Wed, 29 Jan 2025

Reeves backs third Heathrow runway in growth push

The chancellor tells the BBC she wants a planning application "signed off" before the next election.

* Rachel Reeves has backed a third runway at Heathrow Airport as part of plans to boost the UK's sluggish economy.
* The chancellor said Heathrow expansion would make Britain "the world's best connected place to do business".
* She also backed expansions at Luton and Gatwick airports, as well as a "growth corridor" between Oxford and Cambridge.
* Reeves claimed that the growth corridor could add £78bn to the UK economy by 2035.
* The Tories welcomed the plans, but leader Kemi Badenoch said they had been stolen from her party.
* Badenoch also claimed that the government's Employment Rights Bill would "destroy" any prospect of growth.
* Reeves said she wants a planning application for a third runway at Heathrow to be signed off before the next election in 2029.
* She announced other projects, including a major redevelopment of Old Trafford and a plan to bring Doncaster/Sheffield airport back into use.
* Trade unions welcomed the Heathrow announcement, but environmental campaigners and Labour's London Mayor Sadiq Khan opposed it.
* Reeves said she has been "genuinely shocked" at how slow the planning system is and claims new powers in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill will speed up major infrastructure projects.
* The government also plans to review the Green Book rules, which have previously biased infrastructure spending to already fast-growing areas.
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