Sir Alan Haselhurst MP, Alan, We hear a lot about the SSE campaign, but how many of your constituents and constituency businesses are contacting you supporting the expansion and how do you decide who to support?
Asked by paul576 on Nov 11 2007 5:11:25 PM and supported by 19 members
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The answer to that is very few, we had an interesting exchange in the local press recently about the letters, which had appeared. I think in fact the Evening Standard did some investigative work and discovered that there was a bogus nature to a number of letters. One of the letters quoted was one that had been sent to me. At the time I had looked at this letter and thought shall I answer it because the person writing was actually from outside of my constituency and it had appeared in the local press. I decided on that occasion not, but there had been a previous one where I had been tempted to write back, not to the newspaper but to the person because it was from an address in the constituency only to find that the person and the address did not exist. And when the Evening Standard revealed that there were about 15 or so such letters all of which were bogus, the finger began to point in a certain direction. So I got into an altercation with BAA who thought I was accusing them of doing it so I wrote an article in the local newspaper it struck me as being astonishing that this was Britain, this was not Zimbabwe and people were free to express an opinion, and the idea that they would be frightened of doing so was ludicrous.
But that is just the background and no the answer is I only rarely get a letter from anybody who says yes we think this is an undiluted good thing. It is true to say that the Braintree Chamber of Commerce, which is a bit more distant, so they can speak from the luxury of not being over flown and not having any of the disadvantages who see it as an undiluted benefit for business but they don’t write to me. I’ve just had occasional encounters with them but by and large no the correspondence I get is negative. And that confirms the properly conducted referendum in the District of Uttlesford which revealed that 89% of people were opposed to a 2nd runway and that is on a 69% turnout higher than a general election turnout so I’ve no doubt at all that I reflect vastly the majority of opinion within the District and the Constituency