It now looks as though a decision on expanding Heathrow (or Gatwick), which had been pencilled in for this summer, could be slipping back again.
Patrick McLoughlin, the Transport Secretary, certainly seemed to be bracing us for more waiting when quizzed over airport expansion on LBC yesterday. The current deadline is the summer. But McLoughlin said the busy political timetable could get in the way of that – and spoke about summer as aspiration rather than a firm deadline.
‘I hope later this year, we have said we hope to move some way by the summer. There are lots of other things that are going on in the political spectrum – if there’s a referendum this summer and the like, but I would hope by the summer of this year we’ll be able to make progress.’
The apparent delay is not the first time the Government has prevaricated over the toxic decision of airport expansion. Previously,
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