which was going to be required. The Roskill Commission estimated the 1980 capacity of Heathrow, Gatwick with one runway, and Luton plus Stansted as 474,000. B.E.A., admittedly taking into account a second runway at Gatwick—which must clearly be hypothetical at this stage—makes the capacity 648,000; and both these figures took no account of Southend, which last year handled over 20,000 aircraft; or of Lydd, which handled over 12,000. It seems probable, in the light of American experience, that with more sophisticated techniques of air traffic control even more flights could be accommodated. So I think one must agree broadly with the judgment of the Economist that there is little to worry about for the next 15 years. But that, of course, must not be made an excuse for lethargy, inaction, or the postponement of decisions.
A further factor which makes one question the need for a third London airport is the very real likelihood of the short take-off and landing aircraft making real progress. My noble friend Lord Beswick, with great experience in aviation, will speak of this more fully, and I also look forward very much to hearing the views of the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton. Certainly at the moment progress is being made in this field in the United States of America and in France, and there appears to be good reason for believing that it will be feasible to have 50-seater STOL aircraft in service by 1980. They will of course have only a limited use, and little value from the tourist point of view; but I think that what is so important is that they could well take the pressure off the existing airports, and the Third London airport could become redundant. Aviation experts of distinction and the magazine Flight have certainly expressed this view.
Finally, my Lords—and I apologise if I have trespassed for too long upon the patience of the House—I should like to make six practical proposals to Her Majesty's Government. First, they should look urgently at our national airport requirements and not just at the need for a third London airport. Second, they should develop the use of existing airports to the very maximum. Third, they should

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decide as swiftly as is practicable to remove the planning blight which is already affecting the four Roskill sites. Fourth, they should legislate to make compensation available for injurious affection; and if the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, will rummage through the files in what used to be the Ministry of Housing and Local Government he will find some excellent documents which will make his task much easier. Fifth, the Government should stiffen up the control of noise from aircraft and fix a date—perhaps 1980—beyond which aircraft generating noise above a certain level will not be allowed to use British airports. At this point I think one must reflect a little sadly that the RB.211 engine would have been probably the most silent in the world, and we hope that it will still be so. Lastly, the Government should galvanise the aircraft industry into a more energetic approach to the development of STOL aircraft than has been apparent so far.
If the Government will accept these proposals there will be jubilation in Foulness, Cublington and Thurleigh, and relief, I believe through the country among those millions of people who regard the beauty of Britain as their heritage, and a heritage they are determined to defend.
3.38 p.m.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, no one is better placed than the noble Lord, Lord Molson, with his previous Ministerial experience in cognate matters and in his present position as Chairman of the C.P.R.E., to persuade the Government to think again. I thought he made a most formidable case. With both noble Lords who have spoken I remain unconvinced by the arguments of the Roskill Commission. The noble Lord, Lord Molson, has said virtually all that can be said with regard to how serious a thing it could be if we made Cublington the site, and the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, has followed that up with a survey of all the different sites. I would rather follow the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, on what he had to say about the methodology of the Commission and about certain aspects of it.
First, while saying that I am unconvinced by the arguments of the Roskill Commission I want to add that I am saddened by the fact that having got a Commission appointed after the public outcry against Stansted, there is now this
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overwhelming feeling that its Report cannot be accepted. I, for one, cannot accept it myself; and this is—I will not say disastrous, but it is sad. This was a strong Commission; it took 2½ years to do its work, it spent over a million pounds and it examined every conceivable witness. The noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, suggested that it may have seen too many witnesses. There is some truth in that, but I think one of the things that did emerge from the Roskill Commission is the extremely able way in which Mr. Justice Roskill marshalled the evidence from all those experts. What more, on the face of it, could one have done? Stansted, we all remember, was felt to be something that was decided in the back corridors of Whitehall, and now the Roskill Commission come up with what in a manner of speaking is Stansted in another place. And this again people in general have instantly rejected, and it seems clear to me, at any rate, than any inland site is absolutely unacceptable at any price. The strength of feeling is such that the Government may well have a riot on their hands if they do not change their mind; but no doubt they know how to cope with riots.
I do not think that because we have rejected the finding of this very distinguished and expensive Commission the idea of a Commission to conduct such examinations is in any way invalidated, but I think we ought to be careful that it does not appear to be so to the general public. I think we do right to reject any answer if we consider it wrong, and I believe we do right to refer it back for further examination. Roskill has devised methods of conducting this kind of examination which will be of great value for any future examinations of this kind, and particularly the way in which he got his evidence in beforehand, so that it could be studied by the members of the Commission before they actually examined the witnesses. Furthermore, the Commission amassed a vast deal of information which is not challenged; a great deal is challenged, but it did amass a very great deal which is not challenged. It did in fact show how to do this sort of thing on a scale on which it has never been done before. I liked Lord Green-wood's illustration of the mistake in trying to quantify what you cannot quantify

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by the analogy of adding apples to pears and getting oranges. I also liked Professor Peter Self's description of the same thing as "nonsense on stilts". But, after all, this is the first time that an inquiry of this kind has been carried out on this scale, and having said that there are misgivings, nevertheless one has to say that it was a formidable task, and our thanks are due to the Commission, whatever we think of the answer.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, that in fact we asked the Commission the wrong questions. He very honourably accepts a certain amount of responsibility for that, and he says—and I am sure this is the right answer—that there was a feeling of urgency which was not really justified. I think we were "conned" by certain interests in the aircraft industry, or those people who manage airports, into panicking on this issue. I think he is also right in suggesting that perhaps the Commission itself was a little rigid in its interpretation of what it should examine. What it should have examined the noble Lord has already touched on: it is a national airports policy, and it seems to me inconceivable that we should have started off without having considered that first. I daresay that again these are reasons of hindsight. I think that the complexity of the whole problem is such that people were frightened of looking at more than one very narrow aspect of it. We do not really know what sort of traffic we are planning for. A great many of the American traffic estimates have proved to be hopelessly wrong. Lastly, there is the problem that change catches up with us so fast that we have no sooner put one answer into motion than it is out of date. Nevertheless, it seems to me that to start off with the premise that a third London airport was necessary and work from there was shortsighted.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Molson, says unequivocally that he believes a third London airport is necessary; but I do not follow him there, although I follow him in virtually everything else he says. I am glad the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, did not follow him there either; he had his doubts. First of all, there is the question—I think it was number two on the noble Lord's list of what the Government
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should look at: are we operating those airports we have at their full capacity? I take Lord Molson's point that it may well make the situation for those who already live near these airports even worse than it now is: "unacceptable to those living near", I think he said.
But it is not only those airports near London. There are a great many airports in other parts of the country which are not being used to capacity. Prestwick is one. It is suggested that our ideas on the speed with which new kinds of train can get to London from, let us say, Hull is very much behind the facts, and that we need not think in terms of only 80 miles from London for a third London airport. It is suggested that we may be missing out on a great Europort. It is not only Foulness that could be a great Europort. There is the possibility of the Wash; it would make a new Europort for air and sea, and also provide water for the South-East of England. These are points that should have been considered in a national airports policy.
We also have a great many municipal and private airports in this country. Most of these municipal airports can give themselves planning permission to make the airport into one quite different from what was intended, and that kind of bypassing of national planning cannot be in the national interest. Some of these municipal airports, I am advised, are not even safe. These municipal airports and private airports should have been rationalised before any decision was made on a third London airport.
With regard to noise, the legal position is absolutely nonsense; there is virtually no law that can be brought in at all, or at any rate it is so limited as to be virtually meaningless. The noble Lord suggested with regard to noise and other issues of amenity next door to airports that all noble Lords speaking in this debate should declare an interest as to how near they live to an airport. There are so many of these municipal, private and B.A.A. airports in the country that there are few of us who do not live extremely near to one.
Lastly in this overall consideration, what about the higher technology? It seems to me that we are getting into a state now in which people who engage in higher technology in this country and

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France and over the Atlantic are persuading Governments to go on with aspects of higher technology which no one wants because they are afraid of unemployment or because a private empire may disappear. But this is ridiculous. It would be cheaper to send all of them on permanent holiday rather than maintain the higher technology at the sort of expense we are now facing. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, that these are matters which we ought to have considered before we started from the premise that we must have a third London airport. One last point on the question of a third London airport. If it emerges, after a long look at a national airports policy, that we do need a third London airport, it may even then be a more imaginative thing to say, "Enough is enough". The noble Lord, Lord Molson, virtually said this when he said that there were circumstances in which people were not now prepared to tolerate the squalor and noise and everything else that went with a third London airport.
The Roskill Commission suggested that it was a proud thing for London to be the Clapham Junction of the air. But by building a third London airport at Cublington, or at any of these three inland sites, we convert England from London to the Black Country into one very large Clapham Junction—I may say a less attractive Clapham Junction than the one we have already. If we do this—and Lord Molson has expatiated upon what this means—whatever the brilliance of our technology in the future we shall have done something irreversible. It does not matter how good are our new inventions with regard to transport or anything else, how good we are in regard to coping with pollution: if we do something of this nature we shall be doing something which is irreversible. And that may then be an argument for saying that it is not worth while on any material consideration having a third London airport at all. This is where we should have started before and not after.
I suggest that the Government should hold another Inquiry which should do what I have suggested. It may cost £3 million where the last one cost £1 million; and it may, I suppose, last for five years where the last one has lasted two. But we already know that
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it is possible that we were "conned" into being too quick on the last one. And remember that what we do now is the biggest single capital investment that this country will be making, with the possible exception of the Channel Tunnel, in the second half of the twentieth century; and that if we make the wrong decision the money lost on things like Blue Streak, TSR 2 and even on Concorde (because I believe that that money will never be recovered) will be like the children's pocket money. In spite of it possibly putting us back again for another five years, it seems to me that there is time to consider a national policy, before we come back to the third London airport. I support the noble Lord, Lord Molson, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, in hoping very much that the Government will not be afraid to do that.
3.53 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, of one thing I am fairly certain about this debate. It is that we shall hear during its course a certain variety of opinion. However, I believe that within this variety there is one point on which we can very easily agree; and that is on the size of the decision to be taken by the Government on this matter. It will have a lasting impact upon the lives of our children and of our grandchildren, and its consequences will most certainly be felt deep into the next century. The Government certainly do not underestimate the importance of this decision. That is why we have decided to seek, through the medium of debates in both Houses of Parliament, the fullest possible expression of informed opinion before any final decisions are taken. We must certainly try to get these decisions as right as possible. That is why I am glad that your Lordships' House is to devote two full days to the discussion of this matter, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Molson for making this possible.
I am also glad that we are to hear two maiden speakers in this debate. I am being followed by the noble Lord, Lord Dowding, the son of a father to whom all of us owe an almost immeasurable debt. I am glad, too, that the noble Earl, Lord Essex, will also be speaking in this debate. My spies tell me that he favours a site in Essex. I do not

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know whether that is because of his name or because he lives near Aylesbury; but we must wait and hear.
Having said that, I must go on to say that I fear your Lordships are going to hear a more than usually dull speech from me this afternoon. Given the Government's desire to commune with public opinion before we take our decision, your Lordships will not expect to hear from me at this stage arguments designed to advance a particular pet solution. If I may correct the noble Lord, Lord Henley, whose speech I greatly enjoyed, he kept on asking the Government to think again and to change their mind. I would only assure the noble Lord that this most thoughtful of all Governments are constantly thinking about this matter. We have not made up our mind on this, and we have made it absolutely clear that we wish to take the advice of Parliament on this matter before we do make up our mind.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, what I really meant to press upon the noble Earl is that his Government should think about setting up an inquiry, however expensive and even if it takes a long time, to consider the national airports policy before they decide on the Third London Airport.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am glad to have that elaboration of the noble Lord's thoughts. In any event I am, I fear, this afternoon cast in a strongly agnostic role. It is not for me to throw out the Beelzebub of Cublington, or to grapple with the foul fiend of Foulness. I shall rather merely try to set out some of the main considerations which we feel must be weighed before we come to a final decision.
If your Lordships are cynical about my professed agnosticism, or if you have any doubts about the influence which Parliament can bring to bear through informed and constructive criticism, then I would only remind you of the origin of the setting up of the Roskill Commission. I would refer your Lordships—and the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, does not need any reminding of this—to the debate in this House just over three years ago, on December 11, 1967, because I believe that that debate
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clearly reflected the view of the great majority of people who had studied the Stansted proposal. I have, likewise, no doubt that it caused the Government of the day—and it was a real question of rethinking in that case—to accept the view so strongly voiced in your Lordships' House that a matter of such importance as the choice of a third London Airport should not be settled without the most thorough, the most expert and the most impartial examination.
My Lords, it is obvious that a great many people are a great way from accepting a great many of the Roskill Commission's findings. Some of these, I suspect, may not have troubled to delve too deeply into the Report itself. But I think that anyone who has read the Report would in any event readily concede (I know that this has been conceded by all three speakers who have preceded me) that its work has been thoroughly expert, and indeed impartial. I believe that we have been well served, and that, whatever the final decision may be, we all owe an immense debt to Mr. Justice Roskill and the other members of the Commission, and their staffs, for their truly monumental labours. As Peter Hall, for example, an acute but severe critic of the Commission's proposals, has stated, their recommendations are based on—and I quote his words:
"the most rational, dispassionate procedure of analysis that good minds could devise."
It is true that in their final recommendations the Roskill Commission were not unanimous. We have all read Professor Buchanan's powerful, indeed poetic, Note of Dissent. But I should like to emphasise at this point, and I should like your Lordships to remember, that on two out of the three recommendations made by the Commission there was no dissent. They were in fact unanimous—pace the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, to whose constructive and civilised speech I listened with great interest—in thinking that a third London Airport should be in operation by 1980. And they were also unanimous in recommending that the planning should be undertaken without delay, in order to advance that date should this subsequently be shown to be desirable.
The unanimous recommendations of the Commission were based on their estimates of traffic growth and a number of

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important assumptions. For example, they assumed that there would be no major expansion of any of the existing airports in the South East; there would not be, for example, a second runway at Gatwick. This is an assumption which your Lordships will no doubt wish to consider.
The Commission also concluded, after very careful consideration, and after taking a great deal of evidence, that the impact of STOL or VTOL on the total problem was not likely to be large for many years to come, and that it would in particular be wrong to assume that such aircraft would bring about an absolute reduction on the pressure on conventional airports until, at the earliest, the end of the 1980s. This again is an assumption which your Lordships will wish to weigh and which has already been questioned, and that is the point of this discussion in this debate.
I do not wish to pre-judge what determination your Lordships will come to on this matter. All I would ask your Lordships to weigh is what deferment could entail for those who are already suffering under the blanket of airport noise. I would ask you to remember what deferment would mean for those near Luton; what it would mean in terms of increased pressure for a second runway at Gatwick; what it would mean in lack of relief for the sufferers at Heathrow. Some of your Lordships have already called for the development of the existing airports in the South East to the maximum. This may be right, but it is necessary to consider what this would be bound to entail in really pretty desperate penalties for those living under the existing noise shadows at those airports.
In addition, the Commission assumed that it would be right that the Third London Airport should be provided as soon as traffic had grown to the point where congestion costs would exceed the costs of advancing the opening. That, I think, means, to cut the jargon, that they assume that the airlines would not move out of the existing airports in the South East unless they had to. Finally, the Commission formed the opinion that when calculating the timing of the need for a third London Airport, they should ignore the contribution which airports outside the London area might make. Again this has already been questioned
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by your Lordships. I have nothing to quarrel with about this. This is a matter that will need to be carefully weighed, and I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Henley, that it will be carefully weighed.
In suggesting that these are some at least of the assumptions which your Lordships will wish to weigh, I do not wish to imply in any way that the Government have concluded that the Commission's forecasts were wrong, or that their assumptions were unjustified. Indeed, I think I must make it plain that so far as total traffic forecasts are concerned, the Commission's prognostication is in line with those of the Government Departments most concerned with this matter. Before turning away from timing, I must make it clear that the Government are not concerned merely with the economic factors here. We are also deeply concerned with the possibility—and I have already suggested this—that a third London Airport might help to lift the blanket of noise which hangs over the sufferers at Heathrow and elsewhere.
As for the proposed site for the airport, the Commission conducted a searching inquiry. It seems to me that some people do not quite realise quite how searching that inquiry was. For example, it was only after no fewer than 78 possible sites had been passed by them through increasingly fine filters that the Commission came up with their eventual list of four main candidates; Cublington, Foulness, Nuthampstead, and Thurleigh. This process was far from being a mindless and mechanical one. At every step these sites discarded by the Commission were reviewed again by them in case of error; and in fact they added back six sites at the second stage.
In any event, of the four sites eventually short-listed, the Commission, with the notable exception of Professor Buchanan, recommended Cublington—although it is quite clear (and in this matter I go along with the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, to some extent) that they considered that Thurleigh ran Cublington a very close second. As your Lordships know, Professor Buchanan has come out strongly in favour of Foulness. However, all the members of the Commission, including Professor Buchanan, are agreed that there is no ideal site, and that a judgment has to be made on where the balance of advantage lies when all

835
the factors—economic, environmental and the rest of them—have been fully taken into account.
It would of course be possible for the Government to reject all four sites and to plump for another one, or for none at all. Indeed, since the Report was published many people—surprise, surprise!—have suggested precisely this. There have also been suggestions (and I have touched on some of the implications of what they would involve)—for the expansion of the existing airports in the South East. I can only say at this stage—I am sorry for this agnosticism, but I think it is understandable in the circumstances—that, while the Government will bear all these proposals in mind, all the available evidence appears to indicate that the development of airports outside the South East, or the construction of new airports outside the South East, would not relieve the pressure on the London airports to any substantial extent.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, would the noble Earl explain quite what he means by that? I should be grateful if he would. He has already talked about what deferment would mean to the sufferers at Heathrow. Is he suggesting that the present burden would be reduced? Is he considering the growth of traffic? If he is saying that the growth would still go on at London if we had an airport in the Midlands or in the North, I should be very interested, because I did not find that confirmed in the Roskill Report.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, what I had in mind was that it was really a combination of the growth of traffic plus the origin of the traffic. I think the noble and learned Viscount will find it stated in the Report that something like 73 per cent. (I believe that is the figure) of the passenger traffic using the London area airports originates in, or is destined for, the South East. Even if all the remaining 27 per cent. could be prevented from using airports in the London area this would delay the need for a third London Airport only for something like two or three years. However, that is an amalgam of estimates of origin and destination, together with the estimated growth.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, is the noble Earl now dealing with the present
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pattern of the traffic, or is that an estimate of the future pattern? I know the Report says that something like 75 per cent. of the growth will be of British passengers. I should very much like to know what proportion of those passengers are thought to emanate from London and the South East?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I was dealing with future growth and the present pattern. I am afraid that I do not carry in my mind what the Commission assessment is for the future pattern. This is a point which I shall certainly be very glad to follow up in correspondence with the noble Viscount; or I will ask one or other of my noble friends who will be replying to the debate to-morrow to deal with it. In any event, in deciding between the four sites on the short list, it is clear that the Commission went to immense efforts to devise a framework which would make an effective comparison possible.
Be that as it may, all this part of the Commission's work will need to be most carefully examined. It may well be that the Government will decide to give more weight to some considerations, and less to others, than the Commission have done. For example, some may suggest—and I know there was a difficulty over the terms of reference—as indeed Mr. Anthony Crosland suggested at the weekend, that one should concentrate more on the analysis of what is involved in a two-runway airport than in a four-runway airport. All I can say there is that we are quite prepared to examine this as well, and we are certainly anxious to hear the views of your Lordships on this particular aspect of the matter.
May I deal for a moment with the question of methodology? The Roskill Commission carried out a cost/benefit analysis that was unprecedented in scale and in depth. In coming to their own view, the Government will look at that analysis with very great care. That does not mean of course that we shall wish to rehash the whole thing; but we shall wish to examine carefully the validity and significance of the Roskill cost/benefit analysis, because cost/benefit is a developing tool and we cannot afford to be uncritical in our approach to it, especially when the stakes are as high as they are on this issue. Moreover—and this is

