Gatwick ruling delays government plan for airport expansion by a year

The Government's 30-year plans for airport expansion will be delayed until next autumn, Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, admitted yesterday.

This week the High Court overturned the Government's intention to exclude Gatwick airport from its plans for new capacity in the South-east.

In a Commons statement yesterday, Mr Darling said the ruling would "inevitably mean an extended period of uncertainty for everyone". He said a revised set of options, including new runways at Gatwick, Heathrow and Stansted, and the building of an airport at Cliffe in Kent, would be published next year, prior to a four-month consultation period.

The consultation on the original plans was issued in July and was due to end on Saturday. It will now have to be completely redrafted.

The ruling delighted anti-expansion campaigners near Stansted in Essex, who had claimed the suggestions for the airport would have quadrupled it in size. With four runways it would have been as large as two Heathrows, they said.

They brought the High Court case, along with Kent and Medway county councils, on the basis that expansion of Gatwick should not have been excluded from the original consultations.

The decision is a significant embarrassment for Mr Darling, who has been Transport Secretary since the end of May, following the resignation of Stephen Byers.

But he was urged by the Labour backbencher Chris Mullin, a former aviation minister, to recognise that the demands of the aviation industry were "insatiable".

Mr Mullin said Mr Darling should "make a stand, and perhaps instead of building more runways, airports and terminals, you ought to be considering demand management".

He continued: "Cheap air travel is not a basic human right and does have to be matched against environmental considerations."

Mr Darling noted that half the country now flew at least once last year – and that raising the price of air travel would stop some people travelling. He added that the aviation industry should pay the price of its environmental impact.

One option being pushed by anti-airport groups is the construction of an offshore airport, as has been done in Japan, Genoa and Hong Kong.

Although that was not suggested in the latest consultation exercise, Mr Darling gave a hint that such plans might be considered if put forward.

He told MPs he had always made clear that people could respond not just to the Government's proposals but also come up with their own.

He confirmed that the whole consultation exercise remained open because "manifestly a decision on the London area has implications for the rest of the country".