Gale's Views | rogergale

Gale's View - Manston Airport – and moving forward into the New Year

2nd January 2026

Following discussions with The Civil Aviation Authority the proposed flightpaths for take-off and landing at a reopened Manston freight and subsequently passenger airport will go out to public consultation in Ramsgate and in Herne Bay in February of this coming year. This is another modest but essential step in the process that will lead up to the resumption of commercial aviation at Manston. And I expect that further significant announcements and progress will be made within the coming months. I hold to the view that the reopening of Manston airport is vital to the economy not just of East Kent but of the United Kingdom and this is a project that I and many others, with the political backing of successive governments, intend to see through to realisation.

Turning to other issues of local and national importance I continue to raise both in the House of Commons and with the Labour-controlled local authorities, the need to re-appraise local plans and to revise downwards the amount of good agricultural land that is currently being sacrificed to development for housing and is, as a result, blighted for farming purposes. The recent granting, by Thanet District Council, of approval of a planning application for hundreds more homes in Birchington is a case in point. This fertile land, currently farmed, is not backed up by any of the road, medical, education or other services and infrastructure required to support housing and is wholly speculative,

Nationally it is estimated that there are more than a million outstanding planning consents for houses that have not been built out but are being land-banked while Government policy mitigates in favour of yet more greenfield sites being earmarked for development. Locally we need homes to house those on the housing waiting list, certainly, but not at the expense of the diminishing supply of agricultural land that we are continually and rightly told that we shall require if the United Kingdom is to become more self-sufficient in the crops that we require to feed a growing population. And not at a time when other building sites in East Kent are on hold and construction workers are being laid off because the properties that were being built are not selling.

It is correct that Thanet Council has acquired, at a borrowing cost that it no doubt assumes that under local government reorganisation will have to be repaid by others, a modest number of houses unsold by developers for social housing purposes. That number is, though, far outweighed by the number of homes believed to have been acquired by London boroughs to help solve housing needs that the Mayor of London has failed to address. Those London boroughs will say, literally correctly but disingenuously, that they are not purchasing properties in Thanet. They are not. Properties are being purchased by companies that are then leasing them to London boroughs. Thanet can no longer afford to remain the dumping ground for the social housing problems of inner London and the time has come when the local authority must be compelled by the electorate to provide adequate housing for local people, not all-comers. And in the meantime, we have to maintain our efforts, in the teeth of Central and Local government policy, to protect the farmland upon which future generations have a right to depend for their food,

The Labour Government`s most recent u-turn, this time in respect of the proposed `Family Farm Tax`, is a modest step in the right direction Increasing the threshold after which an estate becomes liable for Inheritance Tax from one million to two and a half million pounds sounds significant but it does not go far enough and I am surprised that the NFU has called off its campaign on the basis of this concession. If you say it quickly two and a half million pounds sounds like a lot of money and to most people of course it is. In the context of a family farm such as those many in East Kent, however, it does not solve the problem that Rachel Reeves has created for herself. A modest few hundred acres at agricultural land values, with barn, possibly cold storage and other essential farm buildings and with costly modern farm machinery thrown into the mix pretty soon easily surpasses The threshold of the Chancellor’s enforced largesse. Her policy will still mean a huge potential financial hit and the break-up of farms that have been in the same hands producing food for generations or their sale to large corporations very possibly controlled by overseas investors. That battle will have to continue until, if necessary, a future Conservative government is in a position to, as promised, remove the threat.

The coming year will also see the additional challenge to our local environment posed by National Grid come to a head with the determination of the planning inquiry to be announced. If the planning Inspectorate approves the application for a Converter Station on the Minster Marshes or if a negative decision is over-ruled by the Secretary of State, one Ed Miliband, then we shall have to do our utmost to secure a judicial review of an act of environmental vandalism that, if allowed to proceed, will be irreversible and disastrous for the ecology of the area. It may be that the Department for Energy believes that we will give in without a fight: we shall not.

As Suzy reminded me, while sitting with me in the small hours of the 27th December, It is a very good thing for Members of Parliament to have to use the National Health Service over which, ultimately, we preside, from time to time. I have in fact had occasion to do so myself, twice, over the Christmas period and it was an informative if not an entirely happy experience.

(To allay any rumours suggesting my imminent demise and a possible by-election, I woke up on Christmas morning with what was subsequently diagnosed as an impressive attack of shingles, preceded by a gruesome incubation period with unpleasant side-effects , from which I am painfully but fully recovering).

Let me simply say, at this stage, both that I have nothing but thanks and admiration for the medical and ancillary staff who, without having a clue who I was, took care of me, and second that I have, as a result of these encounters, a number of questions that will need to be answered on behalf of my constituents both locally by those in charge of primary and secondary healthcare and nationally by the Secretary of State and aspirant Prime Minister, Mr. Wes Streeting.

I would like to be able to wish you a peaceful New Year. But with the lunatics in charge of the asylum in the Neo-Soviet Union, The United States, The Middle East and in China that may seem like a tall order. Perhaps we shall just have to try to settle for good health, but wherever you are and whatever your faith or nationality, Suzy and I wish you a better 2026.