837
equally important—there are other vital issues and major aspects not covered by the analysis, and these also must receive their due weight.
This means that we need to look at the uncertainties within the cost/benefit analysis, particularly the forecasts of total air travel and the forecasts of airport preferences. The latest figures indeed show that traffic has been building up rather more rapidly than the Commission anticipated. But, of course, the Commission were looking far ahead in time scale. They estimated, for example, that total air travel will grow 15-fold between 1969 and the year 2006; and for leisure travel they put a factor of 26 on the growth in that period. Clearly, a vast amount must be speculative here, particularly as one tries to peer, as the Commission did, over the horizon of this century. Alternatively, the construction of new airports elsewhere in the country could affect the choice of travellers. Apart from that, there are all the imponderables of accelerating technological change. These uncertainties could certainly affect the comparison either way, and this is obviously one area which we are closely examining.
The second area is the hotly disputed one of the passenger user costs within the analysis—the field which was ploughed over again and again in the public hearings at Stage V of the inquiry. We shall doubtless hear rather more of this during this two-day discussion—and rightly so, because this is a matter which profoundly affects the comparison between the three inland sites and Foulness. I can assure your Lordships that this again is one of the issues to which the Government will be giving close attention.
The third matter in the context of cost/benefit analysis at which we shall need to look is the way the question of noise is dealt with within the analysis. I shall have a word to say in a moment about noise generally, when I come to conclude. However, within the terms of the cost/benefit analysis the Government will have to satisfy themselves that the treatment of noise was right. For example, is it simply a question of relative movements in house prices in the vicinity of airports; or are the overall social consequences of aircraft noise such that a higher valuation should be put upon them in the analysis?
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Finally, we shall need to look at what the analysis does and does not cover. The Commission themselves conceded that there were unquantifiable factors here—for example, those which touch on planning or the environment—on which, not surprisingly, they felt quite unable to put any monetary value. At the end of the day we all have to exercise our subjective judgment on the weight to be given to such imponderables. The Commission exercised their judgment, and the majority decided to recommend one way. Professor Buchanan exercised his judgment and came to a contrary conclusion. What the Government will need to consider here is not only how far the results of the economic analysis provide a reliable measurement of the factor which it covers, but how things that are measurable should be weighed against those which are not.
My Lords, I now turn to the noise factor in its more general setting. If one looks at the tables in the Roskill Report, and sees the comparison of numbers of people living close to the various sites, it is quite easy to come to a snap judgment and decide that Foulness must be preferable because the numbers there are the smallest, and therefore fewer people are likely to be affected by noise. If one looks further afield and sees the potential noise shadow from Foulness reaching over Kent, one can also see how it might be possible to realign the Foulness runways so as to reduce the noise shadow over Kent—admittedly, at a cost.
On such evidence—and it is of course relevant—Foulness would seem to be the better choice. But, my Lords, in making our judgment we must not, at least in the Government's submission, be thinking only of the four alternative sites in isolation. We must remember—and I have already dealt with this—the appalling inconvenience which everyone near Heathrow, for example, already suffers from noise. At the moment more than 700,000 households—something like two and a quarter million people—lie under the noise blanket of Heathrow. For every one household which would ultimately be affected by noise at the Third London Airport, 24 people would be affected as early as 1978 around Heathrow; and one must also remember that there are real noise problems at the other airports.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, will my noble friend allow me to intervene? One of the peculiar things about the Roskill Commission's recommendations is that the site which they considered at Maplin Sands is not the site which was originally recommended by TEDCO. In point of fact, if the site chosen by those who had made a very careful survey were chosen, there would be less noise over Kent than if the site recommended by Roskill were decided upon. Why the Roskill Commission should have selected a different site from that which was put forward, I confess I do not know.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I must confess to my noble friend that I do not know either. But I have also suggested that a re-alignment of the proposed Foulness runways could reduce the noise incidence in the neighbourhood. In any event, in reaching their decision on noise, the Government must bear in mind not only the immediate impact of noise in the vicinity of the various sites, but the total noise "package"—if I may use that term—which will emerge, and the effect of any particular solution in reducing the overall impact of noise nuisance around our major international airports. These are not easy matters and we have certainly not reached final decisions. We shall be very interested to hear the views of noble Lords on this aspect of the matter. But I wish again to emphasise the importance of looking at the noise problem as a whole. If the Government were to do otherwise, it would certainly be an abnegation of our responsibilities.
It is clear that the effect on the planning considerations and the effect on the environment are, again, two of the vital but unquantifiable factors here. My noble friend Lord Sandford, who is directly concerned with these matters, will be saying more about them to-morrow. Meanwhile, I should like to remind your Lordships that the Commission took the view that none of the sites should be ruled out on grounds of regional planning alone. They thought, it is true, that on planning grounds the overall balance of advantage lay with Foulness, and this is a view which we shall be examining now.
We of course noted the points so strongly made in Professor Buchanan's Note of Dissent about the social benefits
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that could flow from locating this economic magnet, which is what a major new airport is, to the East of London, at Foulness. Perhaps this could help to raise the quality of the eastern-most side of London in the same sort of way, but of course on a far greater scale, as planning decisions have raised and are raising the quality of London's South Bank. Certainly if this could be achieved it is a factor which we shall need very carefully to consider. On the other hand, we must think carefully about the possible overcrowding in the South Essex area, to which the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, referred, and about the difficulties of reconciling, in Essex, the essential road infrastructure which will be called for with the necessary urban development. My Lords, there are of course other factors to be considered here; for example, the imaginative suggestions for the development side by side of an airport, a seaport and an industrial complex. But I think it would be better if I left those for my noble friend Lord Sandford to develop.
My Lords, I turn in conclusion to the environmental questions. These are, of course, of crucial importance, and I know that what your Lordships will say on these matters will be of importance since we usually bring to these matters of amenity both passion and experience, be they water or be they whales. But there is, I fear, little that I can add at this stage. At the end of the day the Government will have to take a view on where the balance of advantage in environmental terms lies between an inland and a coastal site, and also how this balance should weigh in the ultimate decision. We all know that this airport, whose size has been so dramatically described by Professor Buchanan, is bound to have a dramatic effect on the bit of England—quite a bit of England—which will house it. But the choice is not so easy as some would seem to make it. On the one hand, we would have the harsh sacrifice of part of the Vale of Aylesbury; we would have a sacrifice of the Norman Church at Stewkley and of other not insignificant buildings. On the other hand—and here I am just making a direct comparison between Cublington and Foulness without prejudging the possibility of other comparisons—there will be the destruction

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of a quite different landscape; of a remote, but in its way beautiful, Essex coast, and its not at all insignificant wild life.
Now I suppose that most of us would feel that the quality of the countryside at Foulness is perhaps of a lower order than that at Cublington. But, my Lords, these are not matters on which one could conceivably put any precise valuation. They are matters essentially of subjective judgment; but they are none the less vital to all of us, and that means, I think, everyone in this House who loves our countryside. They are therefore a crucial part of the final judgment which the Government have to take. All I can say is that I and my colleagues will listen with very close attention to the views which your Lordships will express on this and other matters to-day and to-morrow.
That is all (and I am sorry that I have spoken for rather too long) that I feel I can suitably say at this stage, confined as I necessarily am by the constraints of my present, and unavoidable, agnostic discipline. I have said "present" advisedly. Clearly, the Government must give themselves sufficient time to weigh the many profound considerations raised in this Report and in the continuing debate inside and outside Parliament on it. By the same token, this is not, I believe—and here I think I dissent from the noble Lord, Lord Henley—a matter which should be allowed to drag. I therefore, in conclusion, express the hope to your Lordships that it will be possible for us to announce our conclusions without any unnecessary or undue delay.

EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY AND THE CARIBBEAN
4.25 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, this may be a convenient moment for me to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on the Common Market discussions with Caribbean Governments. The Statement is as follows:
"With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I should like to make a Statement about my visit to the Commonwealth
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countries of the Caribbean, from which I returned yesterday.
"At the invitation of the Governments concerned, I visited Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados. In each I met the Prime Minister and Ministers concerned with our negotiations for entry into the European Economic Community. I also visited St. Lucia, where I met Premiers and representatives of each of the West Indies Associated States.
"I was particularly glad to have the opportunity also of seeing representatives of trade unions as well as employers, and representatives of Opposition Parties as well as Ministers and officials. In this way I was able to build up a more comprehensive idea of the many problems involved from different points of view. I am most grateful to all who made this possible, and above all to the Governments who were my hosts.
"Our discussions covered three main problems: sugar, the future relationship which the independent Commonwealth Governments may have with the Community, and the corresponding relationship of the West Indies Associated States, for whose external affairs we remain responsible.
"First, sugar. From the very beginning of the negotiations, we have identified the need for access for sugar from the developing Commonwealth countries to an enlarged Community as one of the three major problems of the negotiations.
"I explained that we had put in proposals on this point to the Community, but had not yet received the Community's reply. I said that what indications we had had of the Commission's thinking showed that those concerned fully understood the problem and were anxious to find a solution which would permit continuity of access under a new sugar régime applicable to the enlarged Community as a whole.
"So far as the Commonwealth Caribbean Governments and sugar producers are concerned, the principal problem is to be able to plan production ahead with a similar degree of assurance to that which they now enjoy

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under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. For this they require what the Jamaican Minister of Trade and Industry described to me as 'bankable' assurances; in other words, assurances which would persuade bank managers to provide the credits necessary for the roll-on of sugar production. Cane sugar production, unlike beet sugar production, has, of course, to be planned a number of years in advance.
"A number of anxieties were expressed to me but nearly all turned on this point.
"I was particularly impressed by the social aspects of the problem. The economies of the countries concerned are dependent upon sugar in varying degrees, but restriction or dislocation of the market would severely affect them all, and in some would lead to serious consequences in human as well as economic terms.
"Similar considerations of course apply to the other developing members of the Commonwealth whose economies are dependent upon sugar, notably Mauritius and Fiji.
"Next I turn to the question of the future relationship between the independent Commonwealth Caribbean countries and an enlarged Community. There seems to have been a good deal of misunderstanding on this point, which I hope I was able to clear up.
"The problem is this: as the House will know, the Community has already reaffirmed the offer contained in its 1963 Declaration of Intent to the Commonwealth African countries. This offer in no way commits the Governments concerned. But it will enable them to choose whether they wish to have a Yaoundé-type of association with the enlarged Community, or a looser form of association, or a simple trading agreement.
"The Community has not yet renewed this offer to the Commonwealth Caribbean countries, but I very much hope it will do so soon.
"The problem of the Commonwealth Caribbean is not simply one of sugar. The countries concerned need continuing access to the British market and ultimately to the European one for such other tropical products as bananas,
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citrus fruits and rum. Without such access—especially for bananas—grave damage would be done to the economies concerned. These developing countries, who have for centuries been dependent on the British market, need arrangements, such as association would provide, which would give them the same sort of treatment now given to other developing countries associated with the Community.
"Lastly I come to the future relationship of the West Indies Associated States with an enlarged Community. I am glad to say that at the meeting of Deputies in Brussels on the 10th of February, the Community lifted its reserve on the offer of association under Part IV of the Treaty of Rome to those territories, other than Gibraltar and Hong Kong, for whose external relations we remain responsible. This will ensure that their interests will be safeguarded.
"Some concern was expressed to me lest there should be any difference in the positions of the various members of CARIFTA, the Commonwealth Caribbean Free Trade Area, which includes both dependent and independent countries. I said that I hope that with an offer of association to them all, a common CARIFTA position might be elaborated. Without such an offer to the independent countries, the position would of course be more complicated. In any case we shall do our utmost to protect the interests of the West Indies Associated States, and give them all the help and advice they may require.
"I have spoken to-day of serious problems which could affect the success of the negotiations. I have no doubt that solutions can be found to all of them. So far as the Commonwealth Caribbean is concerned, the most dangerous element in the situation is uncertainty. I hope this may be cleared up very soon."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, we on this side of the House welcome that Statement. We are glad that a new relationship of association of the Associated States with E.E.C. has been met. I am particularly glad that the Chancellor of

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the Exchequer has been to the Caribbean. He now understands that it is not a statistical problem but a very human problem, in which the lives and welfare of many hundreds of thousands of people are deeply involved; and he understands also the political consequences if proper and satisfactory arrangements are not arrived at. I would ask the noble Earl only one question. May we have an assurance that the Government, in their negotiations in terms of sugar, bananas and citrus—and particularly bananas and sugar—are negotiating not only for a continuing access but for the quantities that are now imported into this country under the various agreements to continue, so that there can be long-term planning in the Caribbean countries?
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, we on these Benches are also glad to note that Mr. Rippon apparently thinks that the E.E.C. fully understand the necessity of a new sugar régime involving the access of sugar from Commonwealth countries to an enlarged Community. I would associate myself with what the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has said: that it should be suitable access, if only for the reason that it is difficult to see how we could sign the Treaty of Rome unless some kind of new régime is forthcoming. We note, too, that Mr. Rippon is also hopeful that the Community will extend the offer it has made to Commonwealth African countries to Commonwealth Caribbean countries. Surely, in logic it could hardly be otherwise. But if this offer is made, will it not in itself ensure the continuance of the West Indies market for bananas, citrus fruit and rum? I asked that; but I suppose the answer is, "Yes". I am not certain that I have understood the position. We trust that the Community will prove itself reasonable also on this aspect.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, we have had an interesting lecture on the situation about sugar; but I should really like to ask the Minister what is the outcome. What has been decided? What have they got out of it? What real assurance have the Caribbean countries got about all this?
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, I wonder whether I may support my noble friend in that direction. The noble Earl has said that the Government will seek to
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protect the interests of the West Indies in these matters. What exactly does that mean? How will they protect the interests of the West Indies in their negotiations on the Common Market?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, several points have arisen. I should like first to thank the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, for his welcome of this Statement. As he said, this is a human problem; and, as he well knows, it is also very complicated. This matter is under discussion and under negotiation. The noble Lord asks me for a specific assurance that the quantities will be the same as are now being brought into the country. I could not give an unqualified assurance of that, because this matter is under negotiation. But the fact that the noble Lord has said what he has said will obviously be taken into account by my right honourable friend.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, all that I asked for was an assurance that this is the basis on which Her Majesty's Government are negotiating.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government are negotiating on the whole basis of the problems of Caribbean countries—which includes the quantities which are at the moment imported into this country.
I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, who asked what the Caribbean countries had got out of this. As yet, nobody has got anything. What my right honourable friend did was to go to the Caribbean to see the representatives of the trade unions and of Government, to find out the problem, to explain to them the situation as he sees it and to assure them that in these negotiations—which are bound to be extraordinarily complex and which, as was mentioned in the Statement, are one of the three vital points of negotiation in the Common Market issue—their points will be taken into account and so far as possible safeguarded.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that the Common Market will want to seek an outset for their sugar beet industry? Is it expected that we shall be able to get the same quantities into this country as under a Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, in the light of that economic fact of the Common Market?
BARONESS WHITE: My Lords, before the noble Earl replies, would he assure the House that Her Majesty's Government are fully seized of the fact that the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement has brought stability to the sugar interests that they had not enjoyed previously when there were the wildest fluctuations of price? Therefore, access by itself is not enough, and a quantitative agreement of some kind over a long period, as the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, said, is essential.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the noble Baroness is perfectly correct in that respect. As she doubtless knows, the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement is one of the most complicated agreements. It is precisely because it is complicated that some way has to be found of fixing it into the Common Market agreements.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, will the noble Earl answer my question?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I have forgotten what it was.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I asked whether it was a fact that if the offer which the Community has already made to the Commonwealth African countries is extended to the Commonwealth Caribbean countries, that will automatically ensure the continued export of suitable quantities of bananas, rum and so on. Is that a fact or not?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, if the offer made to the African countries is made to the Caribbean countries, it is then up to the Caribbean countries to decide whether to accept the offer of either a Youandé type of association, or a looser association, or a trade agreement. It is up to them to decide which they wish to accept.
LORD GLADWYN: They would then have the chance, if they so desired, to enter into some kind of association which would permit them to export what they now export to England in the way of rum and bananas. Is that not so?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, they will have the opportunity of accepting this Youandé type of association which has certain preferences into the Common Market and which also has certain reverse preferences.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, it would certainly not give the guarantees which these countries now have under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, they would possibly be different.

