Road User Charging Schemes

Mark Francois Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer.

I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for his very able introduction of this very important subject. I also thank everyone who has taken the trouble to sign the petitions that we are reflecting on today.

I will focus on the proposed extension of the ultra low emission zone to cover all London boroughs, including the whole of my Chipping Barnet constituency. I do not believe that this extension is either justified or acceptable. Although I can see that there is potentially a place for charging regimes in appropriate circumstances, ULEZ expansion is the wrong scheme at the wrong time.

Of course everyone in Westminster Hall today will agree that we need to reduce air pollution, and a range of Government policies are delivering progress towards that important goal. The Mayor of London published an independent impact assessment of his ULEZ expansion proposal that concluded that it would have only a negligible impact on air quality. I emphasise that—only a negligible impact. Yet I am sure that many of us have had constituents attending our surgeries to explain the financial hardship that they will experience as a result of this charge being introduced at a time of major increases in the cost of living.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

As an Essex MP, I wish to place firmly on the record my opposition to Mayor Khan’s ULEZ scheme, but another thing that affects air quality is when people have to queue for ages to get through roadworks. One thing that I support is what is known as lane rental, which is the concept whereby utility companies have to pay per day for the privilege of digging up the road and creating inconvenience for everyone else. The Minister and I have discussed this issue before. Essex County Council now supports this idea, by the way. Does my right hon. Friend agree that a sensible measure to improve air quality would be not to bring in ULEZ but to crack down on roadworks?

[Theresa Villiers]

I think that cracking down on roadworks is a good idea, although I have to say that we have heard many times that lane rental is to be introduced, and somehow we all still seem to get caught in those traffic jams. My right hon. Friend makes some valid points.

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[Gareth Johnson]

Absolutely. It is also fair to say that in any consultations that took place at the time, the majority of people were in favour of banning smoking in pubs. Even if we accept wholeheartedly what the Mayor of London has said about the consultation process, we know that a majority of people do not support the ULEZ expansion. It was a sham consultation. What is the point in having a consultation and totally ignoring its outcome? There are lots of rumours that the cameras were bought before it took place, and that therefore there was never any chance of Sadiq Khan rolling back on the policy. He was hellbent on expanding the ULEZ no matter what anybody said, and no matter what the outcome.

What we have not heard is Sadiq Khan saying that he will not move the goalposts. I firmly believe that he has in mind the fact that he has to earn a certain amount of money to pay for the infrastructure that he will put in—£250 million, for a start—and to fill the black hole in his finances. If too many people switch to compliant vehicles, he will move the goalposts, so the next category of vehicles will no longer be ULEZ compliant, until all petrol and diesel cars are not compliant and are therefore charged. The Mayor of London has not ruled that out, and I firmly believe that it will happen. This is not the end, but the beginning.

[Mr Francois]

My hon. Friend said earlier that it is one thing when Kent MPs co-operate with London MPs; it is another when Essex MPs join in too. Does he agree that TfL has effectively been bankrupt for years and is kept going only with central Government subsidy? While the Mayor pays lip service to air quality, this is a tax grab, pure and simple. It is not about air quality; it is about money.

[Gareth Johnson]

My hon. Friend from across the river is absolutely right. I am delighted that Essex MPs and Kent MPs have been working together on this. All MPs who have an inch of fairness about them have been doing so. It speaks volumes that not a single Labour Back Bencher has turned up. They are intimidated. When I speak to Labour MPs privately about the policy, they despair. That is why they are not present. They have no comeback and no answer, and they do not want to be here, embarrassed by this policy, which is supported by the leadership of the Labour party.

I will make one final point. For a party that claims that it wants to look after the poorest in society, this policy will do exactly the opposite: it will hit the poorest the most. It will not hit the rich, powerful and wealthy; it will hit people who have vehicles that are quite old and that they cannot afford to upgrade, and small businesses that have two or three non-compliant vehicles and are therefore unable to upgrade them. The charge will hit people who cannot afford to pay it, and who will therefore despair and contact their Members of Parliament. Scores of them have done so on a weekly basis, desperately trying to work out what on earth they can do about a policy that they have no control over—no vote over, in the case of people Dartford—and simply cannot afford.

This is a cruel form of taxation on people in the south-east. It is something that the Labour party should be thoroughly ashamed of. They should be thoroughly ashamed of their London Mayor.

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[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I confess that I had not originally planned to speak in this debate, but as not a single Labour or Lib Dem Back Bencher has put in to speak, I will make a few points in lieu of them.

