EV Strategy: (ECC Committee Report)

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on her introduction and her committee’s work. She is the most amazing Member of our House, and I think we have to appreciate her effort in actually making life greener.

The Green Party wants to switch to electric vehicles to make a real transformation in how people travel and move around. We want the cars, alongside the electric buses and vans, to be a real game-changer. We want all new cars to be zero emission by 2027, with the aim of being able to remove all petrol and diesel cars from our roads by 2035, but that means making them affordable and having a charging point wherever people need them: so, if you are teacher, you need one at school; if you live in terraced housing, you need one on the street close to you; and, if you make long trips, you need chargers at every roadside stop-off.

We have to keep this real. The fact is that electric vehicles will not help with climate change emissions unless all those charging points are run from renewable energy. If they are not, we will just be transporting the pollution somewhere else—somewhere possibly more rural, where it is even worse. We have to do this properly. Of course, we also have to make batteries that can last for years and years; there should be no throwaway culture when it comes to batteries. Electric vehicles will not completely cut roadside pollution. They will not, for example, cut the particulates coming off tyres and brakes, which is quite a big factor in air pollution. Electric vehicles will not stop congestion or cut the number of people killed or injured on our roads—the statistics are horrifying at the moment. There are also environmental trade-offs. Building any car takes raw materials, sometimes toxic materials, and adds to the planetary burden that we humans create.

For those obsessed with the cost of doing this, they should always ask: what is the cost of not doing it? The fact is that climate change is coming at us like an express train. When we look at what is happening in America—indeed, all over the world—we see that the weather patterns are very different. The hurricanes in America were exacerbated by climate change. We could experience something similar here, so we have to move fast. Therefore, however much this costs, we have to ask exactly how much it will cost if we do not do it.

EVs are expensive, however. We need a well-funded scrappage scheme along with a transport system that gives people a genuine choice. The real solution is traffic reduction. More people on buses, bikes and local trains means fewer cars on the road, which means less pollution, less congestion and fewer casualties. Instead of owning a car, many would prefer a mix of car, bus and rail, with electric car clubs set up all over the country and offering car use on the cheap—or relatively cheap. The transition to electric vehicles is a real opportunity to think about how we travel and whether we need car rental, instead of car ownership. After all, people now download or stream, rather than own things. It is time, perhaps, to apply the same approach to driving. It could happen if the Government put enough money and focus on making car clubs convenient, cheap and reliable, but also, of course, on public transport. I very much hope that this Labour Government will take the issue of traffic reduction very seriously. It is the only way forward.