THIRD LONDON AIRPORT: THE ROSKILL REPORT
4.40 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD DOWDING: My Lords, this is the first time that I have had the privilege of addressing your Lordships' House, and I ask your Lordships for the kindness which you normally extend to those making their maiden speech. I also hope that what I have to say does not appear to be more controversial than custom demands on these occasions. I should first like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, for the gracious tribute which he paid to my late father.
My Lords, the thought that I might wish to speak on this subject came to me one day last summer as I walked in Kew Gardens. It was a beautiful day and at the height of what we have now come to regard as the aircraft activity season. With the utmost regularity, every two minutes a large aircraft swept overhead on its way to touch down five miles further on. As it came over speech was impossible for 20 to 30 seconds and all pleasure in the day and the surroundings was destroyed. I thought how lucky I was that I could escape from this and go back to my home in central London that I was not one of those unfortunates condemned to live day in and day out under this barrage of noise.
I came away with two convictions. One was that the decision on the siting of a third London airport could no longer be delayed. The volume of traffic in the Heathrow area is now quite intolerable for those who have to live in it, and any increase in that traffic is unthinkable. The second conviction I came away with was that we never again should allow such misery to be inflicted on human beings. We must insist that airports be made to live with people rather than the reverse. Some time later and for amusement, I plotted an imaginary Kew Gardens five

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miles from the end of the projected runways at Foulness and at Cublington. At Foulness my walk would have taken place in the middle of the sea where no people live. At Cublington the same point fell within the bounds of Woburn Park. I do not think that I need say much more on this point, and I certainly do not intend to dwell on what has been called the irreversible environmental disaster that this airport would represent if built at Cublington. There will be many among the noble Lords who will follow me in this debate better able to paint the word pictures that conjure this up; but before I finish with this part of my speech I should like to quote the words of Mr. Niall MacDermot, Q.C., in his closing address to the Commission, when he said that anyone looking out over the Vale of Aylesbury would say: "It simply is unthinkable that an airport and all that it implies should be brought here."
My Lords, this is the physical response but alas! we cannot leave it at that; unless we wish to be compared to the gentleman who begged not to be confused with facts because his mind was already made up. We have to deal with 275 closely printed pages of close argument in the Report of the Roskill Commission, and we have to deal with the gloomy conclusion that Cublington is the selected site. I think that all noble Lords who have read the Report will have formed their own conclusions about what was actually said; but for the purpose of what I want to say in a moment I should like, briefly, to summarise what I believe was said. It is universally imagined that if you build at Foulness you will minimise the noise damage to the environment. This need not necessarily be true, because if you build at Foulness, Luton Airport will continue to grow and the noise irritation from Luton may exceed or at least come equal to that which would have been caused by building at Cublington. On the other hand, if you build at Cublington, Luton will shut down.
The second point was that the excessive transport user costs thrown up by the cost/benefit analysis were so high that it was the considered opinion of the Commission that Foulness might have great difficulty in becoming an economically viable airport. In consequence, they
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said, "You are going to do damage wherever you put this airport and so you may as well put it in the place which gives you the best chance of achieving an economically viable result." So, my Lords, they chose Cublington. It is from that decision, that conclusion, that Professor Buchanan has dissented so eloquently.
I should like to say two things about these conclusions. The first is about the noise at Luton. I believe that we could minimise the growth of Luton by administrative, fear. I further believe that the present climate will continue to grow and popular, and hence political, opinion will not tolerate noisy airports. I believe that noisy airports will face severe financial penalties. I believe it may be possible that airports and the airlines using them, and even passengers, may be asked to pay compensation to those who have to live around the airports. If these factors are taken into consideration, and the growth of Luton is controlled adequately, I believe that if we build at Foulness we have not necessarily thrown away all the advantages of peace to our lives which that represents.
My Lords, I should like to try to deal quickly with one aspect of the passenger user costs; and at this point to emphasise the central part that the cost/benefit analysis played in the two conclusions of the Commission. Without the high passenger user costs shown by this cost/benefit analysis, I believe that the choice would have fallen on Foulness. When we examine this cost/benefit analysis one or two rather peculiar omissions appear. The first is that it does not contain any regional planning considerations. I understand that the reason for this was that at about the same time that the Roskill Commission was set up a South-East Joint Planning Team also was appointed and charged with the task of formulating an over-all strategy for the South-East. When the research team for the Roskill Commission set up their cost/benefit analysis they did not have before them the recommendations of the South-East Planning Team. However, at a later date Dr. Burns, the Director of the Team gave his recommendations to the Commission. At the same time, he made an observation. He found it necessary, with all the experience of this Joint Planning Team effort behind him, to say that in his

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opinion the techniques of cost/benefit analysis were not yet sufficiently developed to assess that issue on a regional scale. My Lords, I do not wish to comment on this, but I find it somewhat surprising. I should have thought that a third London airport was very definitely an issue on a regional scale.
While Dr. Burns, in his evidence to the Commission, could see no overriding planning objection to siting an airport at Foulness, Professor Buchanan has seen the proposal in a much more positive light. He sees the possibility of using the airport as a means of promoting equality of wealth and opportunity between East and West London. He pointed out how to the East of London the inner ring of bad housing "thickens out" into what he describes as "a huge, obdurate mass of depressed and impoverished development", trailing away "through plot land into the South Essex corridor". He sees a third London airport, in a sense a captive industry, as a unique opportunity to bring a new range of activities and a new sense of life and purpose to the people living in this South Essex area. And, my Lords, at the same time, siting the airport in this area would drastically reduce commuting to London by those at present living in the Southend area. This area is at present one of the heaviest commuter outflows in the country. It has been said—and it was said by the research team to the Commission—that it is not possible to quantify this benefit. Certainly no benefit appears in the cost/benefit analysis in favour of Foulness. However, one estimate that I have seen found the benefit so enormous that it reduced the Foulness total net cost penalty by £100 million.
Time does not permit me to go on with the other points that I had thought of dealing with, but I hope that I have shown that to decide this issue on the basis of a cost/benefit analysis which at least can be shown to be suspect is not a good thing. On the one hand we have an irreparable environmental disaster at Cublington for which posterity will rightly blame us, and on the other we have the opportunity of a positive and enlightened scheme which may bring overall social benefit to an area which is less fortunate than its neighbours. I
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beg your Lordships to consider earnestly basing this airport at Foulness.
4.52 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to me to congratulate the noble Lord who has just spoken: first because he is the son of his father, whom many of us remember with great affection and respect (he was a distinguished figure in this House for many years), and, secondly, for himself, because of the speech he has addressed to us. We realise that we have a new acquisition who is going to be able to make helpful and thoughtful contributions on the various matters that come before us.
I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale is not here at the moment, because I wanted to make reference to his speech, and in particular to the point that he was doubtful about the need for a third London Airport. It is a most remarkable statement to hear, particularly from my noble friend, and from my right honourable friend Mr. Crosland, because if any two people were responsible for the setting up of this Commission whose Report we are discussing, it is those two. For many years before that they were considering other alternatives, including Stansted, as a third London Airport. To say to-day that we do not need a third London Airport, and that we can improvise in some other way, is the most extraordinary statement that I have heard.
We all know as a fact—and the Report brings this out—that both Heathrow and Gatwick are already immensely overcrowded; they are suffering tremendously from congestiton. It is difficult to see how they can carry on under present conditions, and still less when traffic increases. We have in the Report the calculation that in the next twenty years traffic is going to increase (I think the Commission say) 14-fold. In that case, it is easy to say: why hurry? But if we are going to discover in two or three years' or five years' time that the Third London Airport is necessary in order to satisfy my right honourable friends, we shall probably find ourselves paying at least 50 per cent. more for it, and possibly will have to build it in a great hurry. So I think that what I have to say must be on the assumption that a third London Airport is not only necessary, but urgent.

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Before I go further, I should like, as most noble Lords will wish to do, to thank the Roskill Commission for the enormous trouble they have taken in trying to arrive at a solution. It has been a terrific and most difficult task. I cannot remember a more difficult problem being put before a Commission, and certainly I cannot remember a Commission dealing with their subject in such a thorough and comprehensive way. Whatever our views may be about the Report, and the conclusions of the Commission, I am sure that we owe them a deep debt of gratitude for the trouble they have taken in producing so many facts from which it is possible to draw conclusions.
There is one other thing that I want to say about the Report. As I read it, the Commission have put forward, quite objectively, a case for each of the four areas that they have mentioned, and although they have eventually come down in favour of Cublington, they have not come down so heavily in its favour as to rule out the possibility of Foulness. They have decided on a balance of advantage, and it is quite easy, even on the facts that they have put forward, to come to the opposite conclusion and favour Foulness. The mistake that at any rate the noble Lord, Lord Molson, made, I think, was to assume that the Commission had ruled out Foulness and had come down heavily in favour of Cublington. That is not so. If it should eventually appeal to the Government to favour Foulness, I should not regard it as a blow to the Roskill Report: I should regard it merely as a minor and not as a major difference of opinion. The Commission have set out very fairly what are the advantages of each of these sites, and I think we should not be inflicting a blow on Mr. Justice Roskill if we did not accept the conclusion eventually arrived at by his Commission.
My Lords, I have come to the conclusion that the most suitable site is not Cublington, but Foulness. I feel that in a way the Commission have misconceived the position by not giving the fullest weight to certain things which they had to consider. I think that in weighing up the advantages of the two sites they should have considered very seriously facts which they have not taken into account. For instance, how does one measure the fact that here is an attractive
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site area, developed over the centuries, one of our most precious pieces of country, which inevitably will be destroyed if Cublington is selected as the site for this airport? Thousands of people would need to be removed from their homes; thousands of families. To where? It is going to be very difficult for them if they have settled in Cublington, and are working in the neighbourhood, to find alternative employment within reasonable reach.
I do not know whether some of your Lordships saw on B.B.C.1, last Saturday week, a programme called "Civilisation". The narrator was a Member—I may say a brilliant Member—of this House. He was describing what was happening to many of the most attractive parts of this country; how we were gradually losing them one after another. They were being destroyed and not being replaced. The attraction of this country is gradually disappearing, and the narrator talked—perhaps jocularly—about our returning to the dark ages. I hope that that fear is somewhat far-fetched, but it is remarkable that in my lifetime so many lovely parts of this country have been destroyed.
I cannot remember any that have been developed. I think the most attractive single piece of development in the past 50 years is Waterloo Bridge, or possibly the new Coventry Cathedral, which replaced the former cathedral. I cannot, offhand, think of very much more of which we can feel proud, or of which our children and grandchildren can or will be able to feel proud. Therefore, in saying that this is not a factor which deserves to be cost benefited, and in failing to take into account the value of the loss we shall suffer from the destruction of Cublington, and from the removal of the population, the Commission have really gone wrong.
There is an assumption that large numbers of families—and I think this will be one of the greatest exoduses on record—will be compensated. Figures are given in the Report showing that the families will get for their homes the market value as between a willing buyer and a willing seller, plus removal expenses, and an undefined figure for leaving their homes against their will. This undefined figure that they are to get is not permissible at

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the present time under the law regarding compensation. All they can get is the market value as between a willing buyer and a willing seller, plus removal expenses. If noble Lords opposite are going to introduce legislation to increase compensation in those circumstances, that may be something. Even if the people have all the compensation they want there is still the problem of where they are to find other accommodation.
Then there are substantial numbers of families—almost an equal number—who will suffer from the highest degree of noise. I am not a scientist, and therefore I cannot describe it in scientific terms. But these families will get nothing unless their property is going to be acquired. But if it is not felt essential to acquire the property, then the families can be left there without any compensation at all. I know that it will be open to the Government, if they so wish, to introduce legislation to provide for compensation in those cases; and that is what the Commission suggest they might do.
I am not arguing against paying compensation, but I want to give noble Lords opposite a warning: if they open the door to compensation on this kind of matter, they will be opening the door very, very wide; and they will be setting no limits to the compensation to which people will become entitled, because indirectly they are suffering from the results of improvements. So I venture to prophesy that in the end the Government will find that it is not expedient to open that door, and thousands of families in Cublington will suffer perpetually because of the intense noise that will be engendered if the airport goes there. On the other hand, the Report tells us that it is possible to provide an airport at the other place without the loss of a single building; nothing will have to be acquired by building over the sea, and only a few people will suffer intense noise. On those grounds alone, I suggest that Foulness is the better site.
We have been told in the Report that on the calculation the Commission have made—and it is quite understandable—Foulness will cost £100 million more. That sounds a lot of money until you remember that the cost of the whole scheme is estimated at £5,400 million. In comparison with that the figure of £100
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million looks very small, but then they have taken into account the cost to individual travellers travelling the extra distance from London to Foulness as against Cublington. The extra mileage will not be paid for by those who are going to build the airport; it will be paid for by the travellers. It will not form any part of the expenditure of the community at all, and that accounts for £71 million of the £100 million. But if that is to be counted, why not count the loss which so many people will suffer financially if Cublington were chosen? They will suffer perpetually from noise and from the depreciation of their property, for which they will never get full compensation. Moreover, in the Report there is stated to be a margin of error of some £50 million. If you take those two factors alone, £71 million which are attributable to the extra cost of travellers—and I should like to challenge that figure, but I am not going to do so—and the £50 million, you have more than accounted for the £100 million of extra cost for Foulness. So I do not think much reliance can be placed on an estimate of what is going to be the cost of the airport, or on the contention that one is going to cost £100 million more than the other.
What must have struck the Commission most was that Foulness was going to be less viable; or they were afraid it might be not viable at all. Of course if that were the case it would be a most serious objection. But how can they say it in the light of the increasing traffic which they themselves forecast in, I think, Appendix 6? They forecast an increase in the next 20 years of something like a twenty-fold increase of traffic, a large proportion of it coming to the South-East. Therefore, I should have thought that there could be no doubt whatever as to the demand for an airport. And, after all, once it is built, passengers coming to this country, or leaving it, will have no choice but to go to Foulness—not that I wish to impose anything on them that is onerous. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Molson, has pointed out, if they come by train the train journey is only five minutes longer, and we may be able to cut that down. That is not a serious point. It may be a few coppers, a few new pence, more expensive, but I do not think that that is a factor to be taken into

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account when one is coming on an air journey from abroad, or going out.
Moreover, I suppose all of us in this House have had experience of travelling abroad. We do not ask ourselves, or try to ascertain, how far is the airport from the point from which we have to travel. We are not deterred by that. If we go to New York, there are several airports we might arrive at. Some are very much further from New York than others, but we are not deterred from travelling to one as against another merely by the fact that the distance to New York is somewhat longer. I thought it completely misguided to assume that people will refrain from coming to this country simply because Foulness is a rather longer distance to travel to than is Cublington. To think that is completely misguided. Admittedly, some people will come from nearer Cublington than Foulness, and that will make their journey a little longer. But I visualise, contrary to what has been said, that eventually there will be a choice, and that a traveller going abroad will not necessarily be confined to a particular airport; there will be services from London, from Foulness and from Gatwick, and he will be able to make his choice. At least, I imagine that that is a sensible arrangement.
I do not know whether anything else caused the Commission to come down in favour of Cublington. I think I have outlined the three main reasons, and I must say on that that I do not think there is anything decisive which would lead one to choose Cublington, regardless of the fact that if we go to Foulness we shall be saving some thousands of families from the horror of having perpetual noise day and night hanging over them. Professor Buchanan describes the destruction of Cublington as a major calamity for this country. We have survived, I am sorry to say, a number of other calamities of this kind, and it may be that we shall have others. I only hope that if such a calamity is to come we will try to replace what is lost elsewhere, if we can, possibly in connection with New Towns—I am not sure yet—so that we do not entirely lose the heritage which we have received from the past.
This is not a Party question, as will be obvious from what has been said by
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the two speakers from this side. We fundamentally disagree. I do not know whether noble Lords will be supporting me or will be speaking in favour of Cublington. At any rate, I hope that no one in this House will look on this issue as a Party matter or as a face-saving matter. We are here to reach the best conclusion we can. I have no interest whatever in any of the sites—I get my noise in my own way without these sites. We are simply out to say what we think and to listen to other people. Not only do I hope that the Government will take note of what is being said, but I hope that we ourselves will do so, because, having expressed my view, I cannot pretend that I have been able personally to make such a study of what is dealt with in the Report and ail the evidence that has been presented to the Commission as the Commission have done; nor have I recently been able to visit the sites, as my right honourable friend has done. I should have liked to do so, and in fact I intended to, but I just was not able to. However, I accept the description in the Report.
My Lords, I hope that we shall take a very objective view. I will give only one word of advice to Her Majesty's Government in considering this issue: do not be carried away by an alleged saving of money. Mr. Heath himself said that the cheap solution is not necessarily the best. That is perfectly true. Even if it turns out, contrary to my own view, that Foulness is the more expensive site, I still think that it would be preferential to Cublington, or to any of the other sites that have been suggested. I look forward with the greatest interest to hearing from the Government, and I am sure that they will apply themselves quite seriously and conscientiously to the task of making a choice.
5.20 p.m.
VISCOUNT SIMON: My Lords, I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, because he has said a number of things that I had contemplated saying, and for that reason I hope I can make my remarks briefer than they otherwise would have been. I was very glad to hear what he said about the Roskill Commission, because I think it will be the unanimous agreement of everyone in this House that it was indeed one of the most difficult assignations ever given to

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any Commission, and they carried it out with exemplary thoroughness. That being so, one needs a degree of boldness to challenge the conclusions reached by the Commission after their long and painstaking inquiry. But, like others who have spoken before me, that is what I am going, very boldly, to do. I must first declare my interest. First as Chairman of the Port of London Authority, whose territory includes the Maplin Sands, upon which the Foulness Airport will be constructed (if it is constructed) and also as Chairman of the Thames Estuary Development Company, who have been for some years promoting the idea of an airport and a seaport complex at Foulness.
I should have liked to take un the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, on his question as to whether a third London airport is necessary; but once again I am indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, who I thought gave the answer to that in very clear terms. It seems to me quite inconceivable, if the estimates are even half right, that with airport travellers increasing from 17 million in 1969 to 259 million some time just after the year 2000 that the existing London Airports could possibly deal with this traffic.
I want now to direct your Lordships' attention for a few moments to—strangely enough !—the Roskill Report itself. In particular, I want to refer to paragraph 2 of Chapter 12, which is at page 118. In this paragraph the Commission were explaining the approach they were making to the matter of the use of the cost/benefit analysis, and in the middle of the paragraph I find these words, which I think are most important:
"Underlying this approach was the tacit assumption that there was no overriding reason why those who are prepared to pay for air travel should be denied the services for which they are willing to pay"—
the words are used twice; then it goes on—
"an assumption which we"—
that is the Commission—
"think it right to make if it is extended to include the resulting social costs as well."
When I read those words I thought to myself that this was just the very thing which I should have thought was right. What then happened? If your Lordships will look at the opposite page, page 119, you will see in Table 12.1
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the summary of the cost/benefit analysis, and this shows quite clearly, as I think my noble friend Lord Dowding said in his admirable maiden speech, that passenger user costs alone tipped the scale from Foulness in favour of Cublington. In other words, if Cublington is chosen it is the passengers who will enjoy the benefit of cheaper travel, for which other people will pay in the form of diminished amenity, greater noise and so on.
I know that a little later on, in Chapter 13, paragraph 45, there is a suggestion that this passenger user cost is not the only factor that tips the scale. But certainly I cannot find another one, and this seems to me to be completely out of accord with what has been said in paragraph 2 of Chapter 12. The disincentives are largely borne, not by the air travellers as part of the price of their travel but by the community generally, or by particular groups of the community who happen to live near the airport. One recognises of course that any international airport is going to be a blot upon the landscape and is going to affect a number of people adversely. But it seems to me that the only way in which one can apply the principle which the Commission say they accepted is by choosing the site where the damage is least, even though it means that the passenger pays a higher price, in time and money, in getting to and from the airport.
The principle is taken up a little further on with two paragraphs in Chapter 13; namely, paragraphs 41 and 42. I must say that I found them, in contrast to most of the other paragraphs in the Report, extraordinarily difficult to follow. They are very long, and I do not propose to read them to your Lordships I should, however, like to take you through them briefly, because they seem to show how it was that the Commission, having first agreed that passengers should be entitled to travel by air if they pay for it, left that idea and decided that they Were entitled to travel by air if somebody else paid for it.
Paragraph 41 of Chapter 13 starts by referring to various arguments that have been made, and says this:
"It is argued"—
it does not say by whom, but I expect it is in the evidence—
"that the air traveller should be denied an accessible airport if the effect of meeting his

