Heathrow: a National Disgrace

LORD LAMONT, the former Chancellor, has delivered a withering attack on Heathrow Airport as “a national scandal”. He is raising the poor performance of BAA, the organisation responsible for London’s major airports, in the House of Lords and he tells this paper that the level of mismanagement is such that BAA should be stripped of its monopoly control. Anyone who has recently used Heathrow will echo his sentiments

and his withering criticism of BAA is shared by Nick Ross, the television presenter, who wrote in this paper on Monday about the company’s contempt for passengers.

It is good to see that papers such as the Financial Times have followed our lead here. Heathrow is, as Lord Lamont says, grubby: the prospect of using it depresses the spirits of the most intrepid traveller.

The trip to the airport should not be an experience from which a holiday is necessary to recover but for many passengers, the queues, the delays and the inept and onerous security regulations all make for a thoroughly depressing experience.

BAA blames, of course, both increased passenger numbers and Government-led security arrangements for its problems. Yet the numbers of passengers using Heathrow is, to a great extent known or predictable. The extent of the terrorist threat is also known. BAA has no excuse for treating large numbers of passengers or anti- terrorist precautions as a crisis which throws it into confusion. Other airports share precisely the same security problems as Heathrow without treating passengers as BAA does.

It could have circumvented many of the problems about restrictions on hand baggage by investing, years ago, in the very latest screening devices and commissioning more of those that it already has but it was too mean to do so.

The Government could also help reduce delays by deploying more immigration officers at the airport. Heathrow, after all, is not just a departure point for British tourists but the first experience of Britain for many business travellers from abroad. What a wretched impression they must get of this country from its premier airport..

Roadworks hell AS THE West End still struggles with the massive three-year programme of mains renewal by Thames Water, we report that legislation requiring better coordination of roadworks across the city will not take effect until at least 2008. This beggars belief.

The disruption caused by utility firms that dig up roads with minimal notice, only for other companies to tear up the fresh Tarmac days later, has infuriated Londoners for years. There have been times when major thoroughfares such as Oxford Street and the Strand have been dug up more than 150 times in a single 12-month period. Traffic chaos is not the only result: accidents are more likely near roadworks and the impact of drilling noise on residentsand pedestrians is substantial.

Many other countries have a far more restrictive regime of permits, advance notice requirements or rental charges for companies thatwant to dig up or disrupt the public roads. The Traffic Management Act of 2004 was meant to force contractors to notify Transport for London of their plans in good time. It was also intended to give TfL the power to ban work from taking place simultaneously on parallel routes and to levy fines for jobs that over-ran.

However, there were delays over establishing the relevant guidelines, establishing what should be a fairly simple database and in consulting the groups that would be affected by the change. As a result, the new regime for roadworks will not be in place until next year.

A chauffeured ministerial car may be a more comfortable place in which to wait in a traffic queue than most of us enjoy

but next time this happens to transport ministers, they should demand to know the reason why..

Good for peers THE House of Lords has, yet again, showed itself to be a valuable corrective to the wrongheadedness of MPs. Yesterday, no one in the Lords would sponsor the private member’s bill from the backbench MP David Maclean to exempt members of the Commons from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Bill in order, supposedly, to protect the privacy of their correspondence. Good. Peers have shown themselves, not for the first time, to be far more sensitive to public opinion than the people’s representatives in the Commons. This wretched, self-serving bill should now be allowed to wither as it deserves..

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