Fury at airport lobby links to No 10
Senior MPs are demanding a Commons investigation into evidence of a "revolving door" policy between Downing Street, Whitehall and airport operator BAA, following last week's decision by ministers to approve a third runway at Heathrow. MPs believe that BAA and British Airways were able to crush the environment lobby thanks to an intricate network of contacts with the government and theLabour party.
Concerns over their influence have been heightened by the presence of Tom Kelly, formerly the official spokesman for Tony Blair when he was prime minister, who has taken charge of "all aspects of BAA's communication activity" since being appointed as group director of corporate and public affairs for the company in late 2007, when the campaign for a third runway was in full swing. Kelly heads a network that plugs BAA directly into government and Labour, several of whose senior figures are involved in the pro-runway campaign. Julia Simpson, another former adviser to Blair, left Downing Street in 2007 for BA.
On the other side of the fence is Joe Irvin, former head of corporate affairs at BAA, who has switched to Number 10 to be a key adviser to Gordon Brown. Irvin was also involved with one of the main aviation lobby groups, Freedom to Fly, which was funded by BAA and BA - as was Stephen Hardwick, a former adviser to John Prescott and ex-head of public affairs at BAA. BAA also employs financial PR company Finsbury, which is headed by Roland Rudd, a close friend of business secretary Peter Mandelson, who was in favour of the third runway.
BA has fostered close links with government for years through PR firms Brunswick, headed by Gordon Brown's friend Alan Parker, and Lexington Communications, run by Mike Craven, a former Labour press chief. Senior Labour figures, paid to help the runway lobby funded by BAA, include Lord Soley, a former chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, who has appeared in the media to promote the runway for Future Heathrow, one of the BAA-backed successors to Freedom to Fly.
The issue of Heathrow was tackled in a recent report on lobbying by the public administration select committee. After the inquiry, MPs concluded that lobbying needed to be open to public scrutiny. The report said: "There has also been widespread public concern that some areas of government policy have effectively been captured at an early stage by interest groups, usually within industry, and that public consultations have been unbalanced in the favour of these interests." It named Heathrow as an example of this.
Labour MP John Grogan last night called for the government to implement the proposed new rules. He believed that cabinet ministers who had opposed the third runway - including climate change secretary Ed Miliband and environment secretary Hilary Benn - might have won the day if they had not been fighting the "intricate web" linking BAA, BA and Whitehall. Susan Kramer, a Liberal Democrat MP, said a Commons investigation was essential. "It is a matter of public interest and is imperative."
BAA said: "It is entirely appropriate that BAA holds discussions with government, as we do with politicians of all parties, in the interest of Britain's airports. As was clearly demonstrated with a decision last week, government and government alone makes the critical judgements that affect airport growth."
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