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needs is to damage the environment of those on the ground."
I think this is the conservationists' argument but, if I may respectfully say so, it is put in a rather tendentious way by using the word "accessible". The airports we are discussing are all accessible within the ordinary meaning of the word, although some of them may be less easily accessible than others.
Having mentioned that this argument is put forward the Report continues:
"It may be possible to provide him with an airport which is both accessible and causes little environmental damage. Many seem to believe this to be possible everywhere but in the South-East."
I assume that the Commission here are quoting from some evidence, but I think we could equally well say that many believe that this is possible in the South-East, because these are precisely the advantages which are offered by the airport at Foulness. As they say, it is accessible and it causes relatively little environmental damage.
Then we come to a sentence, in the same paragraph, which I find extraordinarily difficult:
"If this is not possible"—
meaning, I take it, if it is not possible to find an airport which is both accessible and causes little damage—
"and a less convenient site is chosen the air traveller is said to have no ground for complaint. We do not accept this argument."
Then the Commission go on to say, still referring to the argument:
"It would be valid only if there were some absolute right for some of those on the ground to have their interests treated by the community as compelling."
My Lords, I thought that a most extraordinary sentence. With great respect to Mr. Justice Roskill, who is a good friend of mine, it did not seem to me that he could be the person who had drafted that sentence. It is a fluffy sort of sentence. So far as I know, nobody has an absolute right to anything; all rights are conditioned. But surely (and this Mr. Justice Roskill would remember much better than I, because he is a lawyer) the common law right of the man on the ground to object to noise of aircraft was taken away from him in 1920.
LORD SILKIN: Hear, hear!
VISCOUNT SIMON: I should have thought that, in view of that, it is not a case of treating the interests of the man on the ground as compelling, but there is a case for treating them as requiring a great deal of consideration.
It is quite clear, of course, that there will be damage to the environment and to other people wherever the airport is situated, and what is wanted is a sensible balance within the principle, I suggest, laid down in paragraph 12.2, that the air passenger pays the cost, including as far as is possible the social costs. Of course, the passenger cannot pay all the social costs. For one thing they are not quantifiable, and for another there is no machinery for transferring the money from one party to the other. The best way that this principle can be met is, surely, by letting the passenger pay the small additional sum of money and spend a little more time in going to the slightly more distant site, thus in return minimising the damage to the environment and to so many people.
We do not have to push this argument so far as to talk about inaccessible sites, because they are not in question. It is this paragraph and the succeeding paragraph which seem to me to expound the philosophy adopted by the Commission. Here they are not drawing on the evidence they were given; they are expressing their own philosophy, that is, that the advantages and disadvantages as affecting the, community as a whole should be balanced irrespective of who in fact gains advantage and who suffers disadvantage. If we were a community of ants, I think it is conceivable that this is the sort of community we would live in. There would be ants that flew who would have certain privileges, and ants beavering about on the ground who would have the disadvantages. But we are not ants and this is not the sort of community we want to live in. The nearest human example might be a rigid Communist State. In my view—and I hope that the Government will give very careful consideration to this when they review the recommendations of the Cornmission—the right principle is that laid down and accepted by the Commission in paragraph 12.2 and then, for some reason, thrown out of the window.

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As I have said, we do not want to press accessibility too far, but I think much too much has been made of the small amount of time taken to travel the distance between Foulness and London and Cublington and London, accepting the point that of course Cublington will attract some passengers from the Midlands. It seems to me that the Commission listened to a lot of evidence, when deciding which of four sites to choose, that the site nearest to London was the best. This was the evidence of the airlines, the British Airports Authority and others, and is perfectly intelligible evidence. But once one of these sites is chosen, I cannot see that this small difference has any relevance whatever.
I really do not believe in this enormous passenger resistance that is referred to. Who are the 30 million people who are not going to travel at all because the airport is at Foulness instead of Cublington? The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, again saved me telling a little story I had in mind. Curiously enough, it was also about Rome. I was going to say that I am not a very sophisticated traveller myself, but that if I was going to Rome I might perhaps ask my travel agent how long it took to get from the airport to the city. I do not know the answer, but supposing I was told 45 minutes, I can hardly imagine that I—or indeed any of your Lordships—would scratch my head and say, "That is terrible. If it were 30 minutes from the airport to Rome I would go, but as it is more I will stay at home". That is simply ridiculous, and I cannot believe that this very small difference is going to have the effect that it is said to have.
The noble Lord, Lord Dowding, in his very interesting speech, made some criticisms of the cost/benefit analysis, and I should like to add two short ones, if I may. First of all, on air freight, a sum has been put into the balance against Foulness on the ground that Foulness, being further away by road and rail (presumably from the manufacturers, where the things come from) will have a disadvantage for air freight. I do not know whether I he Commission took any evidence from forwarding agents or anybody who engages in this sort of business, because it seems to me the most extraordinary opinion to express. I think they would be told that air freight
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is likely to expand more greatly and rapidly to Europe than anywhere else. They know that Foulness is in fact closer to all the European airports than Cublington; that is to say, closer to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels, Paris, Bonn, Frankfurt, Zurich, Milan. Air freight per ton-mile is much more expensive than road freight per ton-mile, and therefore the further you carry your goods by road and the shorter distance by air the better bargain you make. In fact on this particular issue Foulness should be given a bonus rather than a penalty.
The other point I want to mention is on the question of Luton, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood. I confess that I have found it very difficult to understand the argument. It appears to be this. If the airport is sited at Cublington, Luton cannot expand and will quite likely have to be closed down. If it is sited at Foulness, Luton can expand. But Luton, as has been mentioned, is a municipal airport, and the municipality is also presumably the planning authority, and it is entirely up to them whether they do or do not expand Luton. If they expand it and create more noise for their ratepayers and their neighbours, it seems to me that it has got to stand on its own feet. There was a suggestion that this could be stopped only by Government intervention—and here, I thought, even though we know that at the present time we have a Government dedicated to non-intervention, is a field in which they really could properly intervene. After all, we are considering not just a third London airport but the whole airport system of South-East England. If I could put this point to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, he might care to think about it. Supposing the Government in their wisdom—and I think they have wisdom—were to decide to site the airport at Foulness, what would be their attitude to an enterprising gentleman who was going to build an airport at Cublington to cash in on the advantages the Roskill Commission pointed out were associated with that site? The Government could step in and stop him. If so, why cannot they stop the expansion at Luton?
The noble Lord, Lord Molson, suggested that I should say something about the port, and I hone that I am not keeping your Lordships too long. The Port of London Authority believes that

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there is a great future in deep water port facilities on the Maplin Sands. This was, naturally, not considered in detail by the Roskill Commission, but some evidence was given on the subject, and considerable prominence given to the views expressed by Dr. Burns that there would not be room in this area for a seaport and the accompanying industrial development as well as an airport. I think the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, brought up the same point. This was, of course, supported by Professor Buchanan. The Roskill Commission summed it up by saying that they felt that in the light of this evidence the advantages, if any, are outweighed by planning and environmental disadvantages which would result from a joint project.
The fact of the matter is that the effects on the environment of a joint project have never really been evaluated. Your Lordships will remember that the South-East Essex planning team's report was not available to the Roskill Commission. It has since come out. The interesting point here is that in their Strategic Plan they estimate that this area could support a population up to one million in the year 2000, against 618,000 in 1970, a growth potential of about 400,000. The Roskill Commission estimate of the population required to support an airport-generated employment is 228,000. So there is quite a large margin still in hand. These figures are admittedly rough approximations; nevertheless, on the basis of those figures I think it would be most unwise to suggest that it is not possible to develop the port facilities as well as the airport.
What we in the Port of London Authority have in mind is a modern port for handling primarily hulk cargoes which employ very few people. Similarly, the industries which we hope would be attracted to the site are again the modern primary industries which are capital intensive and not mobile intensive. We think that there would be plenty of opportunity. It will need discussion. That discussion has already begun with the Essex County authorities and the South-East Planning Board, of course with the Government to decide whether this is a proper development. But certainly I should not like anybody to feel that the criticism of the joint development
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was more than a rather initial reaction to something the size of which is not really known or appreciated.
There was just one other point in connection with the port that I would mention, in case your Lordships have picked it up. I could not find it when I read the Report again, but somewhere, in the gentlest possible way, the Commission suggested that those who were advocating the development of a port have been a little not disinterested in promoting the idea of an airport because this would be a convenient way of getting rid of the land which would be reclaimed by the dredging of a channel to the port. No evidence was taken by the Commission on this matter and I am glad to tell your Lordships that the surmise is without foundation. The calculations made so far show that the amount of spoil from dredging the channel would be sufficient to reclaim only some 5,000 or 6,000 acres, which is less than the amount required to make a viable port and supporting industrial complex; so from that point of view there is no need for the airport to go to Foulness at all.
I am afraid I have detained your Lordships for a long time. Putting the value of your Lordships' time at the top end of the scale, I think my speech has cost about 55p. I apologise, and I must not impose on your Lordships' generosity any further. I hope that when they come to look at this problem the Government will most seriously consider the question of whether the passenger should not, so far as he can, pay for the social cost by means of paying a slightly higher access cost, in return for relieving the community as a whole of some of the burden.
5.43 p.m.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, we all know that the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, has this keen interest in combining an airport with a seaport. I do not wish to follow him along those lines. I wish to deal entirely with the airport itself. But I think it is perhaps worth while mentioning that the view of the Essex County Council, the planning authority for that part of the country, is that they would favour an airport plus a minor seaport, but that they would not favour an airport plus a major seaport: they feel that that would bring about too

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great a concentration both of people and of industry in a somewhat narrow piece of land.
I own no quiet, pleasant, peaceful moated manor in the Chilterns. I possess no property in Foulness or Southend. I am no longer the chairman or vice-chairman, or even a member of the Essex County Council. So I have no personal interests to declare. I can approach this problem almost as a virgin. Like other noble Lords, I wish to pay my most admiring tribute to the Commission. I think that in those spheres where they have been able to make judgments based on sound, solid evidence they have given us some helpful information. But in other spheres where the factors have not been quite so tangible I think they have tended to blind themselves with science and they certainly have left many of us cross-eyed and bewildered. They have wandered so far into the forest of figures that they have failed to see the wood for the trees.
I think we have to approach and assess the difficult and complicated task which faced the Commission by viewing it in the form of a parable. It is the Parable of the Eligible Young Man. He was being pursued by four eager suitors. He was in a state of confusion, as any of us would be in such circumstances. But at last he thought to himself, "Ah, I have a solution. I will have a cost benefit analysis." So he proceeded to allocate points to each of the four maids in respect of various characteristics. He awarded so many points for family background; so many points for education and sophistication; so many points for wealth or poverty; so many points for temperament and disposition; so many points for beauty of face; so many points for attractiveness of figure, and, of course, some more for varying degrees of chastity.
That all seems very statistically proper. Unfortunately, within a year he found that he had made the wrong choice. Why had he made the wrong choice? He had allocated too big a value to one characteristic and not a big enough value to another characteristic; and of course for some of the characteristics he had allocated no points at all. I believe that in this case if we pay too much attention to the columns of statistics that have been placed before us, and do not pay enough attention to some of these intangible factors,
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then we may find ourselves in similar trouble. So I think that we must now cast aside our statistical blinkers and decide this matter on the basis of plain common sense.
Viewing it in that way I find myself saying: "Cublington out, Foulness in"; and the other two sites are non-starters. We have heard that we shall be confronted in the near future with short or vertical take-off planes and with very improved scientific landing equipment and that this may render a third London airport quite unnecessary. I do not take that view. I do not see every airline in the world simultaneously equipping its planes with vertical or short take-off power. I do not see them simultaneously equipping their planes with this improved electronic landing equipment. It will be many years before all the airlines using the airports of Britain find themselves in that position.
We now find that the skies are rapidly becoming more overcrowded, and that the number of air passengers is going to rise to 200 million a year. I feel that so far ahead as we can see we shall need a third London airport. And I feel a little sceptical when I listen to people (I do not name them: they are friends of mine) saying that a third London airport will not now be necessary, when three years ago at the time of the Stansted scheme they were impressing us with the very severe urgency of the affair and the need for an immediate decision. I recall the debate that we had on Stansted. I tried to put up a logical case against Stansted. I tried to argue that it was unsuitable. I argued at the same time that Foulness was much more suitable. To-day I find that those very arguments which I used against Stansted are applicable to Cublington, and I find that all the virtues I then found at Foulness remain with us to-day.
My Lords, we have to assess the rival merits of Cublington, on the one hand, and of Foulness, on the other. For that purpose I shall need to refer to the findings of the Commission. I think the factors can arrange themselves under about half a dozen headings. The first of these is air traffic control. I suggest that this is a very important factor, because the whole idea of having an airport at all is to be able to get planes up in the air and to bring them down again. What do the Commission say about this?

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They say that Foulness is the best from the point of view of air traffic control. They say that it would lead to smaller delays, and would result also in reduced air mileage, whereas Cublington would be the most difficult. The choice of Cublington would cause congestion of air space in and around North-West London, especially at peak hours. And, goodness gracious! it is on the traffic at the peak hours that we have to decide upon the merits or demerits of a particular airport. The Report also says that Foulness will have less effect on other airports, and would result in a smaller loss of air space. The British Airports Authority and B.E.A. both say quite blankly that Cublington is the least acceptable site.
The National Control Air Service, whose views I treat with some respect, say that Cublington and Heathrow could not operate together without a loss of capacity, and that it would produce a very difficult traffic control situation. They say that the holding areas of Cublington and Luton overlap each other, and that the Luton runway is incompatible with Cublington. We are also told that Foulness is the farthest away from the other airports, and so its flight paths and its holding areas would not prejudice Heathrow or Gatwick. Finally, on this point, the Commission themselves say that Cublington is the worst for fog and snow, and Foulness is the best. This question of traffic control is very important indeed. It is the vital factor, and the verdict of the Commission there is that Cublington is not as good as Foulness.
Then we look at another factor: defence. I am not going to exaggerate the importance of the factor of defence, and I will content myself by saying that it is a fairly important factor. Perhaps not to-day, but in the event of any trouble it would be important. The Ministry of Defence say:
"Foulness is the only site which would involve no R.A.F. redeployment. Cublington would involve redeployment and involve us in considerable expense. Cublington would considerably degrade R.A.F. operational capability."
The verdict of the Defence Ministry is that Foulness is by far the least objectionable, and Cublington creates the worst problem for operational flexibility and
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capability. The Ministry add this warning note:
"A recommendation of Cublington could encounter opposition from the Defence Ministry."
I do not want this defence question to be confused by bringing in the Experimental Establishment at Shoeburyness. We know that if the airport is at Foulness this establishment will have to go. But the Commission tell us, quite plainly, that all three inland sites would make the eventual closure of Shoeburyness necessary. So there is no debit or credit item there, either for or against Foulness or Cublington. On this question of defence, with whatever importance your Lordships attach to it, Foulness is the best and Cublington is the worst.
Then we look at agriculture. There will be far less loss to agriculture at Foulness than at Cublington, simply because most of the land is going to be reclaimed from the sea. The Country Landowners' Association and the National Farmers' Union both say that Foulness would involve the least loss of agricultural land and would involve the displacement of fewer farmers.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend would permit me to say something on that one point? Did he also notice the suggestion was made that Professor Webley should be asked to advise on this subject? He was asked, and advised in a different sense entirely.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I appreciate that, but I prefer to take the view of the practical farmer rather than that of an ivory tower professor. Next we come to the South-East Strategic Plan, which is going to govern the ultimate use of land in this part of the country. It says that there would be a loss of agricultural land in this area, whether we have an airport or not. The Commission themselves say that Cublington would make a more serious impact on the countryside than Foulness. As we know, the Countryside Commission and the Council for the Preservation of Rural England both come down in favour of Foulness.
Then there is the road and rail access to the airport. The Commission say that Foulness would involve heavier expense for the construction of railways, and that the new road would be needed sooner at

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Foulness than at Cublington. But there is something else we are not told: we are not told that the Southend railway is already scandalously overcrowded at the moment, that it already needs expansion and that British Railways in pre-airport days were considering the question of laying down two extra lots of lines. As for the road, it is known that the road is inadequate even for present traffic, and the authorities have been considering for some years the question of its improvement. The only point I want to make about the road and rail question is that we cannot validly debit the airport with the whole of the expense that has to be incurred on improving the road and the rail communications. What is more, the new road to Foulness, when it does come, will cause less damage than the new road to Cublington, both to agricultural land and to the beauties of the countryside.
The next factor is noise. About this there is no argument at all. The Commission say that Foulness is outstandingly better. The noise is largely over the sea, whereas, with regard to Cublington, along with Heathrow and Gatwick, there will be a constant semi-circle of noise over South-West and North-West London. Foulness has another advantage in the matter of noise. Southend airport will be closed, and that will relieve up to a quarter of a million people of the noise which they suffer at the moment. Instead of Foulness creating more noise it will bring about less noise than we have at the present time. Moreover, on this question of noise, I feel that the Commission have considerably under-debited Cublington for noise disadvantage. They have certainly included a debit in respect of noise damage to houses, but they nave not included anything for the noise damage to factories, offices, shopping areas and so on.
The next factor which we cannot leave out of consideration is the social advantages that will occur with the one site or the other. I feel here that all of them are in favour of Foulness. Some of them can be calculated in money's-worth; some of them can be counted merely in terms of human living. There is unemployment to start with. The Foulness and Southend area is an area of very high unemployment. The establishment of an airport there, with its
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ancillary industries, would be a boon, whereas at Cublington there is already excessive employment growth on the road North-West from London. I mention Stevenage, Hatfield, Dunstable and Luton. There is a grave fear that you might there get economic over-heating and that you would get an inflationary wage system.
With regard to planning, Foulness and its surroundings offer a delightful opening for the scandalously overcrowded people of East London. The public services are already established in that part of the country; they would merely need extending and not constructing from scratch. Shopping services are available. All our planning experts say that it is very desirable that people should be within 10 or 15 miles of a big town, for social and shopping purposes. There are those facilities in Southend. It would be a convenience to the people and would bring increased prosperity to the town. Then there is the question of amusements and amenities. Those of us who have had anything to do with new towns know that the question of amenities and amusements and entertainments is one of the most difficult problems with which we have to deal. It makes all the difference between happy people and discontented, moody people. Southend has all these amenities in abundance and at certain times of the day it has the greatest amenity of all—the sea.
Then there is the question of housing. According to expert planning calculations Southend and district has accommodation available for 85,000 new people without building any more houses at all. There are boarding houses of the old Victorian days which are now under-occupied, there are widows and pensioners living in houses with an enormous amount of spare accommodation, and the council itself fears that it may have too many houses. Here is the Southend Standard of a fortnight ago. A splash heading on the front page says "Council houses going spare". If Foulness were chosen there would be less need to spend money on housing than would be the case with Cublington. Fewer houses would be pulled down at Foulness; there is not a single house on the Maplin Sands. There would be little uprooting of people, whereas at Cublington we know that at least 1,000 families would be uprooted.

