Sale of New Petrol and Diesel Cars and Vans

Debate between David Drew and Peter Kyle

Thursday 4th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

I am very grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker. You will be pleased to hear that I have got my speech down to 12 minutes. Interventions allowing, I will crack on.

My hon. Friend makes another very good point. It is great that we are making batteries in this country and I thank the Government for launching the Faraday challenge, which is important in inspiring and nurturing the sector, but we need to do a lot more. There is absolutely no doubt about that. The ambition of operators needs to be matched by the ambition of the Government for the electrical vehicle infrastructure itself. Otherwise, it will not succeed.

Right now, trends are emerging globally. We therefore have a window of opportunity that we cannot afford to lose. We must not miss out on this opportunity to establish Britain as a world leader in design, manufacture, assembly, and distribution for electric vehicles and their component parts. Industry cannot do that alone. As the interventions I have taken prove, the industry needs the Government to be an active and generous partner at these nascent stages of one of the world’s most significant emerging consumer trends.

Increasingly, electrified transport will become a normalised part of British life. People will experience it for themselves regularly from now on. As they do so, suspicion of its practicality will fall away. For example, in just 18 months’ time there will be 9,000 fully electric black cabs on the streets of London. As part of our inquiry, we visited the London EV Company and saw for ourselves the cutting-edge skills and technology being deployed by this great Coventry-based firm. Its product sets new standards, raising the bar on passenger comfort. Cab drivers love it, too. Next month, Brighton and Hove takes delivery of its first fully electric bus, and London already has several on the roads. When I was walking through Westminster a little while ago, I heard an extraordinary squeaking noise. I turned around and there was a double-decker bus. The only thing I could hear was the squeaking of the tyres as the bus made its way down the road. These are extraordinary innovations, which will transform not only our ability to tackle climate change, and the passenger and driver experience, but our lives in cities, because of the lack of the noise pollution that goes along with the combustion engine.

Our Government have a target of “almost every car and van” being zero emission by 2050, and for new cars and vans to be “effectively” zero emission by 2040. Our Committee found several faults with those targets. First, the phraseology used by the Government leaves plenty of room for interpretation. It is too vague to have bite. Secondly, the target dates themselves are miles behind other nations. China, India and Norway will all phase out petrol and diesel vehicles over the next decade, so why cannot we? Perversely, we are not even managing to beat countries within our own United Kingdom—Scotland has a target of 2032. Moreover, the motor manufacturers themselves are not hanging around for our targets. Honda will be producing electric-only vehicles within seven years, Porsche by 2030.

All those factors lead me to believe that when it comes to electric vehicles, the ambition of consumers, operators and manufacturers is outstripping that of our Government. If the UK is serious about being an EV world leader, as our Government claim to be, we must bring forward a clear, unambiguous target to achieve zero emissions from cars and vans by 2032. To achieve that target, Government will need far more ambition not just in its rhetoric, but in its action on the ground.

We need a revolutionary approach to charging infra- structure —not the incremental one that we have right now.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Would my hon. Friend accept that, as well as more charging points, we need a proper economic structure to maintain them? From my experience, that is not working on the ground. Does he agree?

[Peter Kyle]

I cannot disagree with my hon. Friend, particularly in an era when councils like Brighton and Hove City Council have experienced cuts of over 45% to their budget. We are investing massively in new infra- structure, but maintaining it will be a crucial challenge. We need to share the costs with the people who make money from the charging infrastructure, such as the electric companies, and the people who use the service. We also need to ensure that, for the sake of our climate change objectives, these things are subsidised as well. The cash must be there in the system.

The Government have absented themselves from the opportunity to become the driving force in making access to publicly available charging stations ubiquitous, and have instead devolved responsibilities to cash-strapped local authorities. As a result, a quarter of local authorities have not installed a single EV charging point in the last year. That is simply not good enough.

In the coming months, Brighton and Hove City Council will install 200 charging points across the city. Next week, I shall be joining one of the teams to see for myself what it takes to create a modern charging network. I am pleased to say that a representative of Brighton and Hove City Council who is leading on the programme is here with us in the Chamber today—I welcome Pete Turner to our debate.

Some 60% of EV charging takes place at home, which is why so many people feel liberated from being dependent on fuel stations; but for those of us who, like me, live in flats or high-density housing, on-street charging is essential. My street is scheduled to have two charging points installed in the coming months. Several London boroughs are converting street lights into charging stations.

So we know that the technology and expertise exists, and we really need to get on with it. My fear is that cities like Brighton and Hove will become exemplars in public charging facilities but others will not. That is great for people who want to drive to our city, but unless surrounding towns, cities and destinations are suitably equipped, it will not be great for people who live in Brighton and Hove who want to get out and about in their cars. Charging a car should not be a postcode lottery. EV owners should not have to do research before setting out on a trip. Infrastructure should be ubiquitous and should be evenly distributed throughout our country, and only active Government participation can make that happen.

Until EVs reach the scale of production that we have seen for conventional vehicles, their cost will remain higher. Until then, the Government also need to level the playing field with incentives. Tax breaks and other incentives work—there is no escaping that fact. Last October, when the Government suddenly cut the plug-in scheme, growth in sales of plug-in hybrids plummeted from 29.5%, which we had achieved in the previous 10 months, to just 1.7%. That was highlighted just an hour ago on the BBC website, where it was reported that the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders had said that

“sales of plug-in hybrid cars had halved”

in the last year,

“while hybrid electric vehicle sales were down 4.7%.”

Transport accounts for 26% of our CO₂ emissions, adding another layer of urgency to the need for electrification of our road transport.

As all of us who sat on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee inquiry learned, the transition to electric vehicles is about a lot more than just cars on the road. Its impact will be far and wide. It will change patterns in daily life for most citizens. Implications for policy makers range from the infrastructure of our nation, such as electricity generation, to the distributional challenges for our national grid—and the ability to capitalise on new resources with millions of batteries to be drawn down on at peak times, just as we need to charge them at others. People’s homes will adapt, so that people can fuel their car from home.

Also, of course, the transition is inextricably linked to our ability to tackle climate change and the climate emergency, to meet levels of CO₂ emissions reduction that our country and planet need from all of us. That is why this debate is so welcomed and so important. It is also why it is the start, not the end, of what I hope is ongoing parliamentary involvement from this point forward.