Rachel Reeves wrong to claim Britain has not built a runway since the 1940s

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme [2:17] this morning about government backing for a third runway at Heathrow Airport, the chancellor Rachel Reeves claimed that “the last time we built a runway in this country was in the 1940s”.

In another interview on LBC this morning she said: “We haven’t built a new runway in Britain since the 1940s.”

This is not correct. A second runway at Manchester Airport was approved in 1997 and opened in 2001. It was built on greenbelt land and its construction prompted long-running protests from environmental activists. 

A Guardian report from the day it opened hailed the runway as “the first built in Britain for 20 years”. (It’s not entirely clear which previous runway construction this refers to—we’ve not looked in this fact check at what other runways were built prior to 2001.)

If a minister makes a false or misleading claim on broadcast media they should take responsibility for ensuring it is appropriately corrected, and make efforts to ensure the correction is publicly available to anyone who might have heard the claim.

‘Full length’ runways

Ms Reeves made a slightly different claim on Wednesday in a major speech on boosting economic growth, saying: “The last full length runway in Britain was built in the 1940s.” This claim was flagged to us by one of our readers.

It’s not entirely clear how Ms Reeves meant to define “full length”. We’ve asked the Civil Aviation Authority for its definition and will update this fact check when we hear back. 

However Manchester Airport does say that its second runway is “full length”. Its website  states: “Manchester is still the only airport outside of London with two full length runways.” According to the Institution of Civil Engineers its two runways are 3,200m and 3,048m long. 

A House of Commons Library briefing note about Manchester’s second runway also says: “At the time, the second runway at Manchester was the first full length runway to be built in the UK for 20 years.”

Meanwhile a 2016 report from the Department of Transport which looked at airport capacity made a more specific claim than Ms Reeves’ which appeared to allow for Manchester Airport’s second runway, saying: “We have failed to build a new full-length runway in the South East since the 1940s.” A similar line was used in a government press release the same year, which said a new runway at Heathrow would be “the first full length runway in the south-east since the Second World War”.

After asking Ms Reeves’ office about her comments, we received a response from the Treasury. It confirmed that the last full length runway built in Britain was in Manchester in 2001, and that the last full length runway built in the South East was in the 1940s.