Net-Zero Carbon Emissions

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend Lord Teverson for giving us the opportunity today to discuss such an important issue and for his excellent and inspiring speech.

Transport is a vital part of the jigsaw in the attempt to reach net zero. It is responsible for about a third of our CO₂ emissions and, most significantly, while other sectors have seen significant reductions in total emissions, those from transport have hardly changed, despite significant advances in technology. The legacy of Covid should be that we can build back better but, frustratingly, so far, despite all the talk of how wonderful it is to be able to work efficiently from home, as people return to the office or to the shops, the fear of the disease has meant that they are slow to return to public transport and have gone back to car travel in a big way. This is a crucial period, when we need central and local government leadership working together.

With local elections coming up in England, and general elections for the devolved Parliaments in Wales and Scotland, this debate provides a very timely opportunity to look at the urgent need for a more effective partnership between the various tiers of government in the UK—because the UK Government cannot do it all. Their favoured model of providing some pump-priming money and holding a competition where local authorities are asked to bid for it is of only limited use. Too often, the money goes to the local authorities that are bigger and most geared up to write a good bid; thus the funding goes to the stronger, rather than to support the weaker ones. And, of course, government criteria are often hazy and the money goes disproportionately to those local authorities whose political faces fit. I fear that the Government look as though they will do the same thing in future with money that is currently part of the devolved Governments’ budgets and that the Government intend to apply the same centralisation process.

The Government have plenty of targets on reducing emissions. Some could be a lot more ambitious but that is not the main problem; it is the lack of stepping stones towards meeting those targets. That is not just my view. The National Audit Office recently reported on the Government’s actions in relation to ultra-low emission vehicles. It pointed out that, despite the Government spending over £1 billion of public money over 10 years to incentivise ultra-low emission vehicles, overall carbon emissions from cars have not reduced. It concluded:

“The lack of an integrated plan with specific milestones for carbon reductions from cars has resulted in a lack of clarity over what value the public money should be delivering … departments have not been able to demonstrate value for money.”


It also concluded that there was a need for a clearer plan and a more targeted approach, not just based on EV sales.

It is not just the lack of specific milestones: sometimes the Government seem to be marching entirely in the wrong direction. This self-harm can be inexplicable. For instance, in the last few months, this Government—who say that they are proud to host COP 26 this year—have increased rail fares above inflation while continuing to freeze fuel duty, hence encouraging car travel and deterring rail travel. What did rail passengers do wrong? Why are they worth less than the car drivers? At the same time, the Government have cut grants to encourage purchases of EVs, just when they are beginning to gather momentum and long before the strategic network of charging points is strong enough for EV owners to still be regarded as anything other than pioneers.

When two or three EV owners gather together—usually in the queue for the charging point—they swap horror stories of broken equipment, sparsity of charge points and so on. I have owned an EV for four years, and ever since then I have taken part in debates here, in APPGs, in round tables and so on. The complaints and problems have not changed. The Government have legislative powers to ensure that there is standardisation of equipment and that existing petrol stations modernise and cater for EVs too. They have powers to ensure easier payment systems and so on, but they have not used those powers. To make progress, they need to work more closely with local authorities so that they all come up to the standard of the best. My noble friend Lord Newby, earlier today, was praising the number and quality of charge points in north Norfolk, where council car parks are very well set up to attract EV drivers. He contrasted this with the low numbers of charging points on motorways, where so many are out of service. This problem has existed for years: motorways are the Government’s responsibility, so why has there not been any central government action?

Sometimes government transport policy seems to march in exactly the opposite direction from net zero. Take their policy on their roads plan for England—the second roads investment strategy—worth £27 billion. This is currently being challenged in the courts by the Transport Action Network. The Government have said that the additional CO emissions from this road-building programme would be negligible. Academics giving evidence in court say that the real impact will be 100 times greater, because the Government have not taken into account new traffic, the building process or the true long-term impact. If we cannot trust the Government to do the sums honestly on a subject such as the climate crisis, what can we trust them on?

Historically, most of our air quality regulations owe their origins to the EU, and we have had a poor record as a nation for achieving them. In the post-Brexit world, the Government have to decide to be much more rigorous with themselves and to take real leadership on climate change issues. That means much more than proudly announcing new targets for a time so far ahead that it always seems easy to put it off until tomorrow.

Central government must set the structure within which local authorities operate. Two years ago, the Liberal Democrats produced a strategy for improving air quality, and some of the points from that help to explain what I mean. We need government leadership via a new clean air Act and a statutory independent air quality agency. We need obligations on local authorities, including ones to test and monitor emissions. Central government must invest in research. It should structure vehicle taxation and fuel taxation to discourage use of the most polluting vehicles. Will the Minister tell us why it currently does not cost more in tax to drive a highly polluting SUV than to drive a low-emission vehicle?

The Local Government Association asks for an overarching transport settlement, with control by local authorities of all transport funding, to create unified sustainable travel plans suitable for the characteristics of their areas. It wants a guarantee of a five-year infrastructure budget, because you need long-term investment and planning to make major changes to transport networks.

Our Liberal Democrat strategy had a host of actions which, to be most effective, should lie with local authorities—everything from enforcing legislation needed to make it illegal to idle your car outside schools, to creating and enforcing local taxi licensing regulations which encourage the switch to low-emission vehicles, to an obligation to encourage active travel and provide safe routes to school.

Most prominent among local authority powers should be the creation of an efficient public transport network, with green buses, trams and electrified railways. The Government have recently announced an ambitious bus strategy, and last year they announced an ambitious plan to purchase hundreds of zero-carbon buses made in UK. But time has ticked away and there has been relatively little progress on this so far. To deliver on these promises, the Government have to fill in the detail very soon. They need to trust local authorities and work properly with them.

Railway building and longer-distance buses need co-operation on a wider regional basis. One of the longest established of these wider regional organisations is Transport for the North, a legacy of George Osborne. But here we see a pattern repeated so often by the UK Government: to establish a locally based organisation and then to undermine it when it does not do exactly what central government wants. Transport for the North lost a lot of its funding and its project on smart ticketing, which has been taken back into a new centralised government committee.

The Government have to learn that to reach zero carbon in the UK, we have to reach zero carbon everywhere in the UK: north and south; town and country; whichever political party runs the council; and in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as England. Solutions have to be tapered to the local circumstances using local authority and devolved government knowledge. To do this, central government must trust devolved Administrations and local authorities with long-term budgets and give them the advice, skills and support they need to deliver.