Heathrow expansion 'wrong kind of growth', says Labour donor and energy boss Dale Vince

Aletha Adu

The Labour donor and energy boss Dale Vince ridiculed the Rachel Reeves’ expected support in her speech for a third runway at Heathrow, calling the move “an illusion of growth”.

Vince told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

I think it’s a mistake. Actually, I think it’s an illusion of growth.

It’ll take 10 years to build a runway, cost maybe £50bn. It’ll create the wrong kind of growth – we’ll be exporting tourism money abroad, creating a bigger imbalance than we already have, and it will come at the expense of our carbon-cutting effort.

Reflecting on the government’s green agenda he said:

It’s the wrong kind of growth ... we can have growth but we shouldn’t try to get it in these ways that increase our carbon emissions.

We’ve got to decarbonise energy, transport and food, and at the moment we’re on course to do energy, and we won’t do that with this Heathrow expansion, which is a big mistake.

Good morning. Rachel Reeves is today delivering a speech on growth that has been subject to almost as much advance pitch-rolling and pre-briefing as you get for a budget. And no wonder, because she is hoping that it will do almost as much work, politically at least, as a budget. Although she has not had to unravel the mega, £25bn tax raising package she announced in October, it suppressed business confidence more than she expected and there now seems to be a Westminster consensus that she included a bit too much gloom powder in the cake mix.

Here is our preview of what Reeves will say today, by Pippa Crerar and Heather Stewart.

If you judge a speech by the advance headlines (and, yes, that is exactly how some people in government do judge these things), the pre-speech part of the exercise has gone well.

Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, has been giving interviews this morning and on BBC Breakfast he defended the plan to green-light airport expansion, including a third runway at Heathrow.

I want people to know that things that have been too difficult in the past will be focused on, will be changed, will be delivered on, by this government.

It’s not just about aviation expansion, there’s a whole range of things.”

We’re not going to have endless judicial reviews effectively try to second-guess democratically-elected decisions from the elected government of the day. We will follow process, but that process has got to be one that can deliver the things.

We simply cannot afford to say we don’t build reservoirs any more, we don’t build railways, we don’t build runways. That’s not good enough, we will be left behind.

Keir Starmer has delivered a similar message in an article for the Times. This is what he says about why the government is committed to deregulation.

There is a morass of regulation that effectively bans billions of pounds more of investment from flowing into Britain. Thickets of red tape that, for all the Tories talked a good game, was allowed to spread through the British economy like Japanese knotweed. Our pledge today is that this government will do what they could not. We will kick down the barriers to building, clear out the regulatory weeds and allow a new era of British growth to bloom.

This may seem like an unusual goal for Labour politicians. But deregulation is now essential for realising Labour ambitions in this era — a crucial component of my Plan for Change. If we don’t deregulate the planning system, then we cannot spread the security of home ownership to the next generation. If we don’t simplify environmental protections, then we cannot decarbonise our electricity grid and generate cheaper, homegrown energy. And if we don’t curb regulator overreach, then we won’t unlock the investment needed for a more prosperous future.

Labour politicians also know that, whatever they say on policy, the only dead cert way of impressing a rightwing paper is by invoking Margaret Thatcher, and so in his article Starmer has a go at that too (explaining the splash headline above).

In the 1980s, the Thatcher government deregulated finance capital. In the New Labour era, globalisation increased the opportunities for trade. This is our equivalent.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Sir Peter Schofield, permanent secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions, gives evidence to the Commons work and pensions committee.

9.30am: Amanda Pritchard, NHS England’s chief executive, and other officials give evidence to the Commons health committee.

10am: Rachel Reeves delivers her speech on growth.

Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.

2.30pm: Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee.

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