Transport Committee

2 September 2026

Contents updated on 2 Sept 2026

The Chair sets out the scrutiny mandate for Heathrow expansion under the National Policy Statement and leads into initial questioning on economic modelling, projected GDP impacts and investment rationale for a third runway versus alternatives. Early exchanges establish the main analytical tools, updated benefit figures and key assumptions that will frame the rest of the evidence session.

Committee Wed, 2 Sept 2026 Actual start 09:00 House of Commons

23:52 - 23:53

Speaker 1

Order, order.

23:53 - 26:16

Speaker 2

Welcome to this morning's evidence session. This is the first session into the Transport Committee's scrutiny into the government's draft Heathrow expansion National Policy Statement that will be used as the policy basis against which a decision on whether to grant planning permission for a third runway at Heathrow Airport will be decided. We've been granted by the Liaison Committee the right, I guess, to scrutinise the draft Heathrow expansion NPS, including the extent to which it provides clear guidance about how to assess a proposed runway scheme and the robustness of the assumptions and requirements in the NPS and its associated documents.

This is an important session given that the former Chancellor used the economic growth reason as the reason for moving ahead with government policy to support runway three. So this, hence this session being particularly important today. I'd like to welcome Barry Gardiner joining us as a guest from Environmental Audit Committee and we look forward to Barry or a colleague joining us for future evidence sessions in this inquiry. I'd also like to thank all of the people who have been advising us and the core team on the work for this inquiry. Although it's a single piece of infrastructure, it's the most extensive inquiry I've been involved with in all of my time that I've been on the Transport Committee.

It has so many different aspects which require an awful lot of work and support. So I'd like to thank both our core Transport Committee team and all the additional people who've come in to help us and advise us on this inquiry. We've got two panels today. During our first panel, we'll be hearing about the economic case for Heathrow expansion, and in our second panel today, we'll be hearing about the business and employment case for Heathrow expansion. So first of all, could I ask our witnesses to introduce themselves?

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