Cable calls for minister's statement on "suppressed" Air Noise Study

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 8th Oct 2007

When parliament reopened today Vincent Cable, Lib Dem MP for Twickenham, put down a question to the Aviation Minister demanding a statement from him on the publication of the Anase (Attitudes to Noise form Aviation Sources in England) study which was ordered six years ago and is already available in draft form.

What the study shows is that ten times as many people suffer "significant annoyance" from 50 decibel noise levels as suffer from 57 decibel noise (the official definition of "significant annoyance"). The problems of annoyance have become worse as flights have climbed form 273,000 in 1982 to 477,000 in 2006.

Vincent Cable said:

"we are entering a crucial period of public consultation on the third [Heathrow] runway and runway alternation and it is important that this powerful piece of evidence on noise disturbance is published and discussed. The government seems to be trying to push ahead with airport expansion without acknowledging evidence which it has itself collected, that aircraft noise disturbance s now far more widespread and serious",