MPs stand up against ‘Boris Island Airport’

MP’s from constituencies on both sides of the Thames have voiced their opposition to an airport being built in the Thames estuary.

Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood pic above.) and David Amess (Southend West) hosted a reception at Westminster where they stepped-up their efforts to block the scheme  proposed by London Mayor Boris Johnson.

They said they wanted to protect nature and the estuary’s communities and businesses from "unsustainable development".

The MPs claimed it was unlikely the proposals would survive much beyond the Mayoral elections this Thursday and, in a press release, they said that "unanimously the audience agreed the plans were abhorrent, ill-thought through and devised by engineers who know little to nothing about the area".

Plans such as those put forward by Lord Foster, the architect behind Stansted Airport, would cause an immense amount of damage, they said. "Not including the supporting infrastructure of roads, rail-links and ancillary services, Norman Foster’s imagined runways and terminal would bury up to 20 square kilometres of top wildlife habitat, an act described by RSPB regional director Chris Corrigan as the largest act of environmental vandalism ever seen in the UK."

By Linsey McNeill