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Then, as ancillary to this argument, we have the Basildon New Town not so very far away, a place where some of the people could be accommodated and where some of the second echelon industries could similarly be housed. Then there is the question of commuters. Every day 40,000 of them leave Southend and district to come to London. I am not suggesting that all of those 40,000 will want to work on their doorstep: some of them are executive and clerical people who have their jobs in London and must come to London, but some of them would inevitably find their way into employment in the airport and in the industrial establishments set up around it, and they would not need new housing because they already have their houses. Then the airport staff could presumably be transferred from Southend Airport to Foulness Airport, and they again would need no new houses to accommodate them. The South-East Strategic Plan states that South-East Essex needs more people. Obviously, if it is to have more people it must have more employment, and that is precisely what the airport would provide. So from the social point of view everything seems to be in favour of Foulness.
We now come to the vexed question of accessibility. The merits of Foulness have so far appeared to me to be overwhelming, so the Commission bring in some intangible factors to cancel them out. The chief of these is what they call "surface accessibility". This is of some importance and it is not to be dismissed airily, but I feel that the Commission have grossly exaggerated its importance and by so doing have turned the balance sheet from a Foulness credit into a Foulness debit. The Commission state that Foulness is farther away, less popular and more expensive to reach. But the facts about this story really ought to be unveiled, and they are these. By rail there is five minutes difference, by road there is 12 minutes difference, and if you find yourself with five or 12 minutes in hand, is it really vital? If you save those few minutes what do you do with them? A holiday maker going on holiday from Foulness Airport would find that his wife was able to give the baby another feed in those last few minutes and a business man would be able to make a final study of his documents and assemble his ideas for his business engagement. Or he could
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relax—and do not let us laugh if I suggest that relaxation is of value in this world in these days. It is not wasted time. Anyhow a holiday maker makes his journey only once a year and a business man probably makes his journey half a dozen times a year.
Yet the Commission debit Foulness with this factor of inaccessibility with £167 million or £207 million. They are not quite sure which is the right amount, but £40 million is neither here nor there, according to their calculations. These sums represent two items. There is £71 million for extra road and rail fares in which the passengers are mulcted, and £96 million or £136 million in respect of passengers' wasted time. They have multiplied those items by millions of passengers over a period of 25 years in order to get those figures of £71 million or £136 million, and this wipes out the advantage which Foulness has hitherto possessed. But this calculation of 25 years of so many passengers a day in order to arrive at the figures which are debited against Foulness seems to me to be too much like Rolls-Royce's finance for my liking. The Commission hem-selves say:
"There is considerable uncertainty about the figures for wasted time."
They have already revised them, and if we work out what those passengers' petrol and rail fares are going to cost over the period of 25 years on the basis of the number of passengers that the Commission tell us about, it works out at 1s. 3d. per person worse through going to Foulness rather than going to Cublington.
But there is one point about the £167 million and the £71 million that we must be clear upon. The Government do not have to pay those millions; it is only a notional balancing item—a figure which they first thought of and then adjusted, and which, by some coincidence, happens to swing the balance over from Foulness to Cublington. If the Commission consider that accessibility is the predominant factor, then let us consider Heathrow. It was accessibility that gave us Heathrow; and is not one Heathrow enough without having another?
There is another point here—a minor point, perhaps, but not irrelevant. I wonder whether the Commission attached

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sufficient importance to it. When Foulness gets going, will not all the airports in distant parts of the country put on feeder planes to bring their passengers down to Foulness and land them on the tarmac, so that they can climb immediately into their main line planes for the Continent? This factor might make Foulness the most accessible of all the sites after all. I ask your Lordships not to be too frightened by this story of inaccessibility. The Commission admit that it is not true. They say that by 1991 there will be over 20 million passengers at Foulness and that by the end of the century there will be 80 million. The Commission also stated this:
"We readily accept that the majority of air travellers will not be deterred from flying merely because the airport is at Foulness rather than at Cublington."
The next point I want to turn to concerns the construction costs of the airport. There is not much difference between the costs of Foulness on the one hand and Cublington on the other. It depends which page of the Report you look at. You get a plain figure and then you get all kinds of additions, substractions, revisions and adjustments, and by the time you have finished puzzling them out you feel like a housewife in a supermarket on Decimal Day. The summary of capital costs which is given in the Report shows Foulness as being £6 million dearer and this is for building the airport, the runways, the taxi-ing ways, the terminal buildings and all the facilities within the airport boundary. It also includes the costs of the roads and the railways leading to it from London. This is real, understandable money; you can get your hand on it. But then the Commission bring this £6 million surplus up to £78 million surplus by adding over £70 million for what they call "current and operating costs". Now this £70 million has nothing at all to do with constructing the airport or with operating it. What is it? It looks like our old friend "extra rail fares and petrol" once again for the few extra miles from London to Foulness over a period of 25 years, and I should not like to be the auditor auditing accounts of that kind. If you take off that £70 million difference it brings the constructional difference for the two airports down again to the original £6 million.
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Then, my Lords, we really ought to take off another £18 million which has been charged to Foulness in the balance sheet for extending the length of the runways at Luton. Many of the experts say that this is not necessary. I have a feeling that the people of Luton will say that it is not desirable. They are complaining about the noise they have now: they will not want the additional noise from the larger planes which will use the longer runways. If you take that £18 million Luton expenditure which has been debited against Foulness away from Foulness, you then find that Foulness is actually £12 million cheaper. But these construction costs are so qualified and so confusing that I would not attempt to make a point of them. But I do say this very definitely: that it is wrong to get the idea in our heads that the honest construction figures show that Foulness would be measurably dearer than Cublington.
At this stage, my Lords, the Commission make a very wise distinction in the use of some of their figures. They say:
"These construction costs are resources costs; that is to say, they make a direct demand on the goods and services of the community".
I think we can all understand that. But then they go on to bump up the costs against Foulness by adding another kind of cost, the disbenefits between Foulness and Cublington. They say:
"These are subjective costs which do not give rise to any immediate claims on the nation's economic resources",
and that, of course, is a point which is well worth remembering. By far the biggest of these subjective costs, as they call them, is our old friend the debit of £136 million or £96 million for passengers' extra rail or road time: these few extra minutes per passenger multiplied by the hundreds of millions of people using the airport in the next twenty-five years. This kind of arithmetic once again makes Foulness appear dearer than Cublington. Incidentally, many of these passengers will be foreigners.
I think the Commission have taken he wrong line here. These fares and time ought not to be charged against Britain. They are really an invisible export, something which is bringing foreign currency to this country. Again, I do not know whether, in valuing this twenty-five years' worth of extra petrol that people will

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use careering down the Southend arterial road, allowance has been made for the fact that most of the cost of petrol goes directly to the Exchequer in tax so that it can reduce our income tax. But cost/benefit analyses are really very funny things, and they are admitted on all hands to be of a very experimental nature. The fact I want to make here is that the difference between the cost of the airport and its road and rail communications is very small, and anyhow final costs usually differ from original estimates by very considerable sums. We have the Rolls-Royce engine and the Concorde as examples of that.
Now it is this cost/benefit analysis that is going to swing the decision against Foulness if it is allowed to go unchallenged. I have already mentioned that too little has been debited against Cublington for the noise that will be created there. I have already mentioned that a grotesque amount has been debited against Foulness in respect of passenger time. But I do not know whether the Commission have offset this so-called loss due to passengers' extra time on land by the fact that their journeys to the Continent will be 50 miles shorter by air. Has this been credited in the cost/benefit balance sheet to Foulness? This is a real hard fact, my Lords, because when I came up this afternoon I was looking at some of the posters in the railway station, although not the kind of posters that your Lordships are thinking about. This was a travel poster, and it announced that Channel Airways, because their air journey from Southend was much shorter in the air to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels and some other Continental centres, had reduced the fare for the journey by £5. Southend is near to Foulness, and I feel that there may be reductions in air fares from Foulness to the Continent as there have been from Southend to the Continent and this ought to be taken into account in the balance sheet. But more important, my Lords, is this: some very vital factors have been left out of the cost/benefit balance sheet altogether. There is regional planning. Why is that left out?
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, I wonder whether I may interrupt the noble Lord for one moment, before he goes on to his next long subject, to draw his attention to certain facts? He has already spoken
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now longer than the Leader of the House, speaking on behalf of the Government, who anyway is notoriously long-winded—I say that with due deference—and he has already spoken six minutes longer than the noble Lord who moved the Motion, and he has already spoken ten minutes longer than the average—an unduly long average—of 23 minutes. There are 24 speakers on the list to speak to-day and the same number to-morrow. I feel that perhaps he is taking a little more of your Lordships' time than is reasonable.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord should have wasted three minutes of our time on that intervention, but I will try to come to an end sooner than might otherwise have been the case.
The Commission have left out some very important factors. Regional planning is one. Why is that? Surely this is what the whole exercise is really about. The Commission say they recognise that on a planning basis Foulness is preferable to Cublington, so why not credit Foulness with an item in the cost/benefit balance sheet in respect of this factor? All that the Commission say is:
"We did not see any practical way of expressing in monetary terms the regional planning factors or the value of preserving the countryside".
Then the cost/benefit balance sheet gives no credit to Foulness for these 85,000 fewer people who will need to have houses built for them in the Foulness and Southend area.
If this whole verdict is going to turn on the cost/benefit analysis, can we accept it? There are far too many uncertainties. I have here a list of 12 uncertainties which the Commission admit, with which I will not trouble your Lordships, but they on their own confession have changed their minds so many times and have altered their figures so many times that I wonder whether we can have any confidence in the figures which they finally put before us. I doubt it—and so do they—because they devote a whole chapter to what they call "margins of error". I will not quote from it as I would have done, but their last comment in this chapter on "margins of error", when they deal with the cost/benefit analysis as a whole says: "We do not claim that it tells the whole story". It certainly does not. It leaves one very

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big item out and it puts a great big questionable item in.
My Lords, I feel that Foulness has the advantage, when we look at it from the points of view of air traffic control, defence, agriculture, noise, regional planning, unemployment, social conditions and housing. The money side of the equation, I think, can be juggled to suit either side, but we are not dealing with money alone; we are dealing with people, the people of this generation, and our children and grandchildren who will come after us.
There is this final consideration. We live in a crowded island with little land to spare. Do we want to add to that land or do we want to subtract from it? Foulness would add 13,000 acres to the territory of England and we would possess it for ever. If you want to include this in the balance sheet with a cash denomination of £20,000 an acre it would add £260 million to our national assets and the Commission do not put that in their cost/benefit balance sheet. It was, according to one version of history, at Canewdon, only a few miles from Foulness, where Canute made his vain attempt to keep back the sea. We now have a chance to reverse that page of history and create a great expanse of new land that will push the sea farther away than Canute ever thought possible. My Lords, I think that that is well worth while.
6.21 p.m.
LORD REIGATE: My Lords, I hope that I shall commend myself to your Lordships, and particularly to the Liberal Benches, by being very brief, by not repeating any of the arguments that have already been adduced and by assuming that your Lordships have already read the Roskill Report and have found out for yourselves the flaws that lie within it. I was tempted at one stage, but for the fact that I have some points to raise which have not been raised, to say, "Ditto" to all the speeches; "I am for Foulness"; and to sit down. But perhaps your Lordships will bear with me if I mention one or two points which have not been raised.
I met the Chairman of the Commission, not long ago, and when I told him that I was in favour of Foulness, and was hoping to speak in this debate, he replied, "I hope that you have read the Report
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and I hope that all who speak will have read the Report." At that time I had not read it. I have now; and I am still in favour of Foulness. Whatever site is chosen, I think it will be a small consolation, albeit a consolation, that the decision will be taken as the result of a Report that is so painstaking and so careful and contains such a considerable marshalling of the facts. It is beautifully reasoned and, I would add, is admirably written and is a standing reproach to the average Government document.
But, when you have mustered all the statistics in the world, this is not really a justiciable issue, it is a political issue. Hence this debate. Whichever is chosen, as the Third London Airport, the people affected are fortunate, as I have said, in that the issue and the outcome will have been discussed, reasoned and debated—a consolation which was denied to the first and second airports. It was not thus with Gatwick whose development has been Topsy-like and higgledy-piggledy over the last 16 years.
My Lords, it is not unusual, in any debate affecting the environment, that somewhere behind a speech we hear the low murmur of an axe being ground and of a log being rolled. I think therefore that I ought to declare my interest. I have a house within a few miles of Gatwick, and for 20 years I was one of the four Members of Parliament whose constituencies abutted on that airport. It is an under-statement to say that I have been aware of the problem since Gatwick was first designated as an alternative airport in 1954. It was designated as an alternative airport because the weather was different. And after 16 years I noted with interest the other day that both Heathrow and Gatwick were closed down by fog. But with the passage of the years, with the changing needs of the airport, with the changing types of aircraft and the growing volume of traffic, I ask your Lordships to realise the extent to which the second London Airport, unplanned, has come to overshadow the lives of thousands of people in the area. Thousands have gradually seen the loss of amenity and the change in the neighbourhood that they have known and lived in for many years.
But, of course, there are two sides to every question; there are those who have been attracted to the neighbourhood by

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its proximity to Gatwick. But the fact remains that a total environment in a comparatively rural part of the South-East has been changed for the worse over these years. May I remind your Lordships that Gatwick lies halfway between Crawley New Town and Redhill? It is therefore a fact that from Merstham to the other side of Crawley New Town you have over ten miles of urban sprawl slicing across the Green Belt. If you have ever driven down to Brighton, it is not until you are beyond Crawley New Town that you can see anything which you can recognise as a Green Belt, or indeed as a rural area. In short, the second London Airport, without being officially so designated, has come into being without the inquiry that has in this case been vouchsafed to Cublington and Foulness, and to the non-starters.
I hope that your Lordships will realise that what I have said by way of introduction is germane to the main issue of the debate; because many of us are concerned that the disputation about where the Third London Airport should be sited might involve delay and might be used by the vested interests as an excuse for increasing the use of Gatwick by involving a second runway on that airport. Therefore I welcome the very clear statement in the Roskill Report (and it has been echoed in the words of my noble friend to-day), the conclusion accepted by all members of the Commission, that a second runway at Gatwick is no substitute for a third London Airport.
If I may, I will quote part of paragraph 53 from Chapter 5 (page 34) of the Report. The Commission say:
"… it was suggested to us by the Chairman of the British Airports Authority that a second runway at Gatwick was needed because of what he described as 'four lost years' due to the change of policy in setting up the Commission instead of proceeding promptly with the proposed third London airport at Stansted. We are unable to accept this view in the light of our clear conclusion that the forecasts of traffic and of airport capacity show that a third London airport can be provided at any of the four sites before present airport capacity in the London area is exhausted."
Now, my Lords, mark these other words which follow immediately:
"Indeed Mr. Masefield agreed that if these forecasts were right it would have been premature to have started building an airport at Stansted four years ago."
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For the future there will be something of a credibility gap when it comes to considering the recommendation of the British Airports Authority. This is reinforced by other quotations which I could cite against the suggestion that the second runway at Gatwick would increase the reluctance of airlines to use the Third London Airport.
One would have thought that the categorical statement I have quoted might allay any fears that exist, but I think those fears will once again be aroused by the eruption into the debate over the weekend by Mr. Anthony Crosland, whom I think one could describe as the only begetter of the Roskill Report, with the suggestion that we should have no Third London Airport but should make more intensive use of existing airports in the South-East and much further afield. I echo every word that the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, said. We cannot just sit and wait for these marvellous new aircraft. We have to deal with a situation which is already absolutely intolerable.
Therefore, my Lords, my plea to-day is for an assurance from Her Majesty's Government that while the battle rages between Cublington and Foulness, with Crosland intervening, there will be no weak solution by allowing any further and unnecessary extension at Gatwick on any grounds whatsoever; but that, if this is even considered, the second London Airport will at last be vouchsafed what it never has had—an inquiry on Roskill lines, weighing up all the implications, economic and planning. And I may say that I welcome very much the sympathetic remarks of my noble friend Lord Jellicoe about those who already suffer, and have suffered for many years, and whose patience was long ago exhausted.
6.30 p.m.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, I should like, first, to join with those noble Lords who have expressed their appreciation to Mr. Justice Roskill and his Commission on the manner in which they performed the task which they undertook. That is a particularly pleasant task for me because Mr. Justice Roskill and I are friends. We were, and still are, Benchers of the same Inn of Court.
I think I ought to add to those words of congratulation a few words of sympathy as well. I believe that Mr. Justice Roskill

