Eddington report

5th December, 2006

A new study has been produced, which claims that expansion of aviation is vital for the economy. The report is not independent, the work on aviation is not new and the conclusions are worthless.

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The Eddington report says that aviation makes a big contribution to the UK economy and that international airports such as Heathrow need to expand.

No new work has been done to justify these conclusions. The report just uses the work done for the aviation White Paper and re-iterates its conclusions.

Since Eddington was head of British Airways, which was constantly lobbying for expansion of Heathrow and still is, such comments are hardly surprising.

It is even less surprising when one realises that much of the work for the report was done by civil servants. Since the civil servants, under instruction from ministers, produced the ‘justification’ for expansion of airports in aviation White Paper and since government policy has not changed since then, they are bound to reach similar conclusions.

In short, the the conclusions on aviation are worthless. No original work has been done. Neither Eddington or his team were independent – they all had a vested interest in confirming the government’s current policy on aviation.

For more information on the inadequacies of the report, contact AEF.