North Thanet MP Sir Roger Gale marks 10 years since Manston airport closed

Transcript

00:00 The development consent order process, ironically, was designed to enable the Secretary of State

00:06 to grant planning consent to matters of national infrastructure and national importance without

00:18 the interference from local authority, local objectors, so that people could actually get

00:23 on and create the jobs and create the wealth, create the boost in the economy that we all

00:29 want to see, or 98% of us want to see. It is a nonsense. The judicial review process

00:36 has been abused over and over again, and I think that this or a future law minister is

00:44 going to have to take this in hand and deal with it. It is absolutely right that people

00:50 should be able to challenge in law either unlawful decisions or bad decisions, I suppose.

01:00 But it is equally wrong that people should be able to use the law to over and over and

01:05 over again frustrate the will of the people. That is what is happening in this case. It

01:10 has happened, and at the moment it continues. I would like to think that the handful of

01:17 people who have bought houses under the flight path in Ramsgate, knowing that there has been

01:26 an airfield at Manston for 100 years, it is not as if this was something new. People who

01:33 buy houses on the edge of airfields expect aircraft to come in and out, and they have

01:40 done this knowingly and wittingly, believing that somehow they could frustrate the process.

01:44 me that is quite wrong.