STEPHEN GLOVER: China built an airport in five years. How bleak it is that Britain could wait 100 for one runway at Heathrow

Why is this country so utterly hopeless at carrying off large new projects within a reasonable timescale?

Over the weekend we learnt that Heathrow Airport’s third runway will be delayed another four years. It is now supposed finally to be in service in 2039.

That will be almost a hundred years since the project was first discussed. In 1946 the airport’s original development plan envisaged six runways, followed by a further three.

My fear is that even the new 2039 deadline won’t be met. The scheme faces formidable opposition from local groups, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, the Greens, and the Climate Change Committee, to name but a few. Lawyers are queuing up to throw spanners in the works.

What is interesting is the way the news emerged. You might suppose it was the Government that made the decision, but no. It was in fact the people running the airport (which is owned by a consortium of international investors) who informed ministers that a third runway is going to take longer.

Cowering

Last year Rachel Reeves of unblessed memory told us the third runway would be completed by 2035, which is not exactly speedy. Now her announcement is being countermanded by the panjandrums of Heathrow

Airport. Nothing could better illustrate the impotence of the Government.

In China it took less than five years to build the massive Beijing Daxing International Airport. That is only a few more months than the latest – but I’m sure not the last – period of postponement for limited though crucial improvements at Britain’s largest and very congested airport.

In China it took less than five years to build the massive Beijing Daxing International Airport

Stephen Glover says his fear is that even the new 2039 deadline won’t be met as the scheme faces formidable opposition from local groups

Our ministers no longer oversee huge infrastructure projects. They have ceded power to private companies and legions of consultants who lavish billions of public money with little accountability, and usually end up spending two or three times as much as was originally envisaged.

Successive governments have also created a multitude of costly quangos that answer to no one but themselves while making arbitrary decisions which often lead to the squandering of taxpayers’ money.

In the case of Heathrow, the Climate Change Committee has just ruled that a third runway is not ‘currently compatible’ with reaching net zero by 2050. The country’s economic wellbeing must be sacrificed to an abstract principle.

It doesn’t matter to the obscure figures who make up the Climate Change Committee that Britain accounts for less than one per cent of global greenhouse emissions while China – which has built more than 120 major airports in the past 20 years – is responsible for about 35 times as many emissions.

Cowering on the sidelines, Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander maintains that another runway at Heathrow would be compatible with net zero, but she is unlikely to have the last word. The Climate Change Committee and the Greens are calling the tune.

Will a third runway ever be built? I wouldn’t bet on it. Heathrow, which handles more than 25 per cent of all UK trade by value, will continue to be constrained, and the economy will suffer. At the very least, expansion is going to take an inordinately long time.

The Labour Government could cut through the red tape if it so wished. It could amend the net zero legislation that empowers the Climate Change Committee, and it could put a rocket under the Heathrow management and the airport’s owners. It doesn’t have to be a mere spectator on events.

But we all know that the chances of it seizing control are slender, not least because Andy Burnham is believed to be sceptical about a third runway. His mind is habitually orientated towards the North. Yet the expansion of Heathrow is in the interests of the entire country.

There’s another example of dysfunctional planning on an epic scale in my home town of Oxford. The Government has again looked on hopelessly while budgets have been bust and timetables ignored.

In April 2023 Network Rail began work involving the rebuilding of a bridge and – supposedly – a new platform for Oxford station. It entailed the closure of a major arterial road, and was meant to take between 12 and 18 months.

The road finally opened eight days ago. The cost had been put at £161million but the bill (which will be paid by the taxpayer since Network Rail is a public body) has already reached £237million.

Andy Burnham's mind is habitually orientated towards the North. Yet the expansion of Heathrow is in the interests of the entire country

The planned station platform hasn’t been started and may never be. The new bridge won’t accommodate the tallest lorries. Meanwhile local shopkeepers have lost business (one estimate is £50million) and many inhabitants have been inconvenienced.

This is a major scandal. Yet no one at Network Rail has been sacked and the Government has as usual watched ineffectually. There were a few warm words from Lord Hendy, Minister of State for Rail, when he visited Oxford last year, but nothing was done.

Stupidity

One reason may be that Lord Hendy was himself Chairman of Network Rail for nine years until his appointment as a minister in July 2024. He was put in charge of the very organisation that has overspent so much and taken so long. Don’t expect a forensic public inquiry.

Profligacy is of course endemic in all government infrastructure projects, and nowhere more so than with High Speed 2, that extravagant and ill-fated piece of folly.

In 2009 HS2 was costed at £37.5billion. Latest estimates for a much-truncated scheme that ends in Birmingham are around £100billion. Have any senior executives been sacked for financial mismanagement? You can guess the answer.

Probably the most egregious example of wasting public money combined with sheer stupidity is the construction of a ‘bat tunnel’ in Buckinghamshire at a cost of £100million. Natural England, another quango, advised on the scheme, though later disavowed responsibility.

Throughout this incredible process Tory and now Labour ministers have looked on lamely as overpaid executives mentored by an unaccountable quango merrily throw away public money in the cause of a few bats. As vivid an example of decadence as you are likely to find.

Impotent

Even when public projects are pursued more sanely, money is squandered. A recent report that analysed 345 transport projects in 21 countries concluded that new road and railway schemes cost on average 65 per cent more in Britain than equivalent ones in countries such as France, Germany and Italy.

The report by the think-tanks Britain Remade and the Centre for British Progress calculated that ministers could have saved £42billion over five years if the UK had managed to deliver projects as efficiently as comparable countries.

Governments have become impotent and detached observers. They cheerfully pick up the tab on our behalf while declining to supervise large projects, and trying to escape responsibility for failure.

Of course the third runway at Heathrow should go ahead – and much sooner than 2039. It’s possible to sympathise with local objectors, and even with environmental concerns, and yet to accept that expansion at our most important airport is vital for our prosperity.

But unless we get a government that is brave enough to confront these problems, and to manage their outcome, our future as a country will be bleak.