Chancellor Rachel Reeves has controversially announced UK Government support for a third runway at London Heathrow airport. The reaction to this has been mixed, with voices loudly raised both for and against it.
One person in favour is the ex-Conservative Senedd group leader and current MS for South Wales Central, Andrew RT Davies. He posted on X that a third runway represents the biggest investment into Wales in decades. As is so often the case, he’s off the mark by an international distance.
London is not in Wales
There’s just one tiny issue with his statement. Heathrow is in London and London is not in Wales. It’s in England, and that’s part of the problem. We have a member of the Senedd of Wales praising investment in England, rather than asking why there’s no investment in Wales – especially in aviation, and in Wales’ own national airport in Cardiff.
There’s no doubting that if – and it’s a big if – the runway gets built, Welsh companies may well be involved. Not just in the runway’s construction but also the building of a new terminal, and the work that’ll be required on the M25 (as the plan is to build the new runway over it). Welsh people in the construction industry will leave Wales to work in England, leading to a skills drain in that sector, potentially for at least a decade.
Whatever happens, this simply isn’t direct investment in Wales by any measure, any more than HS2 is. Wales should be demanding more, not just hoping for a few crumbs from the English infrastructure table. Let alone praising them.
Ongoing extraction from Wales
If the third runway gets built, which isn’t guaranteed, it may not be as beneficial to Wales as Andrew RT Davies seems to believe. A new runway will create a lot of new slots that airlines will literally fight over. Slot pairs at Heathrow can cost tens of millions of pounds. That may mean airlines won’t launch routes into Wales itself, especially long-haul routes, at its national airport.
Instead they’d look to airports like Bristol and Manchester, which serve Wales indirectly and are much closer to it than Heathrow. Cardiff Airport struggles to attract airlines at present, and many passengers from its catchment area already leave to use other airports. Bristol sees the most Welsh passengers, with 1.96mn in 2023. An expanded Heathrow isn’t going to help stem that exodus, and in fact is likely to make it bigger.
This is partly caused by the austerity that’s been making people in Wales poorer since 2010. People with less disposable income and hit by austerity don’t have the money, or have less of it, for holidays or visits to family and friends. They will not travel at all, travel less, or look for cheaper options to travel. They’re more likely to head to airports in England including Heathrow, rather than using Wales’ national airport. This leads to less money being spent in the Welsh economy, contributing further to the circular and compounding impacts of austerity.
Aggravating austerity
The third runway may also affect Cardiff Airport’s aspirations for expanding its cargo operations. More slots mean the possibility of more cargo-only flights as well, leading to more freight going down the M4 to be imported and exported via Heathrow.
Whether it’s passengers or freight, this is all money going out of the Welsh economy. Passengers will spend money in terminals, hotels, and on car parking. Freight will attract handling charges and sometimes be carried by local logistics companies, which would all contribute to Wales.
Davies’ support for Heathrow’s third runway is just part of an obsession with trickle-down economics that not only hasn’t benefited Wales, but has helped to aggravate austerity here. It’s part of a stance that Wales can only thrive if it’s deeply connected with England, to the point of essentially being an English region – as is also evident in his obsession with the M4 relief road.
As an opposition MS, you’d have thought Davies would ask questions about why Wales hasn’t seen any investment itself, why Air Passenger Duty hasn’t been devolved, or what the UK Government plans for aviation in Wales are.
Instead he focuses on yet more money being spent in South East England and pretending some may trickle down to Wales. Wales can do better than that. It deserves better. And it deserves leaders who don’t stand with their mouths open, waiting for drops to fall from spending in England. A third runway would be no more than mist on Welsh windows. Calling investment in England a benefit for Wales is yet more austerity for Wales, but by stealth.
