Electric Vehicles and Bicycles

Debate between Andrew Selous and Stephen Kerr

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous]

I have to very respectfully disagree with my hon. Friend. I bow to no one in my defence of high-quality British jobs. I absolutely accept the anxiety, but we can sustain those conventional jobs. Very soon, there will be so much pent-up demand for electric vehicles that the car workers in his constituency, and that of the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham), will not be able to keep up with the demand for these new energy vehicles—as they are called in China—from our constituents when we reach that 2022 tipping point. It is the obvious thing for our constituents to do.

The transport sector is now the largest source of carbon dioxide in the country. Emissions in the transport sector went up in 2017. If we bring forward the 2040 date, that would address a large part of the gap to which the Committee on Climate Change has drawn our attention.

We need to make huge progress in the fleet sector, and we can do that now. There are about 25,000 central Government fleet vehicles in the UK. The Government say a quarter of those should be electric by 2022—that is a much less ambitious target than India and China have announced for their fleets. Let us go for a 100% Government electric vehicle fleet by 2022, including those run by local councils. We have a long way to go; only two of the Ministry of Justice’s 1,482 vehicles are electric. Let me praise Dundee City Council, which has 83 electric vehicles—the most of any UK local authority. It has also brought in a charging hub for the public and taxis, with four 50 kW and three 32 kW chargers. Well done, Dundee.

There is the serious issue of company car tax. There is a lunatic progression: at the moment, the rate of company car tax for zero-emission vehicles is 9%, which is due to rise to 16% before going down to 2%. Let us get it down to 2%; let us signal our intention, not make it worse for the area that we are trying to encourage.

We should be ambitious on sales targets. Let us go for 15% by 2022, 45% by 2025 and 85% by 2030 and get on with electric charging infrastructure.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good point. We have the objective for 2040—I agree that it is not very ambitious compared with other targets that we could have set—but we do not have any adequate milestones to get us there. My hon. Friend has laid that out, and that is exactly what the Government need to do.

[Andrew Selous]

I have great confidence in the Minister. I think he gets it, and I am genuinely trying to be helpful to make sure that Britain is a world leader in this important industry of the future.

I said that this is the third debate on electric vehicles, but we are making history today, because I am informed that this is the first House of Commons debate on electric bicycles. Hon. Members who have read their Order Paper carefully will have seen that the debate is also about the take-up of electric bicycles. Most people probably do not know anything about them. Six weeks ago, I knew nothing about them, until I was asked to chair a meeting of the all-party parliamentary cycling group—I am delighted to see my co-chair, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) in the debate. I found out about them and I was lent an electric bike for 10 days or so by the Green Commute Initiative, for which I was very grateful.

In my constituency, I live on a hill. I cycle with a conventional bike in London, but at the grand old age of 56, I found that extra boost helped me to get to and from my constituency office on a daily basis, and on one day twice. With my electric bike, I took more exercise that week than I have probably taken all year. That is the thing about electric bikes: they open up cycling to older people, and people who are anxious about ability or fitness, people wanting to arrive somewhere sweat- free when there are no workplace shower facilities. They can deal with carrying luggage and shopping; even commercial cargo is easy on an e-bike.