Airport funding

You reported that all of the Members of the Scottish Parliament for the Lothians oppose our decision to introduce two drop-off areas at the airport - one for which customers are charged one pound and another for which they are charged nothing (31 July).

It should be remembered that BAA will have spent 150 million at Edinburgh Airport between 2008 and 2011 and our profits in that period will amount to less than 100m. Our challenge is to try to bridge that significant gap without raising landing charges and making Edinburgh Airport less attractive to airlines that provide excellent services.

This money does not include the significant subsidies given by BAA to the many airlines who have provided some of the 42 new routes delivered for the people of Edinburgh in recent years.

Passengers using these routes will no doubt see the irony in Gavin Brown and Margaret Smith's opposition to our decision, as the coalition government made up of their parties prepares to apply huge airport tax rises to every man, woman and child using a Scottish airport.

The hard fact is somebody has to pay for investments, whether at airports or railway stations or in factories, schools and hospitals.

I note that, in your piece, none of the MSPs surveyed expressed a view on how private investment in infrastructure might be delivered if companies based in Scotland are somehow prevented from passing on a relatively small element of the capital cost of projects to the people who use them and benefit from them.

I don't need to tell politicians times are tough. Some of them are taking difficult decisions and will not be thanked for doing so. But if private companies are criticised for making difficult commercial decisions, politicians levelling the charges have a duty to to explain how finance will be raised for important projects if the private sector is somehow not permitted to do so.

MALCOLM ROBERTSON BAA

London