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and his Commission were set what proved to be an impossible task. They were required to find a site for a new airport; it was to be linked with London and it was to relieve the pressure of the traffic at Heathrow. As I hope I shall show in a moment, I do not believe that such a site exists anywhere where an airport of this kind could be constructed without bringing about all the social and material damage which will be caused if this airport is placed at Cublington or Thurleigh.
My Lords, I doubt whether the public has realised the magnitude of what is proposed. This airport will be the largest in the world, three times the size of Heathrow. It will occupy 15,000 acres and employ something like 65,000 staff. It will handle initially 600,000 flights and accommodate something like 100 million passengers in a year. When the industrial development which will go with the airport is completed it will employ something like 75,000 people. This vast undertaking is to be thrust into the countryside without much consideration for those at present living there. Never has there been an invasion of the countryside equal to this. Villages, farms, homes, churches—all will be swept away; hundreds of persons will lose their homes.
Are these matters inseparable from the construction of a modern airport? My Lords, I think that they are. I do not think it would be possible to find a site which could be said to be connected with London but which would not give rise in some part of the country to precisely the kind of hardships about which we have been protesting this afternoon. As one read through the mass of evidence—I do not remember seeing so much evidence in a single case before—it became clear that the construction of a new airport of this size and magnitude anywhere in the region which may be described as being linked with London is not a practical proposition unless one is prepared to bring about the hardships that the provision of this airport might bring.
The Foulness site provided the Commission with a splendid opportunity, but alas! they cast it aside. An airport at Foulness would be constructed at least partially on land reclaimed from the sea, and the difficulties which would present
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themselves at the other sites would not be experienced there. Foulness would certainly have great advantages and I hope that it will prove to be the site chosen by your Lordshipe when the time comes to express your views. So far the other sites have not found many friends in your Lordships' House. That shows how unfortunate were the Commission that their choice should fall in the wrong quarter, after the long, painful and protracted investigation which they undertook, lasting for more than two years.
Before I conclude, my Lords, there are one or two matters with which I should like to deal; the first might be described as a major matter, although hitherto it has not attracted much support in your Lordships' House. It is the question whether a third airport is necessary for London at all. When I began to consider this case I thought that the result of my study of the evidence would convince me that a third airport was not really necessary. On the whole, I think that conclusion was wrong; and I would hesitate to advocate delaying the construction of a new airport, mainly because I feel that one might very likely end by regretting such an action. Air travel is increasing and has almost overwhelmed other forms of travel, and it may well be that although the need for a third airport is not at the moment so apparent, before many years have passed we should regret it were we to hold back now. Nor do I see any reason why we should do so. The provision of a new airport could proceed quite well on the Foulness site. So far not many of your Lordships have argued that we could dispense with a third airport. I hope that feeling is general.
If it is not practical—as I believe that it is not—to construct an airport of the requisite size anywhere in the proximity of London, we have to ask ourselves what can be done to relieve the pressure at Heathrow and, to some extent, at Gatwick. My Lords, I have not found it easy to analyse the traffic evidence in the Report, but I believe that there is a considerable amount of exchange traffic at Heathrow. A large number of passengers fly into Heathrow and change aeroplanes, and then fly out again, either on the same day or within 24 hours. I should have thought it possible to divert part of that traffic from London altogether, to some

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part of the country where it would be possible to construct an airport of the necessary size without the social consequences which would be inseparable at Cublington or Thurleigh. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell me whether it is a practical suggestion, and what the number of exchange passengers who fly into Heathrow or Gatwick and fly out again in 24 hours is likely to be.
Those are the only two matters about which I desire to say anything. I have no doubt that the general sense of your Lordships to-day in favour of the proposal for Foulness is the right decision, and I hope that we shall see it carried through.
LORD GRIMSTON OF WESTBURY: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask, as he raised the question of exchange traffic, whether a difficulty would not arise unless an aeroplane passenger list was entirely exchange traffic? I doubt whether that would be so. Some passengers will be wanting to get to London and some will be exchange passengers. That will lead to difficulties.
LORD ILFORD: I was speaking purely of exchange passengers who come in and then go out again in 12 or 24 hours. If a passenger wants to stay and travel the same journey perhaps a week or a fortnight later, I should not regard him as an exchange passenger.
LORD GRIMSTON OF WESTBURY: My noble friend has misunderstood me. I said there would not be aeroplanes with solely exchange passenegers.
LORD ILFORD: I do not think it would be necessary.
6.42 p.m.
THE EARL OF LYTTON: My Lords, my speech to-day is in support of the line taken by the noble Lord, Lord Molson. I have been for some time driven to support an offshore site on the Maplin Sands if only from the massive and perhaps unprecedented negative presented to every other site by every other county, even Essex, which after winning the battle of Stansted and halting the beast, offers it a site, a kind of gift horse in its own county, as well as a kind of atonement. I came here to reinforce the rural representations of the noble Lord, Lord Molson, and to speak with the voice of
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the urban, the suburban dweller and the commuter. I find allies everywhere. To start off with, there is the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, who added, I think, 2½ million to the army that I was hoping to speak for to-day. Then there are the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, the noble Lord, Lord Dowding, in his eloquent maiden speech, and lastly the noble Lord, Lord Reigate. These are voices from urban areas.
In view of the fact that two noble Lords have spoken on what I intended to say at the end of my speech, I will refer to the Gatwick extension first. The noble Lord, Lord Reigate, expressed his detestation of this. The Surrey County Council in the last year or two have written to the Board of Trade describing the noise as intolerable. I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Molson, in saying that it is becoming intolerable. It is not; it has been intolerable for a long time. It is getting worse, and people are not going to have it. The majority of the Roskill Commission said there was no doubt that the people who lived under this noise abhorred it; and Professor Buchanan described it as a hideously undesirable neighbour. Everybody everywhere is against it.
I noted with appreciation that the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, mentioned the population consequence of a second runway at Gatwick on Crawley New Town, of which perhaps he was the father—I do not know. I think the noble Lord should come and see it; I think it should rank with Waterloo Bridge as something he should see. I have no interest left in the ordinary sense, but Crawley moves over my former ancestral lands and I take a great pride in it. I have no wish to put back the clock. I see this town, founded as a growth town, with many new industries such as electronics and so on, getting Queen's Award after Queen's Award. I think they have more awards than anyone else. It is a relatively restricted area, with the mole drainage system. One of the menaces of the expansion of the second London airport at Gatwick is that the additional population, the 70,000 upwards per runway, will squeeze out this beautiful little town. I feel that I have a kind of ancestral ditty to represent it and to ask Her Majesty's Government to do nothing about extending this airport without careful inquiry.

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There are 3 counties, 6 urban district councils, 6 rural district councils, 41 parish councils and 3 rural parish councils, all lined up to stand against this extension of Gatwick. If you want to know why they are already lined up in order of battle, it is because the B.A.A. are going marching on, unless they are told otherwise. They have announced their intention to extend the first runway and to lay down the second runway, and the choice of Foulness or Cublington has nothing whatever to do with their intentions. I am hoping that the Government will say who goes where in the matter of airports, runways and flights.
The Roskill Report is to me a most satisfying document—I am referring only to the majority Report. Having this feeling that we must go offshore, I had a haunting anxiety lest Foulness should prove inefficient or in some way impossible. I do not want anything but a first-class British International Airport No. 1, gradually replacing all others in the South-East region, and for the rest of the country, as Professor Buchanan suggests, a British International Airport No. 2 somewhere else. Meanwhile, the opposition in this country comes from the people who suffer under these noises and those who are likely to suffer in future.
We are increasing in the region at the rate of one million a decade. We must find more room for them. Planners like the prospect of finding more room for them. Without increasing population you cannot do new things: you cannot move, otherwise you leave derelict areas, empty houses and firms that cannot operate. So this increase of population is looked forward to with enthusiasm by the planners. They can do something with it. But we must not use up our country by contaminating 350 square miles here, there and everywhere. The people of the future as much as those of the present are entitled to be relieved from the burdens so eloquently stated, and to have the rest of the country in which to develop according to a reasonable plan. I often think how hard the planners try, and how successful they are. I see the most splendid things in this city.
The absence of a national plan leads us at once, in paragraph 1324 of the
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Report, to the absence of any regional plan, because in that paragraph the Roskill Commission enumerate four existing London airports and five runways. We talk about the third. Where does the third come in? It is really the fifth. They clearly indicate that there is no phasing out in contemplation, and when the idea of phasing out Luton was presented to them they regarded it as almost incredible and unthinkable. How many runways do people want? I presume that they want the five that they have, otherwise they would not be trying to build another one at Gatwick. Therefore, they want six runways. Allowing for expansion for the future and for the internal airport in the West, I suggest that you must earmark six runways to Maplin Sands for the future, otherwise you will be pressed politically again and again. One has to look at the possibilities of silence and at V.T.O., but the prospects are not at all good. I think that silence died with Rolls-Royce, and dead silence is going to be succeeded by a lot of noise. Anything else is the diversion of power and is inefficient. Therefore I agree with the Commission: we must plan for noisy aircraft and put them where the noise does not matter.
In looking at this gift horse from Essex, many people have attacked various points, including the costing. I think the noble Lord, Lord Dowding, dropped a small bomb, questioning the £100 million, and the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, dropped another, saying that it was very small. I should like to say how small; I think it is 2 per cent. I think that £100 million is 2 per cent., or a little less. It disappears in contingencies and errors and a few other things which are not worth thinking about. Therefore the cost does not matter. What matters is the channel of communications, which has to be fitted with some care along the North bank. The things that make me happy are, for example, all the technical matters, reclaiming the gravel, and so forth, which I once saw being done by the Russians in a North African port, and I wondered: "Can it really last? Will it subside?" Here the Commission are perfectly satisfied with the technical feasibility. That is very good. The weather is satisfactory.
We turn to the handicaps. By far the greatest disadvantage is the inaccessibility

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of Foulness. Great play has been made that its accessibility takes only five minutes longer. I think it is more than five minutes. I give the Commission credit for having thought carefully on the matter. It is a question of organising the communications. It is all right when it is only five minutes for one person, but for 5 million people it may be much more than five minutes. That is the difficulty. I could not find anything satisfactory in the Commission's Report—I daresay through faults of my own—to account for the freight that is carried by London Airport's various aircraft. I want to ask a question: Is not the value of the freight carried through London Airport bringing it into third place in all the ports? The Port of London is first, Southampton is second and London Airport is third. I cannot find anything about it. I think that, quite apart from passengers, we need to settle down to the freight business. It may be that in time this aircraft lift will produce the most valuable freight of any port; it is moving ahead so quickly.
I will miss out a number of points because other people have made them well and better, and I want to take a tour round the counties. In addition to reading the Report, in addition to having briefs, I telephoned the five counties. The spokesmen for Essex made it perfectly clear that they felt a duty, in the public good, in the spirit of the Caesars, pro bono publico, to offer something if they could: and they offered Maplin as a sacrifice. If anybody said: "You can have a MIDA instead", nobody would be better pleased than Essex—they have offered something for the public good. That is something we should look on with great care before we reject it, because it is the only offer anywhere. Everywhere else is rejected, not only stonily but under arms. Of course Essex will get benefits. I think the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, said how suitable Southend-on-Air, adjacent to Southend-on-Sea, would be to develop a happy satellite city of 300,000, or whatever the number was, added on to the existing community, with all its maturity and empty accommodation—all the 84,000 which I think he mentioned—and that there is such an advantage to be able to do things, if you want to do them,
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quickly. What we want is speed, and an airport, in any case, is going to grow more rapidly than, say, Crawley New Town, which I think is just 21 years old, or thereabouts. It is still growing, and is going to double in size. That is why we do not want the other people coming in.
I confirm what the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, has said, and with great respect to the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, I would point out that Essex County Council do not want, cannot take and cannot contemplate what is called a MIDA—this industrial complex added to a marine port. Never mind what TEDCO says, of which Southend, as well as the noble Viscount, is a member. Southend may like it, but there is every sort of evidence from the Roskill Commission, majority reports, minority reports, the planners, Essex County Council themselves—that you cannot take this MIDA there. Presently I shall come to Kent who want it and who are preparing to receive it. And I should like their case to be carefully considered.
Now we move from Essex across to Kent. Kent are opposed to being contaminated by the noise of Essex, and I sympathise, and I think that that case should be considered. I am hoping that six runways will be found which will subscribe to what I call the "N.N.N." standard: the "No Noise Nuisance" standard. In other words, nobody in Southend, nobody in Southend-on-Sea, nobody in Southend-on-Air or Sheppey, will be disturbed by the noise. Kent have quite a strong case. The case, as it was put to me—and I put it with the greatest possible reserve—was that the difference between a noisy site and a silent site is £28 million, and they discussed what that was in so many thousands per householder, and so on, all with regard to persons present, and no regard to persons future, and no regard to the development of holiday facilities for the "East Enders" at Sheppey. Why should they have their holiday resort contaminated for £28 millions? One half of one per cent. is not worth bothering about. In order to look at the subject in this detail you want to see what size it is. If it is possible to clear it all at what I would call a "nominal cost" given these high figures, then it should be in the interests of Kent.

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Kent have a secret hope. I said to them, "You say that you are getting nothing to compensate you for this. Have you any hopes? What are your intentions in the Medway? Have you none?". They said, "Yes; a MIDA. That is what we want. Our consultants are busy on the job and will be reporting in due course. We shall be sorry if anybody decides to put a MIDA on Maplin before considering our claims. We have deep water without bridging." Therefore, with respect to the noble Viscount the Chairman of the P.L.A., who must know this subject better than I do, I ask Her Majesty's Government to consider the claims of Kent in due course—something very big and very important, another third of a million population, I suppose, a MIDA in the Medway. Kent have that same idea of rejuvenating the South bank as was so eloquently expressed by Professor Buchanan in regard to the effect of the airport on the North bank. And why should not the South bank be treated equally well? I used to work in Bermondsey, and I like the idea of the South bank, with all its derelict Surrey Docks, and so forth, being revived by something. I look forward to that, if it is possible. It is an adjunct to what we are talking about, but it has been mentioned, and it is important.
Now I turn to the other people, the other counties: West Sussex, East Sussex, Surrey. All their eyes are focused on Gatwick and its risk of expansion. Why? Because the Roskill Report—the Majority Report—says: "If you go to Foulness, the chances are that Gatwick will expand; that every other airport will expand." This fear will be dismissed if we can take it that Her Majesty's Government will say who goes where, what airport goes where, what runway goes where. And, if it is decided to expand at Foulness, let it be considered whether the aim should not be to make it, in thirty years' time, the major British international airport, thundering out to sea, full throttle, no restrictions, all round the clock—surely, my Lords, an airport that would be welcome to all the airlines of the world once it was established.
7.1 p.m.
VISCOUNT BLEDISLOE: My Lords, I do not propose to take up much of your Lordships' time, but there is an
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aspect of this matter which I think has not been mentioned so far: the effect of the choice of Cublington on what is known as general aviation. General aviation is a term to describe all civil aviation other than airline operations. It includes flying clubs, training establishments, charter flying, business and what is called "executive" flying, and private flying. General aviation is increasing rapidly in this country, and would undoubtedly increase even more rapidly if and when we joined the Common Market.
The choice of Cublington as a site for a large airport would involve a control zone stretching across the centre of this country. Such a control zone would very seriously affect general aviation whose flying within that zone would be heavily restricted. I suggest to your Lordships that the future of general aviation is a matter of very considerable importance; yet it received the scantiest consideration by the Roskill Commission. I will not weary your Lordships by citing from the Report, but, so far as I can see, the future of general aviation is only cursorily mentioned, in paragraphs 18 to 21 of Chapter 8.
Let me take an example. At Kidlington, an airfield near Oxford, a firm known as C.S.E. Aviation are running probably the largest training establishment in this country. They train British Overseas Airways Corporation and British European Airways pilots and aircrews. They are now training pilots and aircrews for Swissair, Olympia Airways (the Greek airline), and now Japanese Airlines. At Kidlington they have a large amount of expensive equipment, a considerable fleet of aircraft and a team of highly qualified instructors of various kinds. A large airport on their doorstep at Kidlington would be fatal to their highly important training activities. And yet, as I say, this whole subject has been condensed by the Roskill Commission into two short sub-paragraphs.
I would submit to your Lordships that there is a question of principle involved in the use of our airspace; because, after all, the airspace about our country belongs to all of us, and it ought to be available to all of us, free, so far as possible, from restriction. And, as I say, a large airport at Cublington would in practice result in very serious restrictions,

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and the control zone would soon become the monopoly of the airlines.
I would now say just a few words about the Roskill Commission. Very unfortunately, the Commission's terms of reference were limited to advising on the best site for what is called the Third London Airport, or a third airport to serve London. In fact, as I think has already been mentioned, there are already four airports serving London: Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Stansted. Consequently, what the Commission were really concerned with was selecting a site for a fifth London airport. I suggest to your Lordships that London, taken by itself, does not need five airports to cater for its needs.
The Roskill Commission (and it has been suggested that the learned Judge who was Chairman of it might have read his brief a little more broadly; but he did not), therefore, were concerning themselves with what was a completely irrelevant problem. After staging probably the most elaborate and expensive inquiry ever undertaken by a Government Commission, the Roskill Commission have necessarily produced an entirely irrelevant answer. In the process they have wasted over two and a half years of invaluable time, and it has cost the unfortunate taxpayer over 1 million, to say nothing of the cost incurred by the individuals and bodies who gave evidence in favour of, or against, one or other of the sites. Now, by a majority, the Commission have selected a site, for an unwanted and unnecessary fifth London Airport.
Nevertheless, my Lords, there is a real problem, and it is a great pity the Commission did not consider it. Is there a need for an international airport to serve the South of England and the Midlands? I suggest to your Lordships that there is—and a very urgent need. Such an airport would serve the South of England and the Midlands, and would incidentally, but only incidentally, also help to serve London. Professor Buchanan, whose views must surely command great respect, recognised this point. He mentions it (I give the reference for the sake of the Record) at pages 149, 156 and 159. As he says, what we need is a national airports policy. And of course he is right. The Roskill Commission, apart to some extent from Professor Buchanan himself,
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did not consider any such policy; and of course it may be said that their terms of reference did not allow it.
May I now turn to Heathrow? At present England's international airport is at Heathrow. It can hardly be in a worse place. Yet enormous sums of money have been spent, and I fear are probably still being spent, on developing and enlarging it. In the prevailing westerly winds, as we all know, aircraft crawl in low over Westminster, Chelsea, Chiswick, Hounslow, and so on. One day an aircraft coming in to land at Heathrow will crash, possibly as the result of a bomb on board; and it will crash into a heavily built-up area, not only killing the occupants of the aircraft but ploughing through houses, hospitals, factories and shops, leaving behind a trail of destruction and causing the loss of innumerable lives. With the help of a bomb on board, of course it might fall through the Palace of Westminster. My Lords, must we wait for a disaster of this kind to happen before taking action to avert it? I suggest to Her Majesty's Government that the answer must be, No. What is the right action to avert it? The action is surely this: first of all, to develop Foulness as quickly as possible; secondly, to operate Foulness to its maximum capacity; thirdly, to reduce the traffic in and out of Heathrow; and fourthly, for heaven's sake! to stop spending vast sums of money on Heathrow.
7.9 p.m.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, because while listening to every speech, I think, that has been uttered in the House to-day I began to wonder if there was anybody in the House that I could follow. But in the course of his speech, particularly the middle part, I felt very much in sympathy with the noble Viscount because it leads me to the point I want to develop. The only other two speeches, so far as I can remember, which give me a lead-in are those of my noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale and the noble Lord, Lord Henley, who said one or two things which greatly encourage me to say what is in my mind.
Nothing was written into the terms of reference of the Roskill Commission except consideration of the Third London Airport, and I think this is where the mistake was made in the very beginning.

