Ed Miliband: I won’t quit over Heathrow expansion

After he became Labour leader in 2010, Miliband ended his party’s support for Heathrow expansion, saying he had had “some very heated arguments” with Prime Minister Gordon Brown over it and had even considered resigning from his cabinet.

In 2018, he said he would vote against it in the Commons, arguing “we owe it to future generations not just to have good environmental principles but to act on them”.

Speaking on Thursday, he said the government’s position was that any aviation expansion should take place within the UK’s carbon budgets, which are part of plans to meet the 2050 target of reducing emissions by 100% compared with 1990 levels.

Independent government advisers on the Climate Change Committee (CCC) have warned there should be no net airport expansion without a proper national plan to curb emissions from the sector and to manage passenger capacity.

Miliband insisted that was “absolutely the position of the government”.

“We believe that we can meet our growth mission – our number one priority – and keep within carbon budgets, and indeed that our clean energy mission is crucial and a central part of meeting our growth mission.

“Far from them being in contradiction, they are absolutely complementary,” he argued.

Challenged on whether the country could still meet net zero with a third Heathrow runway, he replied: “I’m not getting into speculation about specific issues like that.

“What I’m saying is that aviation is part of our economic growth and it has to take place within our carbon budgets, and that is accepted right across government because we have legally binding carbon budgets.”

Speaking on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Chancellor Rachel Reeves signalled her intention to back expansions to Heathrow and Gatwick Airport in a bid to boost economic growth, despite environmental concerns shared by a number of leading Labour figures.

“We will look at all plans to bring infrastructure, to bring investment to Britain.

“When there are decisions around infrastructure investment, the answer can’t always be ‘no’, and with this government the answer is ‘yes’,” Reeves told the BBC.