The ULEZ zone affects outer London, stretching out towards the county of Essex, in some cases well past the M25. Many of my constituents and people who live in Essex will be affected by the imposition of the charge, and, because they do not live in Greater London, they cannot vote Mayor Khan out of office or vote anyone else into office. For them it really is a case of taxation without representation, which is one reason I feel strongly about it, and even more so after having heard excellent speeches on the topic by my Conservative colleagues this afternoon.

The Mayor says the issue is about air quality, but it is not. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) made perfectly clear, the studies and detailed scientific analysis show that the effect of the ULEZ on air quality will be marginal at best. Everybody knows the truth. It is not about air quality. That is the fig leaf that Mayor Khan is using to justify it. It is about money, because TfL is effectively bankrupt and has been for some years. He is therefore trying to use the charge to fill a black hole. It is perfectly obvious what he is up to, and I think every Londoner in their heart of hearts knows that.

The charge will add to the other problems that the Mayor has introduced such as the road closures and road narrowing measures in London, which serve to create more pollution on an increasingly congested number of remaining roads, because the traffic has to go somewhere. Such measures make London one of the worst cities in which to drive.

As has already been made plain, not everyone can take public transport. If people need tools or equipment for work, they have no choice other than to drive. People in the public sector will be affected, including Met police officers and NHS workers who have to drive into London to work in hospitals. I declare an interest: my wife will be one of those affected. It will also affect people in the private sector such as tradespeople going about their work trying to get to and from their place of business. All of those people will have their lives made more difficult by Mayor Khan. Let us be honest: he does not like cars and he does not seem to like car drivers, either.

A black cabbie said to me a few weeks ago, “I’ve been doing this job for over 30 years and I have never known the traffic in London to be as bad as it is now. Between all the road closures and the roadworks it is virtually impossible to get anywhere and it is about time someone raised it in Parliament.” Well, Bill—I think that was his name—now they have. Bill the cabbie was absolutely right. It is becoming incredibly difficult to drive across our capital city because there are so few arteries that we can take. If there is an accident or heavy roadworks on one of the arteries, that whole part of London an rapidly grind to a halt.

[Theresa Villiers]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Francois]

In return for earlier, I am glad to.

[Theresa Villiers]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that in an age when we are trying to become a more productive economy, it is madness to make it more difficult to get around our capital city, which generates so much of our GDP? That is crazy.

[Mr Francois]

Yes. Perhaps it is a function of my age, but I can remember a time when the fastest way to get across London was to hop in a cab. It is certainly not that way now. We have about half the number of black cab drivers that we had prior to the pandemic, which is a fantastic drop-off, bearing in mind that it takes an average of three or four years to do the knowledge and get a green badge. Many of them have given up. From talking to them or to friends of people who have given up, we find that many have done so partly because of their age—that was an effect of the pandemic—but that many others have given up because it is so difficult to get across London. It is just too stressful a way to earn a living. That is why sometimes people can wait quite a long while to get a black cab in London. There are far fewer around than there were. If anybody knows about the challenges of driving across London, I would suggest that black cab drivers are well-placed to comment.

One of the other great problems is roadworks, which have a great effect on air quality. One of the most frustrating things about modern life, is it not, is spending ages in a car crawling ever so slowly forward toward the lights to get through that contraflow, only to finally make it through the lights and drive past a perfectly coned-off big hole in the ground with absolutely no one in sight doing any work on it at all? How many people get wound up by that?

We have had a proliferation of roadworks in my county of Essex. We are the roadworks capital of the UK. In a recently recorded 12-month period, we had 77,000 roadworks of one kind or another. I cannot blame that on Mayor Khan. I could talk about the utility companies or Essex County Council’s highways, but there is just too much to say. I have launched a “Can the Cones” campaign, which the Minister kindly agreed to meet me about in March. One thing he was looking at was lane rental—not ULEZ—which involves making contractors pay by the day to dig up roads. In the parts of the country where that has been brought in, contractors, funnily enough, tend to get the job done much quicker. Perhaps in the Minister’s reply he could spare a moment to say where he has got to on that.

Essex County Council, I am pleased to say, has come around to the idea and is working on a joint scheme with Suffolk to introduce it. The reason why it is so important is that as communities have grown historically, we have tended to find that most of the utilities have been laid on a very limited number of roads, and those are the ones that get dug up again and again. They would be ideal candidates for which to bring in some form of lane rental.

