What Heathrow needs is not a third runway but a complete rethink of its central hellhole

Justine Greening is unlucky to have been passed the transport chalice so early in her cabinet career, and her tenure will surely be even shorter than the already short average for the post. On the issue of a third Heathrow runway, opposition to which was a theme of her campaign for her Putney seat in 2010, she seems at a loss to respond to a surge of Tory opinion led by former minister Tim Yeo in favour of the runway project as a symbol of newly assertive, globally connected, growth-seeking post-Olympic -Britain. I feel obliged, in a chivalrous way, to help her marshal her arguments before she’s forced to depart. Here goes.

What Heathrow needs is not the bulldozing of the last semi-rural communities between the Bath Road and the M4 to make way for what could only be a short-haul landing strip, but a complete redesign of the nightmarish central complex that encompasses Terminals One, Two and Three.