There is a "strong consensus" among CBI members that a third runway for Heathrow airport must go ahead, Richard Lambert, the business group's director-general, insisted yesterday.

Mr Lambert told the Financial Times he did not want to "get into a punch-up" with 13 leading executives who have called for a halt to the third runway in favour of more high-speed rail. But, he said: "For a majority of our members the argument is that the UK needs a hub airport rather than being at the end of a branch line from France and the Netherlands."

Heathrow expansion was so important, he said, that steeper cuts in carbon emissions must be made in other sectors to allow it to proceed while meeting the government's target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

Read the full article in The Financial Times.


Richard Lambert is director general of the CBI. Martin Broughton is president of the CBI and also chairman of British Airways. Are we surprised that Lambert supports the third runway? Not a bit.

But to say that cuts in carbon emissions must be made in other sectors to allow Heathrow to expand is really plumbing new depths in playing the poodle.