The shadow chancellor has argued that Rachel Reeves's plan to expand Heathrow Airport doesn't do enough to tackle economic issues affecting people now, claiming it will only come into effect in the next 10-30 years, if at all. Mel Stride did, however, assert his support for Reeves's planned Heathrow expansion, despite citing Labour divisions about the issue including Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan's objections. Report by Faragt. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Now, she's made a lot of announcements.
00:01They're very, very long-term.
00:03Some of these things won't come to fruition,
00:05if at all, until the 2030s, 40s, or maybe even the 2050s.
00:09What we need now is something that's
00:12going to boost the economy over the coming period of years
00:16and sort out the fact that she ramped up those taxes
00:19on business during the budget, killed growth,
00:22stoned it, unemployment's going up,
00:24inflation is higher than it should be,
00:25with interest rates staying higher for longer,
00:27which affects people with their mortgage costs, and so on.
00:30And we really need to see Rachel Reeves come to the Commons
00:32at the end of March with her spring statement
00:34and tell us what she's going to do this year, for this year,
00:37next year, the year after, because that's a period
00:40that people are very concerned about.
00:42I think there has been an issue about delivering
00:44longer-term infrastructure projects in this country,
00:48and that's something that's affected governments
00:50of all colours and all stripes.
00:52So absolutely.
00:54And where they do the right thing,
00:55we will, as a responsible opposition, support them.
00:58But let's not confuse that with sorting out
01:00what's going on now and over the next two, three, four, five
01:04years.
01:04They are two different things.
01:06Rachel Reeves is talking about very long-term here.
01:09People need something earlier than that.
01:11And she has an opportunity at the end of March
01:14to tell us what she's going to do about that challenge.
01:17So in principle, we support the move to increase air capacity
01:21and look at growing Heathrow with a third runway.
01:26There's a long way to go, obviously,
01:27and it will be subject to making sure
01:29that we're comfortable with the overall proposal
01:32as it develops through time.
01:33But Labour are very split on this.
01:35You've got Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London,
01:37threatening legal action to try and prevent this from happening.
01:40The prime minister himself voted against Heathrow
01:43last time around.
01:44So let's see where this goes.
01:46Now, there were some big lessons for us to learn.
01:48We lost the trust of the British people,
01:50and we have to own up to that to ourselves,
01:54move on, and do the thinking to make sure
01:56that we learn the lessons of that and get that trust back.
01:58And that's what we're going to work towards.