I thank the House for its forbearance, and I would summarise the issue as follows: ULEZ is going to be, if it is introduced—I hope the Mayor might yet relent—a tax on ordinary, hard-working men and people of this country, who will be penalised £12.50 a day for having the temerity to want to go to work to earn money and put food on their family’s plates. That is what Mayor Khan is doing. The whole bit about air quality is complete camouflage. It is not about that; it is about the money. For that reason, the petitioners are right: rather than the cars, it is ULEZ that should be scrapped.

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for opening the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee, and I thank the other hon. Members who have contributed. It is unusual to see the Tory party all in solidarity with one another. Everyone agreed with one another, which is not something we often see in the House.

[Mr Francois]

We can’t talk to the Labour party; they’re not here.

[Gill Furniss]

Air pollution is a serious yet solvable problem. The Government’s figures estimate that between 28,000 and 36,000 deaths are attributed to air pollution each year, or between 80 and 100 deaths each and every day. Three years ago, nine-year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah became the first person to have air pollution listed as a cause of death by the coroner. That heartbreaking case demonstrates the urgency with which we must tackle air pollution.

Currently, the UK air quality limit stands at 20 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic metre of air, which is four times higher than the World Health Organisation’s target of 5 micrograms. The Government are only committed to reducing the limit to 10 micrograms as late as 2040. Sadly, the World Health Organisation guidelines for air pollution continue to be missed across London.

Transport is a leading cause of air pollution, estimated to contribute 35% of nitrogen oxide pollution and 13% of PM_2.5 pollution in 2021. Those stark figures must not be ignored, and we need action from the Government to address the problem. The fact is that many local authorities have had little choice but to implement clean air zones because of the years of inaction on air pollution at a national level. The Government require local authorities to take steps to improve air quality, but this Government’s inaction on the main sources of air pollution means that local authorities are left with few options to clean up their air. Given the funding and powers available to local authorities, clean air zones are, in practice, one of the only viable mechanisms available to them to meet their legal requirements.

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[Mr Holden]

I tend to agree with my hon. Friend. The Mayor put the idea of an expanded ULEZ in his manifesto, but it was not the expanded zone that we see today, which was only delivered by the votes of the Labour party, the Lib Dems and the Greens in the London Assembly. They voted to extend it right to the outer borders of Greater London, rather than what the Mayor of London had proposed in his manifesto.

The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough shouted at me from a sedentary position that whatever we are providing for the bus sector is still not enough. I would love her to tell me how much more we should put in. When I speak to Labour politicians at the moment, none of them can tell me. They have no plan. They are just an opportunistic Opposition. This Government have put more than ever before into the bus network. We have capped prices for working people, which is something the Labour party never did when it was in office. Right up and down the country we have put in the new bus service operators grant of 22p per kilometre, which now includes electric buses—something that was not the case just a few years ago. We remain committed to an end date for non-zero emission buses, and that consultation will be reported on soon.

[Mr Francois]

We have concentrated mainly on roads in this debate, but as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) introduced the topic, does the Minister agree with the simple proposition that our rail network would run much more efficiently if the rail unions stopped going on strike?

[Mr Holden]

I have to agree with my right hon. Friend. I was attacking on so many different fronts that I forgot to mention the elephant in the room, which is the continuing rail strikes by people who have been incredibly financially supportive of the Labour party over the years.

Although there is a huge amount more to be done, we can be proud that air pollution has reduced significantly since 2010. Emissions of fine particulate matter have fallen by 10%; transport emissions of nitrous oxide have fallen by 32%, overall nitrogen oxide by 45% and sulphur dioxide by 73%. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough might criticise a reduction of three quarters in the amount of sulphur dioxide and wish that we could go further. I want to go further too, which is why we are phasing out internal combustion engine vehicles. If she wants to go further, would she outline exactly how far and fast she would like to go?

The only statutory air quality limit that the UK is currently not hitting as fast as we would like is for nitrogen dioxide around our road network, but we are making massive progress there. Around 72% of the road transport emissions of nitrogen oxides comes from diesel cars and vans, which we are phasing out. If we are going to introduce a ULEZ across Greater London requiring £250 million of capital cost, which is going to be phased out anyway because of the fact that we will be moving, in pretty short order, towards electric vehicles, particularly in smaller areas, it seems to be particularly targeted—I think the Conservative speakers really picked this up—on those who use second-hand cars and who, because they cannot afford to buy new vehicles, will be running those cars for a long time. It is particularly pernicious to put those people at the front of the list.