Building a third runway in the world’s busiest airport London Heathrow Airport was brought back by the Prime Minister yesterday to the Tory agenda to increase airport’s capacity in the south-east of England.

The possibility of the construction of a third runway was strongly opposed by the Conservatives in their last manifesto. The Coalition Agreement also did not accept the prospect of including the U-turn.

Notwithstanding objection from both the Conservatives and the Coalition, the government, as reported by Tory sources last night, is all set to make the third runway a “live issue” in case of the transport policies after 2015. In fact the government is expected to put the policy in white paper by next month while sorting aviation policy.

Yesterday, in the Commons, David Cameron talked about the need to increase the number of flights in airports. But the prospect was objected to by the Transport Secretary Justin Greening whose Putney constituency is beneath Heathrow’s flight-path. Heathrow is also close to Richmond Park constituency of Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith who tackled Cameron in the Commons yesterday.

The Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, also objected to the prospect of expanding Heathrow until 2015. “I am pretty clear – there is not any chance of us reopening the third runway within this parliament”, asserted Pickles.

The Prime Minister refuted the objections saying, “Clearly we must not be blind to two important considerations. One is how we expand airport capacity overall, but secondly how do we make sure that Heathrow operates better.”

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