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Why are we always talking—and we have now been doing so for several years—about a third London Airport? I am not going to take up much of your Lordships' time, but I suggest that for a long time past our thoughts should have been concentrated not on London's Third Airport but on the needs of the nation as a whole, including London, and so look for an additional—or more than one additional—British international airport.
When people arrive in Britain by air they are not particularly concerned about the distance between the place at which they land and London. What they are concerned about is the time it takes to get there from wherever they land. It is the time element that is so important, rather than the distance; and so, as might be expected from me with this accent, and with my relationships, I think of the North-West. I think in terms of Liverpool and Manchester airports. Why must we always think about somewhere South of Northampton for a new airport? Liverpool is crying out to extend; and the same applies to Manchester. Manchester is making an application for a second runway; and Liverpool, around Speke airport, has acres and acres of land that could be developed. The people of Liverpool, and particularly the business interests, are very anxious that it should be developed and that a new airport should be built, or at least that the present one should be extended.
Let me point out that to-day, because of the electrification of the railways from London to the North-West, the centres of both Liverpool and Manchester are within 2 hours and 35 minutes of Euston. That is at this moment. So what could happen? Let us take Liverpool, to begin with. There could be a link from Speke Airport, at Liverpool, which would be only one and a half miles. There could be a station in the airport and a link to the Liverpool-London main line. Where has our imagination been? Why should there not be on a train connecting Liverpool Airport with London a coach which would deal with Customs? Why have we not all these years been trying out this idea? Why is it not possible to have a Customs examination on the train and so save all the frustration and waiting for the examination of our baggage? Not long ago I travelled
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from Scotland down to Heathrow, and I did not get out of Heathrow Airport in under an hour: it took longer than it had taken to fly direct from Scotland This is the frustration of our time, and I believe that we should have the imagination to get on with the job. One improvement that I suggest is to have a Customs coach on the train.
We have the seaports at Dover and Southampton, with the railway running alongside the docks. Why should not the railway, as at Gatwick, run alongside the airport? In terms of time, Cublington and Foulness are nearly as far away from London as Manchester and Liverpool are, so why should we worry about a few minutes? After flying for six hours from the United States of America, or perhaps 24 hours from the Far East, what does a difference of half an hour mean to anybody who wants to get to London, once he has arrived in England? It seems to me that the solution of the problem is to think in terms of more international airports. Geographically we are only a small country, and it would therefore be easy, if necessary, to connect every part of the country to London.
But think about the other links, so far as Liverpool and Manchester are concerned. There could be links to the North, links to the North-East, links West/East, towards the East Coast. All these could be done from extended Liverpool or Manchester airports. It may be argued that Euston is an overused station and too busy, so that we could not get any more traffic in there. All right. We have closed St. Marylebone Station. Let us reopen that and get some of the traffic on to that line from Liverpool and Manchester into St. Marylebone, instead of Euston Station. I believe that these airports could service areas further North, and in Wales and the East, and the like. Buckinghamshire and the Foulness areas do not want this new airport. They are all screaming out against it. Liverpool and Manchester want to extend. Why should we play about with people who do not want it when there are other people who do? Take-off and landing from Liverpool and Manchester can easily be over the Irish Sea, so there would be a minimum of noise over those great conurbations.

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There is room at Liverpool for an airport as least as large as Heathrow.
Apart from railway links there are the road links. The M.6 runs very close to both these airports, and would be used as a link. Then, of course, Liverpool is a great exporting city, with its docks. Manchester, too, has the Ship Canal, and can link in that way.
My Lords, I have now been speaking for a longer time than I had intended, in view of the number of noble Lords who have to follow me, so I will summarise quickly the advantages of my proposals. They are: a minimal intrusion on the environment; excellent road and rail nation-wide communications; fewer topographical or other physical problems; less disturbance of residential development; no air traffic control difficulties; site area equal to Heathrow; site works and land costs comparatively low. And, my Lords, lastly, overall costs almost infinitesimal as compared with what we are discussing for Foulness and Cublington. I wanted to be brief and I hope that I have been, but I hope that I may have put an idea or two into the minds of the Government. My plea is that what I have said may be closely examined.
7.20 p.m.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, for at least one idea that came from the noble Lord, Lord Royle, I believe we should all be obliged and grateful; namely, his suggestion of a Customs coach. When he was speaking of Liverpool he was no doubt aware that the computer model used by the Roskill Commission ignored the traffic pattern not only of Liverpool but of Birmingham, Glasgow and Edinburgh. That brings me to a firm declaration of interest, which is that my Scottish home base, Castle Gogar, Corstorphine, lies at the edge of Turnhouse airfield and therefore I have some interest and anxiety, although a remote one, about the layout of its expansion.
Amid the uproar of obscure enthusiasm in which the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, initiated the Government side of this debate I could not help feeling that he might well have taken Marcus Aurelius for his text:
"There is a proper value and proportion to be observed in every act'.
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Our problem is to balance three different considerations. First, the economic: what will jack up our growth rate from its present 1½ or 2 per cent. to something like West Europe's 4½ per cent.? Second, the environmental: that though half our population live on 3 per cent. of the land area, the intervals between are being rapidly despoiled and we must ask ourselves whether we cannot put the wide areas of wilderness to some use. And, third, the technical: only two runways are needed meantime; the other two are not needed before the end of the century, if then, but we shall not know until the mid-80s whether STOL or VTOL are going to make the difference. What is quite clear—and I say this again in reference to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Royle—is that, for better or worse, not only do 80 per cent. of air passengers and freight go through London but studies show that they want to go through London.
I join others in praising the Commission's patience and expertise, but their contradictions remind me at points of sheer technological arrogance, "the very obstruction of wisdom". The way the econometricians have boldly chosen, often in an arbitrary fashion, which data to measure and which measurable data to ignore, I say, from the point of view of their boldness, makes mediæval school-men disputing about how many angels can dance on a pinhead seem humble children by comparison.
But though the study was undertaken in mystic abstraction from the world of the senses, it is only fair to recognise that the Commission did labour under two disadvantages: first, the lack of any national airport policy, of which we have already heard plenty; and, second, the lack of any really relevant regional development policy—a matter to which the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, referred.
Not only did the South-East Strategy emerge very late for the Roskill Commission's consideration, but nine months after the new Government took office we are even now debating this subject without the smallest sign that our Government have been, or are, revising the regional development policy they inherited, which is derived from the Barlow ideas of 30 years ago—revising this in any fashion that is meaningful to the problems of the present time.

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So in the planning context Roskill had very little to go on. What the Commission did have was the last Civil Aviation White Paper (Cmnd. 4213, of November, 1969) which claimed simply:
"Airport location makes little difference to regional development"—
although the Scottish experience of attracting science-based industries contradicts that altogether.
Then the Commission had the benefit of Dr. Burns's evidence whilst he was immersed in his South-East Strategy study which, in turn, had largely been conceived in an epoch of statistical inflaation before the Registrar-General had been forced to revise his end-century population predictions downward by no less than 11 million to correct a guessing error now put at 100 per cent.
The fact is that an airport is both a captive industry and a facet of the many-sided interface of trade and industry in some three dimensions—not only air, but also land and sea. It is a facet of this many-sided interface in which the development of sea power and the new ships that plough the seas is very relevant to the fact that inland industrial sites are in general throughout the world of less interest than in the past. There are developments that also call for increasingly perceptive regional policies.
Brushing aside the favourable cost features at Foulness, Roskill simply summed up the difference as one between overheating at Cublington and overcrowding at Foulness. This was taken as making the case against any sharing of costs between air and seaport put together. The South-East Strategy study has since been over-simply taken for the view that these two things, the seaport and the airport, could not conveniently be accommodated without urban development either spreading North of the River Crouch or congesting the South Essex corridor. But in fact any housing damage to the Dengie peninsula is physically containable; if you go there you are not on the route to anywhere else as you would be at Cublington.
The South-East Strategy study at Appendix C makes some interesting remarks:
"The airport at Foulness could provide a much needed stimulus for growth. Also
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employment opportunities at the airport may lead to a reduction in commuting from South Essex into London … hence less new urbanisation would be required than if another site were chosen. The availability of the labour force now employed at Southend airport, which would have to close, might also limit the need for additional urbanisation … From a recreational point of view growth on the scale envisaged in South Essex would put additional pressure on the area's limited countryside amenities, although it has been accepted that this is less important than the achievement of other objectives especially since a new Thames crossing would bring a wider range of recreation facilities within reach".
Then the South-East Economic Planning Council has just declared:
"We see no overriding reason why such a port should necessarily be associated with such massive industrial development that it could not be accommodated … There is no doubt that it would be cheaper if there were also an airport, and that there is thus a potential national asset here which should not be forgotten … We consider the advantages he heavily with a location at Foulness … We cannot believe that Foulness would not be made viable and even popular fairly quickly … The Council unanimously recommends this course to Her Majesty's Government."
So on the question of overcrowding, the argument simply does not stand and we have eminent planning authority to support us in this. If there were any shortage of land let us go back to Mr. Bernard Clark who, although he is chided in the Report for his underestimation of reclamation costs, we should surely hail and salute as the man who first thought of the Foulness reclamation idea which others have since decided is technically feasible. He has now gone further and said that if you want more land, reclaim it East of the Denge Peninsuala out to what he calls Buxey Island.
As to the costs of Foulness, not only did Roskill ignore the cost-sharing of the bund, the drainage, and the land link associated with both the airport and the seaport, but they counted the extra six minutes land link cost three times over; they counted the higher money costs, they counted the higher time costs and then they added in as a disbenefit a 7 per cent. loss of potential passengers. The Report's summary, which was somewhat misleading I think we should all agree, even suggested that Foulness would not pay as an airport soon enough, though that is very far from the evidence given by the British Airports Authority.

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Then the Commission missed the private enterprise point altogether. It even suggested that developers would just as readily offer at Cublington what they had offered to do at Foulness. But private enterprise developers have not offered to develop Cublington. They have offered to invest heavily in an air-sea-port-MIDA at Foulness. They have done this just because they see this three dimensional land-sea-air transport interface at the epicentre of a 400-mile radius circle from Berlin to Lyons to Glasgow. They see this as something which can offer great benefits to the country and profits to the developers. The need for an oil-ore port is already attested by participation in TEDCO of Rio Tinto Zinc who want an ore port, and Shell who want to bring in oil.
Taking the figures generally, crude oil now coming into the Thames is of the order of 25 million tons a year, and the experts expect this to go up to somewhere towards 100 million tons by the end of the century. If the economies of scale made possible by very large crude carriers cannot be enjoyed, then we shall all suffer an oncost through the extra price of fuel through that limitation.
"Imagination may be but a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding."
But this project is fathered by private enterprise inspired with the same sort of imagination as generated a Rotterdam which provides one-half of all the Netherlands' annual economic growth. Private enterprise sees benefits from the rising value of land put to industrial use. Roskill says that is unfair unless foreign industry is brought in. But that is what is expected, and certainly what is hoped for. As for considering rising land values as being some sort of black subject that should not be considered, it is the very anticipation of rising land values which is at the basis of all our New Towns investment.
Time is short, as the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, has made clear. Certainly it is too late for another investigation. But I want to ask Her Majesty's Government seriously this question—and I hope that perhaps tomorrow we may get an assurance about it. Having heard what Parliament has to say, and having made up their mind, will the Government come back to Parliament with their ideas
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so that we can have a chance of again debating them? Of course, if the decision is for Cublington, then Her Majesty's Government must by legislation come back to us. But supposing they decide to sanction extra runways and misery at Gatwick or Stansted or extra use of Heathrow, or all three together, or, indeed, suppose they decide to do nothing: whatever they do I for one hope that they will come back to Parliament and that we shall have a chance to express our views, not only by voice but if necessary by vote, as to what they decide. That is the assurance I ask for tomorrow.
In conclusion, Foulness offers flexibility. Reclamation unwanted for a four-runway instead of a two-runway airport could very well he put to industrial development. The Government will be judged on this, not only on their attitude to environment, but on whether they seize—or whether they duck—one of the greatest social, planning, regional development growth opportunities of our lives, in which private enterprise prays only to be allowed to take a large share of the capital risks. It does so with an imaginative grasp of the new geography of modern Europe and of the incredible benefits which nature has showered on this Island set, as it is, in the mouth of the Rhine. It may be true that "the form of Government can never be a matter of choice, that it is almost always a necessity." But, as President Hoover once said,
"The art of government in a democracy is the art of yielding to pressures."
7.35 p.m.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, if I should inadvertently refer in the course of my speech to the "Lauderdale Report", I hope I may have your sympathetic understanding. I am left with somewhat of a feeling that my noble friend has covered almost as much of the ground as is covered by the Commission and I hope he will forgive me if I do not follow him in his quick jumpings from Rio Tinto to Marcus Aurelius and back again. I intend to begin with a question directed to the Government. I hope it will be answered, because it is of some importance. It is this: why were the Roskill Commission told, when they were set up, to consider an airport of four runways? Why four? Why not say two

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airports of two runways each? What thinking, what inquiry, what research, what form of decision led them to decree that only a project of this gigantic size was to be considered and no other? I do not know the answer, but I think it would be of interest to a great many people.
I ask another question, one to which I can provide some sort of answer myself. If the airport that we are discussing is the third London airport, where then is the second? That question also is of some importance, for one may suppose that the three would form an integrated group under a co-ordinated plan. As we have been told often enough to-day, there is no such plan. Moreover, there are already three London airports sufficiently so named: London Heathrow, London Gatwick, London Stansted. There is no doubt that London Heathrow is the first. That leaves either Stansted or Gatwick as the second, and both are slowly growing without any decided plan for their future or any regional inquiry of any kind.
The one with which I concern myself is Gatwick, which affects the county in which I live and which, by implication, is in fact the second London airport: by implication only; by inference, if you like—it is not so stated, but by inference from the many references that are made to it in the Roskill Report. What then is the function of Gatwick? I know of no official pronouncement on this matter since the public inquiry in 1954 to hear local objections to the development of Gatwick. The inspector's report then stated the purposes for which the Ministry of Civil Aviation intended to use that airport, as follows:
"… to serve as the main alternative airport for diversions from Heathrow and as a base for charter flying and to take over from Heathrow and Northolt certain short-haul services of a largely seasonal character."
I take that from paragraph 1.7 of Roskill. That was 16 years ago, and, so far as I know, the intention remains unchanged.
Another, and again local, inquiry has just finished hearing objections to a proposal to extend the existing runway there to 5,000 yards. With this extra length transatlantic aircraft will be able to carry enough fuel to fly on the extra 750 miles
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to Chicago, without landing for refuelling at New York. Does that sound like charter flying, or
"certain short-haul services of a largely seasonal character"?
Hardly. Much the same sort of thing goes on at Stansted. Nobody knows where it is all supposed to lead to, so long-term environmental planning becomes impossible.
If this sort of proceeding is still thought sensible, perhaps we should extend that principle to the new airport. Perhaps we should put down, say, a couple of runways at Cublington, and a runway-and-a-half at Foulness, and see what happens. That, at least, may make the despair of the planners of Milton Keynes something less than total. Doubtless such a scheme would be criticised as verging on the slapdash, and so it would be. But that is what is happening at Gatwick. I do not know whether the runway will be extended or not, but I understand that the master plan of the British Airports Authority calls for a whole second runway bringing that airport to more than twice its present size.
Do your Lordships know, or are you sure, what that means in terms of housing and of people? The county planning officers of West Sussex, East Sussex and Surrey have estimated that it could mean a new town of as many as 165,000 people in 30 years. Once you had a town and you built an aerodrome alongside to serve it. Now you plan a four-runway airport and alongside it you have to build a town the size of Bristol. But at least that is planned, and you know what you are going to get. At Gatwick nothing is planned, and nobody knows how it is all going to end. Only one thing is clear to the people living there and to the authorities who are responsible for future planming—I think my noble friend Lord Reigate will confirm me in this—and that is that the longer it takes to build a new airport, the more certain it is that more traffic will be squeezed into Gatwick, and the more—piece by piece, and unplanned—it will grow. It would surely not be unreasonable for the Gatwick people to ask what sort of traffic increase they may expect in the interval before the first runway at the new airport is ready for operation. To be specific, they might ask, and I now ask: what is the forecast for the air traffic movements at

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Gatwick in 1975, which is not very far ahead? I ask the Government this question in the hope that they may be able to improve on the wild estimates that it is possible to extract from Roskill—estimates that must be attempted, even though the Commission are able to say, as they do in paragraph 4 of Appendix 5:
"We were told that Gatwick's capacity was already and was likely to remain limited by its proximity to Heathrow."
In paragraph 5.24 there is given a range of estimates for the 1975 movements at Heathrow sand Gatwick combined. In paragraph 5.27 the Commission give their research team's estimates for Heathrow alone. Subtract one from the other and presumably the estimate for Gatwick alone is what you get. And what you get is its lowest estimate, of 45,000 movements, and the highest estimate, of 138,000. The highest estimate is no less than three times the size of the lowest. If that is the best that experts can do in forecasting for only four years ahead, how would you like to be a county planning officer in those parts? In 1964, the B.A.A. forecast that Gatwick, even with two runways, would reach the limit of its capacity somewhere between 1977 and 1981. Does that estimate still stand? The Roskill Commission reject it, referring to,
"our clear conclusion that the forecasts of traffic and of airport capacity show that a third London airport can be provided at any one of the four sites before present airport capacity in the London area is exhausted."
So we have Roskill believing that Gatwick can hold out with one runway, and B.A.A. believing that it can barely be done even with two. What kind of a dream world are we trying to live in and operate in? To put an end to all this uncertainty—and it was partly for this purpose that the Roskill Commission were appointed—may this new airport, wherever it is to go, please be proceeded with with the utmost despatch? It surely would be wickedly wrong if Gatwick—and, similarly, Stansted and other places—were to be forced to expand unnecessarily simply through delay in setting up the great new installation that was intended for their relief.
My Lords, may I say a brief word of a more general kind on the Report? I agree wholeheartedly, and at once, with
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all those people who have said that it is a tour de force. It is indeed a great achievement. I believe also that the Commission, once they had begun their work, showed remarkable fairness and openness of mind in hearing and balancing the conflicting views brought before them. I say "once they had begun their work" because I confess to being a little disturbed by a couple of things that the Report reveals concerning the Commission's approach to that work. When the terms of reference of the Commission were announced in your Lordships' House the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, asked this question:
"… will the Commission be entitled, if they so wish, to recommend a site which is not either in Essex or Kent, or anywhere particularly near London … if the Commission thought that it might be more desirable to have the airport further away from London—for example, on Severnside—would they be entitled so to recommend?"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20/5/68, col. 484.]
To this the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, for the Government, replied (col. 484):
"As for the scope of their Inquiry, it is not limited geographically, and if, in the light of technical evidence before them, the Commission thought that the airport ought to go outside the immediate London area, there is no reason why they should not make a recommendation in that sense."
In the light of that exchange, and remembering also that there is no mention of a London Airport in the actual terms of reference, it seems to me odd that the Commission began by excluding the possibility of any such technical evidence ever being offered to them at all. For their first step in drawing up a list of possibilities was to decide to look no further than 80 miles from the centre of London. I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, was surprised on reading that.
In the opening paragraphs of the Commission's recommendation in Chapter 13, the Report speaks both justly and eloquently of the importance and difficulty of striking a nice balance between economic and environmental factors. But in the middle there appear the two sentences that have already been quoted by my noble friend Lord Molson. I will not repeat the first, but the second sentence says:
"We see no reason why the pursuit of leisure should not allow a flight to Rome to see the Sistine Chapel but should permit a

