The Airport Operator - Pages 10-11
OA Chair, Baroness Ruby McGregor-Smith, is urging Rishi Sunak’s Government to support a pro-growth agenda by backing aviation.
Speaking at the start of her second three-year term as Chair of the Airport Operators Association, she said that Ministers should consider how they could offer support to help airports and the rest of the sector to boost connectivity and achieve sustainable growth.
She said “we very much support government to have a pro-growth agenda for aviation. Clearly there will always be challenges around that, including planning, noise and sustainability, but we hope that we will have a government that we can work with and will support us to overcome those challenges”.
Baroness McGregor-Smith told The Airport Operator “I think that UK airports are really important assets in terms of helping grow the UK economy in the regions and around the South East. Global businesses invest here because there are great transport links through our airports. My view has always been that they are critical to Britain, even more so because we are an island. Aviation is very much an important area for the UK to continue to invest in and making sure everyone understands how important they are to the future growth of the UK economy I think is really important”
She pointed out that before the pandemic aviation contributed more than £92 billion to the UK economy, supported nearly a million jobs and provided £8 billion in tax revenues to the UK Government. Crucially, she pointed to evidence that, for every 10% growth in connectivity, GDP grows by 0.5%
