Geoff Hoon, the transport secretary, has been accused of suppressing his own officials’ reports, which could have defeated government plans for a third runway at Heathrow. After a seven-month battle, the information commissioner last week ordered Hoon’s department to release to Greenpeace a register of hazards to the project, which it had insisted on keeping secret.

It shows his department’s internal worries about risks ranging from increased air pollution to the strength of opposition to the runway and the likelihood of a judicial review succeeding. The register recorded how likely it was that each risk could derail the project. Jim Fitzpatrick, the aviation minister in Hoon’s department, had claimed the register was closed in 2007, but it has now emerged that entries were made more than a year later.

Justine Greening, the shadow London minister to whom Fitzpatrick made his statement in January, said: “What they told me was not true, and is a particularly extreme example of a deliberately inaccurate [parliamentary] answer apparently designed to mislead an MP.” She added: “The documents show the Heathrow consultation was not about facts, it was about how best to spin them.”

Read the full article in The Sunday Times.


It will all come out. The lies, the spin and the reasons behind the ill-conceived decision to press ahead with Heathrow expansion.

And the parts played by Hoon, Fitzpatrick and Brown.