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car journey to Audley End or Waddesdon Manor."
No more do I. And I am sure that the more stately of my noble friends who throw their premises open to the public will see no reason why, on those occasions, I should not walk round them, as a member of the public, for my pleasure. But I think they would see a reason if I were to do so while discharging fireworks and banging on a drum.
My noble friend Lord Molson described this passage in the Report as "misleading, inaccurate, and silly". My comment is that I think the Commission have been guilty of a piece of special pleading here. The argument is not about whether we should be allowed to fly but about whether, in so doing, we should be allowed to make ourselves obnoxious to the people on the ground. Noble Lords may think that I am making a bit too much of this. It may be that it was only an inadvertence on the part of the writer of this passage in the Report. If so, I would refer such noble Lords to page 35 of the Report. Here it says:
"… there are those who argue that there might be no need to attempt to meet the growing demand for airport capacity."
That argument was based—
"… partly upon the supposition that where-ever the airport went the price to be paid in terms of environmental damage would exceed the advantages of meeting the demand."
Now this is what the Report says in reply to that:
"… we are of the clear view that there is no social or economic reason why those who are willing to pay the price of air travel should be arbitrarily denied the opportunity of so doing."
Well, well! Is there then no social reason why, if I can afford a motor bicycle, I should not be allowed to ride it roaring up and down the Bishops' Corridor? My Lords, the whole of our Common Law is based on the broad proposition that the individual may do more or less as he pleases so long as he does not bother his neighbours. And now comes Roskill with a proposed exception to that basic law in the person of the traveller by air—provided he can afford the fare. Of course, there is no reason why he should not be allowed to fly, but there is every reason why he should not be allowed to do so to the annoyance and discomfort of hundreds of thousands of people on the ground.
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I suspect, though most certainly without imputing any such conscious intention, that the majority of the Commission were in fact mentally preconditioned to lend rather more weight, as the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, has already suggested, to economic factors than to environmental factors. Why otherwise should they find it possible to quantify noise and accessibility in terms of money but not the social and employment magnetism, for example, of an airport? I question whether the latter assessment, which is by far the more objective of the two, is not less of an imponderable than the other, rather than more. If you can work out some totally notional way of estimating in terms of cash the value of sitting for an extra quarter of an hour in a train, can you not also evaluate some of the more important environmental changes caused by the mere proximity of an airport? I am still persuaded that this Report is a great work, but I am less able to persuade myself that the arguments that have been assembled lead to the conclusion which has been reached by the majority. I therefore declare myself a follower of Professor Buchanan, and I am pretty certain that there are quite a large number who will agree with me in that.
If I may go back to the beginning of the debate, I should like to refer to something said by my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal. I think he spoke of the Government's intention to pay close regard to what was said in both Houses of Parliament, and not to decide until they had first done that. But I do not think I am likely to be wrong if I say that I do not think the Government will ever decide what shall he done, if your Lordships do not like it. There is no question—this is the advice that I have and your Lordships will probably agree with me—or very nearly no question, of the Government's ever deciding to put an airport at Cublington without your Lordships' approval. Whatever steps may be taken—whether Affirmative Resolution, Negative Resolution procedure or Private Bill—your Lordships' approval is required and I think it just as well that we remember that, and remind the Government of it, during the course of this debate. I not only declare myself a follower of Professor Buchanan. I also avow that I hope with all my heart that neither Cublington nor any other

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inland site will ever be subjected to the screaming nightmare promised by this Report.
7.52 p.m.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: My Lords, it is extraordinary how agreeably these long debates pass when you find that you agree with all the speakers. I do not suppose any Report which came to an evidently wrong conclusion has been so severely torn apart before, or for so long a time, and I hope it goes on to-morrow as successfully as it has to-day. Some of the speeches were a bit moderate for me; a hit judicial. This does not seem to me to be a case which requires a very judicial approach. When you hear the opening speech of the noble Lord, Lord Molson, followed by what I thought was the admirable maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Dowding, you have a case which is absolutely unanswerable; and why you want 18 volumes of evidence as well I really do not understand.
I shall not go through any of those arguments again. They are absolutely unanswerable, and I believe we all think that. I believe that even the Ministers, who in the end have to make a judicial decision, all agree with Buchanan. It is very common to get up and say that one will not go through all the arguments again, but I really am not going to repeat them. I want only to draw your Lordships' attention to one aspect; that is, the comments made on Roskill by the South-East Planning Council, of which I am a member. Here I propose to risk rather uncertain prosecution under the Official Secrets Act by telling your Lordships what happened at the meeting where those comments were decided upon. It was rather dramatic. Our distinguished chairman, Sir Maurice Hackett, said,
"This is a draft. Before we go into details, is there anybody who thinks we have gone too far?".
There was dead silence. He then asked:
"Is there anybody who thinks we ought to moderate any part of what we have said?".
Again, there was dead silence. Finally he asked:
"Is there anybody who agrees with anything that Roskill said?".
There was dead silence again.
I have the greatest respect for the work that was done by the Commission and for
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the people who did it. What they had to do was very difficult, and all the work, until they came to their conclusion, was thoroughly good. But the conclusion was wrong, although it was possible from those premises to draw the right conclusion. We had 40 men round our Council table and they were a really distinguished group. We had two chairmen of New Town development corporations, two county council chairmen, one county council clerk, six professors of town planning, social administration, economics and a couple of other subjects of the same kind, and eight distinguished and prominent people from local government. All those people had some connection with, and knowledge of, planning, and it is interesting that all 40 of them agreed with the most distinguished planner on the Roskill Commission, Professor Buchanan. There were only two people on the Commission who were distinguished in planning. So, before I sit down, which I am going to do almost at once, it is worth making the point that if you get a group of people who really know what they are talking about, it is not only possible but almost inevitable that they will follow Buchanan rather than the Majority Report. That will add a little weight to our discussions.
I have said that I do not feel in the least moderate about this subject, but I wish to declare that I have no interest in this issue. I used to live in the Cublington area but I do not any more—I wish I did. I used to worship at Wing Church, which is the oldest Saxon church in England; I used to go a lot to Stewkley, which probably has the most perfect small Norman church in the country, and I am absolutely appalled that anybody could come to the conclusion that has been arrived at by the Commission, particularly after having so much evidence. I think that the Commission must have been punch drunk; that is the only possible way of explaining their decision. I thought it was time somebody spoke rather immoderately, and I hope I have done so, because I certainly feel that way.
I came into your Lordships' House three days before the Stansted debate. I begged my Leader to let me make my maiden speech in it, but he said, "You really cannot." But I felt just as strongly over Stansted as I feel over this, and I

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am glad to say that the South-East Planning Council has stated unequivocally that, in their view, any inland site is highly objectionable. Over Stansted my right honourable friend Anthony Crosland had the courage to reverse the decision and get us off the hook. I hope very much that in this case the Minister in the Government will be as brave.
7.58 p.m.
LORD GREENWAY: My Lords, at this late hour, on the first day of this long and very important debate, I shall not detain your Lordships for more than a very few minutes. I should like to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Dowding, on an excellent maiden speech. If he was dreaming last summer in Kew Gardens, I was dreaming in the Norman church of Stewkley only last Wednesday. I put my name down to speak in this debate because I was the only Member of your Lordships' House to visit the Cublington area on a Parliamentary visit last week, and as such my speech to-night will mainly concern the choice of Cublington as the site chosen by the Commission.
In the course of the day we traversed the whole area and gained valuable knowledge and insight of what a tragedy it would be to the environment if this destruction took place. The villages visited, which are on the perimeter of the proposed airfield, included Stoke Hammond, Drayton Parslow, Stewkley, Wing, Soulbury, Cublington, Whit-church, Oving, Weedon, and Aston Abbots, before we finished our tour at Aylesbury. Moving north from Leighton Buzzard, on the eastern perimeter of the proposed area there is the area known as Brickhills. There one is struck by the very undulating nature of the ground, and one wonders whether the Commission ever visited it in daylight. These are not little mounds, my Lords, but big hills which would involve the moving of many millions of tons of soil before any construction at all could take place. Stoke Hammond and Soulbury are on the North-Eastern extremity of the proposed site and are well within the 55 N.N.I. contour line (the highest possible for noise) this being the area of take-off and landing. At the South-Western end the villages of Oving, Whit-
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church, Weedon, Hoggeston and Dunton are equally affected.
We then passed through Drayton Pars-low, on the Northern perimeter, inside the 35–55 N.N.I. contour belt. The land here flattens out towards the Western area, and here lie large arable fields of, I was told, second-grade land, but very well farmed—in parachuting language, my Lords, a perfect dropping zone for many fully equipped divisions. But I can assure your Lordships that these divisions would not cause anything like the amount of damage or devastation that is going to be caused by the bulldozing of this area—and this would be for all time.
Turning South into the airport itself, we approached the proposed site for terminal buildings, together with all the lead roads, under-passes and flyovers that a modern airport requires; and here we stopped at Stewkley, which the Commission propose completely to annihilate for this purpose, together with the village of Cublington. I should like here, my Lords, to give you my thoughts as I looked over that magnificent Norman church last Wednesday, whose Norman arches inside could well be valued at £2 million each. Before entering the church I looked up at the tower from inside a house opposite, just across the road; and I thought to myself, "I could well be here in 15 years' time looking up at an indicator board telling me,' We regret to announce a delay in the departure of flight so-and-so owing to a technical fault or other operational delays'." No, my Lords; this just must not happen. That church is the diamond in the crown of the Vale of Aylesbury and its environments; and the Saxon church of Wing and the other historic churches are the rubies and the emeralds in that crown which are part of England's heritage. Has technology the right to bulldoze away hundreds of years of history, and replace it with a concrete jungle that could well be a white elephant in 20 years?
I should like now to refer to the community itself. This is not an emotional plea. The destruction of this area would be the destruction of a civilisation. The Cublington area is a most stable community. Disruption at Foulness would be far less. The Cublington area is very closely knit environment-wise. The

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Roskill Commission have put the air traveller and the air operator first, whereas the needs of the community and the nation fall second. The whole concept has been dominated by the mammoth cost/benefit analysis which cannot make evalutions of environmental considerations, and this is where the deficiency lies. No, my Lords; the Third London Airport must not be at Cublington. If there is to be one at all, Professor Buchanan was right to opt out for Foulness. My Lords, Cublington must not die. The whole crux of the matter is that there must be a national airport policy before work on any of these sites is allowed to start, and I hope that Her Majesty's Government will give this matter very serious thought before any action is taken.
8.4 p.m.
LORD WOLVERTON: My Lords, I rise to support the Motion of my noble friend Lord Molson on the Report of the Roskill Commission on the Third London Airport. I am sure the whole House is most grateful to Mr. Justice Roskill and to his Commission for all the work they carried out for the nation on this vital matter—probably the most important planning decision this House and another place will have to take in this century. I should also like to thank my noble friend Lord Molson for giving us an opportunity to discuss this matter, and for the admirable speech which he delivered to this House this afternoon. I may say that I have no interest to declare in the matter under discussion.
I would say at the outset of my speech that after giving the matter very careful thought, and having read a vast amount of literature on this important subject, I have come down entirely on the side of the Minority Report of Professor Buchanan; that it would be nothing less than an environment disaster if the airport were to be built at any of the inland sites. If it is to be built at all—and the Roskill Commission think it ought to be built as early as possible—I should like it to be at Foulness. I have tried to study the financial implications of this great problem, and I must say that I am very worried about them. The whole financial future of a third London Airport is based on future projections which so often in the past have proved to be wrong. I
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should like, without boring your Lordships too much, to quote a few figures of the proposed capital costs of Cublington and Foulness, and to compare them with the capital costs of London Airport, owned by the British Airports Authority.
On page 244 of the Roskill Commission Report, Table 1A, the total construction cost, estimated at to-day's prices, for a four-runway airport and the building of roads and rail communications is given as the vast sum of £536 million, and that at Foulness as £564 million—a difference, on this enormous capital cost, of only 5·6 per cent. That difference is very small. If one takes the interest and sinking fund at Foulness on a capital cost of £560 million, it works out at 8 per cent. interest (and I have taken the 8 per cent. interest; to-day's bank rate is 7 per cent., plus 1 per cent., making 8 per cent.) and a 2 per cent, sinking fund, at compound interest over a 21-year period. That means that this project would require interest of £56 million per annum. If only half an airport, two runways, were to be built, it would probably be about half that amount, about £28 million per annum. The British Airports Authority made a gross profit in the year 1969–70 of £5,615,873 and a net profit, after tax had been paid, of £3,160,855 on this total, as can be found on page 28 of the Report of the Authority.
I am sorry to have quoted so many figures, but I ask Her Majesty's Government, who have great experience of these matters whether it will ever be possible to earn an economic return on the proposed new London airport at the present enormous capital cost that I have quoted, or will it have to be subsidised from State funds in the future? I should like to know, if it is possible to know, how it is proposed to finance this airport, because, studying the accounts of the British Airports Authority further, one finds that they have borrowed, I think, £55 million from the Board of Trade and they are nearly up to their limit of borrowing. They would have to come back to Parliament, they say, for a very large increase to meet this enormous expenditure in the future. I am not against a third London airport if it is absolutely necessary, but, with the figures I have quoted to the House to-night, I cannot see that,

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except by putting up the landing fees a great deal, it will be possible to forecast an economic return on the enormous expenditure which will be incurred if the building of this airport is carried out. But if it is carried out at all, I feel that it should go to Foulness, where its construction will not involve the taking of any beautiful agricultural land or the pulling down of any buildings at all.
8.10 p.m.
LORD COTTESLOE: My Lords, this is a subject of deep concern to many Members of your Lordships' House. That is evident from the remarkably long list of speakers to-day and to-morrow—the longest list that I can recall on any single subject. I shall be very brief. It is indeed a matter of deep concern to everyone who values and loves this island that we have inherited from the past and who cares for its future. The area of Cublington is an area that I know well and have known from childhood: the Vale of Aylesbury and the Chiltern escarpment, an area still marvellously rural and peaceful in spite of its nearness to London. That, if the airport at Cublington is developed, will be profoundly changed. The peace and quiet will be shattered over a wide tract of country, some 300 or 400 square miles; ancient villages will be wiped out of existence and their people dispossessed of their homes, ancient and beautiful churches will be destroyed. I find it difficult to speak of this without deep emotion. But I believe that even those most affected would accept it all if they were convinced that in the national interest it was necessary.
That seems to me to be the question to which we must address ourselves: Is it necessary? We must all admire the patient and dispassionate care with which Mr. Justice Roskill and his colleagues have devoted themselves over a long period of time to their task. We can do so warmly and sincerely, without agreeing with their judgment or accepting their conclusions. Many of your Lordships will agree with me when I say that, on the most general grounds, in a small island, grossly over-populated, it must be lunacy to develop a major international airport on a well-populated inland site if a suitable alternative coastal site on new land reclaimed from the sea is available.
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Professor Colin Buchanan, in his Note of Dissent, makes a case on general planning grounds (grounds on which of all the members of the Commission he alone is pre-eminently qualified to speak), a case that is so strong as to be irrefutable. I find his argument, resting on a dispassionate assessment of environmental and economic values, put forward with conspicuous humility and regard for his colleagues with whom he cannot agree, a moving document. He alone has been able to see the wood, as it seems to me, while his colleagues are irretrievably lost among the trees of that jungle of calculations and statistics, many of them highly speculative, into which their researches have plunged them.
When we examine the Report in detail there appear to be a number of conclusions arrived at by the Commission's research team in their assessment that do not carry conviction. There are many; but I will confine myself to three of them.
In the first place, capital cost. As a result of the Press statement issued by the Commission before Christmas, it is commonly supposed that the costs of providing an airport at Foulness would be £100 million more than for Cublington. The calculations are complex and difficult to follow; but an analysis of the figure shows that the construction and running costs of Foulness would, in fact, probably be marginally less (perhaps substantially less) than for Cublington. Secondly, noise. The Commission, in my view, greatly under-estimate the damage inflicted on a community by noise; but they are clear that the "noise umbrella" at Cublington would cover 300 to 400 square square miles as against 90 square miles over the land at Foulness. If they had taken—as in my view they should have done—the more northerly site at Foulness, the site known as Foulness B II, the disparity would be far greater.
Thirdly, time. The saving in travelling time to the centre of London from Cublington as compared with Foulness is stated to be five minutes. In their computation of passenger user costs, if I understand it correctly, the Commission aggregate the five minutes for the many millions of travellers involved over a quarter of a century and evaluate the total. This produces an enormous figure of cost that is totally unrealistic. It does

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not really mean anything at all. It is cost analysis gone mad. For 90 per cent., possibly for 99 per cent., of travellers to arrive five minutes earlier at the end of a very long journey is of no significant value in terms of money at all.
I will not continue the detailed analysis; it is getting late. But, in sum, the effect is that Foulness is no dearer than Cublington, probably cheaper, while the damage to the community and environment, it appears, is incomparably greater—in my view so great as to be quite unacceptable. Apart from the general lunacy—I can call it nothing less—of developing a great international airport inland when a coastal site no less convenient and no more expensive is available, what could be more lunatic than to put it down alongside the New Town of Milton Keynes—a New Town of a quarter of a million inhabitants, a New Town most carefully planned with regard for amenity and environment?
In one of their earlier documents the Commission provided a map showing what they call "the area of intolerable noise" created by an airport at Cublington and showing also the extent of the New Town; and they remark, perhaps rather innocently, that the area of intolerable noise does not encroach upon the New Town. It is true that it does not encroach: the boundary lines do not overlap; but they run together. What, in effect, is being said is that on the Benches opposite your Lordships may be in an area of intolerable noise while we
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on this side are not. It is totally unrealistic. Of course, the damage to the New Town, which was carefully laid out to provide the best possible amenities, must invariably be immense.
After studying the Report and a great mass of other papers, it is my belief that an airport at Foulness on the site known as Foulness B II, would be wholly viable, no more costly and infinitely less damaging to the community than an airport on any other of the sites considered. My original question was: is Cublington necessary? It appears that it is not necessary at all; that there is a very much better alternative. I hope profoundly that the Government will decide that they cannot accept the majority views of the Roskill Commission to develop the new international airport at Cublington and that they will give us an assurance at the end of this debate that at least they will not do so without first submitting the question to a free rote in Parliament.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, I beg to move that this debate be now adjourned until to-morrow.
Moved accordingly and, on Question Motion agreed to.

ADMINISTRATION OF ESTATES BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.