Crawley MP Peter Lamb attended London Gatwick's Apprenticeship Fair this week. We interviewed him and asked him about the airport's £2.2 billion Northern Runway plans. A decision on the plans is expected to be made at the end of February.
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00:00The thing to bear in mind is this, is that it's an active planning application, it doesn't
00:03go into your local council, it goes into the planning inspectorate nationally and ministers
00:07finally have to take a decision on that based upon what their planning inspector says. So
00:11because of that they can't give you any direct insight, otherwise it probably would have
00:14been part of the conversation around Rachel Reeves the other day. The big thing to bear
00:17in mind is this, is there's no standing still, so whatever happens at Gatwick is going to
00:20continue to evolve as time goes on and in terms of our local employment, you know, and
00:25in terms of our local transport and things like that, we're going to have to continue
00:27to grow to deal with the capacity that Gatwick has and what it can offer. Whatever comes
00:31out has got to be something that's viable for the area and that's really what my viewpoint
00:34is. Growth is not a bad thing by itself but it's got to come with those bits which enable
00:39that growth to be viable. You've got to make sure that you've got that transport infrastructure,
00:42that you've got the housing, you know, these things have actually got to deliver for the
00:45local community. If you haven't got that then it becomes more of a problem and so it's never
00:48the issue by itself, it's about making sure that the whole thing in the round actually
00:52delivers to the area. Those groups have got valid points that they want to raise, it's
00:55absolutely right that people make their views heard and, you know, we've got to listen to
00:58all of that and make sure that it's taken into account as part of that decision. But
01:02you're not going to necessarily always get everyone happy all at the same time about
01:05the same issues. There's always going to be people who are for, people who are against.
01:07The main thing is making sure that as far as possible, whatever happens, you've compensated
01:12for whatever negative impacts or positive impacts there are.