Written evidence from Elizabeth M. Balsom (AS 01) Heathrow Airport I have just watched your video on the Parliamentary website, and am writing to you as Chairwoman of the Transport Select Committee because more flights to Heathrow are back on the political agenda. Noisy, well-remunerated advocates suggest that an additional 60,000 flights a year could access this ill-sited airport via mixed-mode, despite the cataclysmic effect this would have on the lives of those of us under the flight path. I am writing to you in the hope of bringing home to decision makers just what it is like to live with unrelenting aircraft noise. I feel I am paying for the mistake I made in coming here 31 years ago, when planes were not the disturbance they are now. I would leave, but I have made a life here, and I have nowhere to go. I take the strongest exception to those expansionists whose attitude to me is: Tough put up and shut up. 1.Committee Membership It is disappointing and regrettable, indeed it is shameful, given the destructive impact of aircraft noise, that Parliament’s committee on this subject has no members whose constituents’ lives are blighted by aircraft noise. Please can you explain why this is? No doubt you know that people in Putney are troubled and confused at the treatment of Justine Greening, a decent, hard-working MP who is widely liked and respected, and whose efforts to protect us from the hell of yet more aircraft noise are valued by us, yet seem destined to be ignored. I have found media reports of briefings against her distressing. Furthermore, the “money talks” modus operandi and mentality which now permeates every pore of our society is alarming and depressing, breeding cynicism and distrust in the political process and public life. I well remember that during the Labour government’s consultation on the third runway, week after week on the Westminster House, Tom Harris, a member of your committee, would appear to proclaim that a third runway was essential for his Glasgow constituents. Why should a Scottish MP tell people under the Heathrow flight path that we must put up with even more aircraft noise for his constituents? If he’s so potty about planes, what’s wrong with Prestwick? Friends who lived opposite me moved to Sunbury in Spelthorne constituency five years ago, partly to be nearer their daughter, but principally because they could no longer bear aircraft noise in Putney. Because of the flight patterns, Spelthorne, although near the airport, does not suffer as we do, as committee member Kwasi Kwarteng, a vocal promoter of expansion, is surely aware. I was shocked by his comments in the Evening Standard, July 9, and am grateful to the Standard for allowing me the opportunity to respond. I noted Mr Kwarteng’s comments that people should be paid £500,000 to get out of their homes, so a third, fourth and heaven knows how many runways could be built at Heathrow. This sort of attitude is beyond the pale. Perhaps Mr Kwarteng can come up with a figure for compensating those of us whose lives are blighted by aircraft noise. I am serious when I suggest £1,000 a week. After all, when everyone else is on the make, getting something for nothing, why shouldn’t I get something for something: putting up with aircraft noise. 2.Advocates of Expansion We are entitled to ask just who are the people clamouring for more flights to Heathrow and why they are doing so. For some inexplicable reason, every time the then prime minister Tony Blair decreed that Heathrow must expand, particularly at PMQs, the phrase cui bono? flashed into my mind. Mr Blair has certainly done well since he left office. One of the most recent and loudest expansionists is Tim Yeo. I found the following on his website: www.timyeo.org.uk ‘Tim Yeo has pledged his full support to opponents of a wind farm at Chedburgh. He told a packed meeting at Hawkdeon village hall: "I fully understand why anybody in a community as beautiful as this will be concerned. On shore wind turbines are visually a very considerable intrusion on any landscape. This happens to be one of the most beautiful parts of my constituency which stretches from here to the coast." "I can hardly think of a less suitable place to put up a series of very, very large wind turbines six and a half times the height of the village church here in Hawkdeon. They would dwarf the cathedral in Bury St Edmunds as well."’ Mr Yeo’s hypocrisy was further outlined in the Mail Online 16/8/12. “He’s the Tory who chairs the Commons climate committee but earns £140,000 from green firms. And he wants to carpet Britain in wind farms (except in his own backyard).” So Mr Yeo expects other MPs’ constituents to put up and shut up when they object to more aircraft noise, yet supports his own constituents’ objections to a development that will adversely affect them – despite accepting consultancy fees from “green” companies. This is contemptible. I hope your committee will consider whether MPs whose constituents are unaffected by the noise generated by Heathrow airport should have any voice in a development that will devastate the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of people in west London. We should be told whether they have any financial relationship with the aviation interests demanding expansion. It really is unconscionable that any civilized society should expect a large chunk of its citizenry to tolerate the intolerable. 3.Impact of Noise How many constituents of MPs pushing for Heathrow expansion are woken by planes at 4.40am as we are? Here in Putney planes continue until 11 pm and some airlines like Emirates want to land throughout the night. Planes fly over my house every 90 seconds at 2000 ft. As soon as one has gone, another takes its place. Think Phil Spector’s “wall of sound”. I have double glazing, but they are still audible. Outside, you can‘t hear what someone a few feet away is saying. Gardening is stressful; it is impossible to enjoy a summer's day. Please don’t believe the spin that planes are getting quieter. I often wonder if Willie Walsh goes to plane makers and says: “gimme the noisiest thing you’ve got.” Has anyone affected by aircraft noise every appeared before your committee to give personal testimony of what living with the noise is like? The screech as the planes pass over my house is indescribable. You need to experience it. If you are in the garden talking to a friend, you have continually break off conversation as a plane passes over. I remember an incident when my gardener, a man in his 50s with no hearing problems, was pruning a rose in my small garden. I went to the kitchen door and shouted “David, don’t forget there’s a rose at the front.” He turned, came into the kitchen and said: “couldn’t hear you. A plane was going over.” He was all of 10 ft away from me. I remember one June afternoon in 2008 when a friend brought her then two and a half year old daughter to visit. We went outside. To my surprise the little girl suddenly pointed skywards and said: “noisy aeroplane”. She continued to repeat this as the planes kept coming. A small child, unaware of the political dimensions of Heathrow expansion, was struck by the noise of the planes. The third runway is a totemic slogan that slips easily off the tongue. What matters is that Heathrow airport should not be expanded, via mixed mode, more runways, or any other trickery the expansionists come up with. When the inspector gave the go-ahead for T5 he did so on condition that aircraft movements at Heathrow should not exceed 480,000 a year, because to go beyond this would inflict on intolerable burden on the quality of life of those under the flight path. Please could your committee get expansionists to justify why we should be expected to endure more when the devastating effect of aircraft noise has long been recognised? Please could your committee address the implications of studies by Professor Stephen Stansfeld on the deleterious impact of aircraft noise on children’s learning (e.g. at Munich’s airports), and against this background seek justifications from those who seek to increase the number of flights? Please could your committee explore the opposition of residents under the Frankfurt flight path (admittedly hundreds of thousands fewer than under the flight path to Heathrow) to more flights, and their objections to night flights (FAZ 27/6/12) not least when airlines like Emirates are seeking to fly into Heathrow at all hours of the night. Obviously my concern is my quality of life in Putney, but it is time for the aviation industry and its supporters to recognise the havoc that it wreaks. People are fed up with aircraft noise. 4.Regional and Other London Airports At all events, I question the need to focus so much airport expansion on Heathrow. On September 8, Radio 4 news reported that French detectives investigating the Annecy killings flew into London City Airport. On Feb. 5, the day when Heathrow cancelled hundreds of flights because of a dusting of snow, a friend's niece flew into Manchester airport on time from Islamabad with Qatar airlines. She was on a British Council programme at northern universities and had neither need nor desire to visit London.