BAA flies in Hargreaves to spearhead runways campaign

Ian Hargreaves, the journalist and broadcaster, is to spearhead the campaign by the airports group BAA to win public support for the construction of more runways in south-east England.

A former editor of The Independent and the New Statesman, Mr Hargreaves will join BAA as director of corporate and public affairs at the end of the year. He is currently the director of the Centre for Journalism Studies at Cardiff University. He takes over the post vacated by Des Wilson, the former environmental campaigner who became poacher turned gamekeeper when he joined BAA to promote the case for building Heathrow's Terminal 5.

Mr Hargreaves, 51, will be joining the company at a critical time with the Government due to publish a White Paper on airport policy next year. Earlier this week it issued a series of consultative documents setting out options for a third runway at Heathrow, up to three more runways at Stansted and a new airport at Cliffe in the Kent marshlands.

Mr Hargreaves, who lives in Bermondsey, south-east London, said it would be "completely false" to characterise his role at BAA as being to promote the need for a third runway at Heathrow. However, he added: "Clearly my role is going to be to help BAA figure out the enormously complicated issue of how to meet the increasing demand for air travel given the constraints on the supply of airport facilities."

Mr Hargreaves will spend 75 per cent of his time with BAA and will retain his position as professor of journalism at Cardiff University. He will also continue as a panelist on the BBC Radio 4 programme Moral Maze but will give up writing a weekly column on media issues for the Financial Times.

At BAA he will become a member of the executive committee which runs the business and reports to the board and will be responsible for all BAA communications and "stakeholder relationships".

Mike Hodgkinson, BAA's chief executive, said Mr Hargreaves would play an important role in helping ensure that BAA operated with the widest possible base of support.