East Bergholt MP challenges PM over runway plans (From Harwich and Manningtree Standard)

East Bergholt MP challenges PM over runway plans

7:30am Monday 3rd September 2012 in News By Caroline Tilley

AN EAST Bergholt MP has challenged the Prime Minister over dithering over Heathrow’s third runway.

Tim Yeo, MP for South Suffolk, told David Cameron to decide if he is a “man or a mouse” over the airport’s expansion.

Mr Yeo said backing the runway would give the Government a “sense of mission”.
In an article for a national paper he wrote: "The Prime Minister must ask himself whether he is man or mouse.

"Does he want to be another Harold Macmillan, presiding over a dignified slide towards insignificance?

"Or is there somewhere inside his heart - an organ that still remains impenetrable to most Britons - a trace of Thatcher, determined to reverse the direction of our ship?

"An immediate go-ahead for a third runway will symbolise the start of a new era, the moment the Cameron government found its sense of mission. Let's go for it."

Mr Yeo, previously a high profile opponent of expansion, now says European Union carbon emissions caps will force airlines to use more environmentally friendly planes if they want to use new capacity at Heathrow.