Boris 'must back City Airport protest—forget Thames Estuary'

15 February 2010

By Mike Brooke

CALLS are being made on Boris Johnson to scrap further research into his controversial Thames Estuary airport idea.

Cash for the research should be ploughed instead into helping East London protesters prepare their case against expansion of City Airport ahead of the judicial review, say Opposition London Assembly members.

The research is included in the Mayor’s ‘mean and lean’ £14 billion London budget which he just managed to push through last Wednesday, February 11, on a minority 11-to-13 vote without amendment because opponents failed to get a two-thirds majority.

Tory Boris’s Green Party namesake Darren Johnson and others lost a proposed amendment calling on the Mayor to cancel further Estuary airport research and allocate the funds to the City Airport ‘No Expansion’ campaign.

“The residents should be supported to ensure their case is properly heard,” he demanded. “I am calling on the Mayor to give the money to help their legal costs.

“London cannot handle any more flights. The only solution is to limit demand for air travel—cutting domestic flying is an easy place to start.”

He is challenging the Mayor for not including guidance to reduce short-haul aviation in travel planning information to businesses, even though staff on London’s police, fire and transport authorities and at City Hall itself have reduced their UK flights by 75 per cent.

Boris’s Estuary airports feasibility study now takes off, after his London budget was passed.