Greater London Low Emission Zone Charging (Amendment) Bill

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Friday 22nd March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head.

Progress is being achieved. The vast majority of cars —19 out of 20 in Greater London—are compliant with ULEZ. Labour Members are pleased that Transport for London and the Mayor of London have decided to expand the scrappage scheme to support those who are struggling as a result of the Tory cost of living crisis.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)]

I am listening with interest to the hon. Lady’s speech. The Government obviously support the Bill in the circumstances applied. Will she address the point that is fairly made about people outside a mayoral zone being affected and penalised by entering a mayoral zone, when they did not vote for that?

[Lilian Greenwood]

Unusual as it is for the Minister to intervene, I think the point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford). When people from outside London drive into London, the costs of that in terms of health, and wear and tear on the roads, is borne by constituents here in London. It is not unreasonable for them to expect that those who benefit from everything that London has to offer, who travel into the centre causing congestion and poor air quality, should abide by the well-established principle that the polluter pays.

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[Kerry McCarthy]

I suffer from hay fever virtually all the year round. I would have thought it would be worse in the countryside, but it is terrible when I am in London. I was in Paris in January and the hay fever took off suddenly because of the air pollution levels. Hay fever is not lethal in the way that asthma attacks can be, but it is a pretty grim condition to have to live with. It affects people’s ability to do their work and to study, for instance.

As I said earlier, the Government were forced to act on air pollution after being taken to court by ClientEarth, to which I pay tribute for its continuing efforts through the legal system to hold the Government to account in respect of their environmental targets. As a result of that court case, Bristol was asked to act. I have already made the point about the irony, perhaps, of demanding local autonomy in some cases and demanding not to be told what to do by the Mayor of London, but in Bristol the Secretary of State told us we had to do that.

[Guy Opperman]

The hon. Lady is making a fair point, but we have to recognise the issue of scale. In Bristol, the clean air zone is barely 2 square miles—it is about 1 mile by 2 miles—and specifically took into account individuals and businesses. The Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford does not seek to get rid of the congestion zone or the first ULEZ expansion, yet the second expansion of ULEZ, in contrast to Bristol’s 2 square miles, is approximately 600 square miles, at 50 miles by 50 miles. That is so monumentally bigger than anything contemplated in Bristol or other cities.

[Kerry McCarthy]

London has the Greater London Assembly, a Mayor with devolved powers and Transport for London, so this issue is looked at on a London-wide basis. There is an issue in Bristol with people coming into the city centre from places like Bath, but the boroughs are not so interwoven that we cannot see the borders between them, and we do not have the interconnectivity that London has. In Bristol, we were told that we had to bring air pollution levels within legal limits as quickly as possible. We went to great lengths with the modelling to deal with concerns about the economic and social impact. As the Minister said, making the zone as small as possible was one of the factors in that.

It is relevant to talk about the Bristol scheme because it shows what can be achieved by similar measures in London. The scheme came into effect in November 2022, and in January this year we had the first annual report on its effectiveness. It was judged to have been highly successful. The headline figure was that air pollution across all measured sites had declined by 9.7%. The success of the CAZ is measured by whether it lowers nitrogen dioxide levels below the legal limit of 40 micrograms per cubic metre. In November 2022, when the scheme was introduced, there were 18 sites across Bristol above the legal limit. Just 12 months later, that was down to just six zones. The scheme was particularly effective outside the Bristol Royal Infirmary and the Bristol Children’s Hospital, which are bang in the middle of the city centre. Air pollution was down by an incredible 26.9%. I defy anyone to tell me that such big improvements in air quality in areas where there are very sick and vulnerable people, including sick children, is a bad thing. It has been really successful.

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[Kerry McCarthy]

Exactly—there is very complicated modelling involved. Also, if we can use measures such as these to take some cars off the road, that increases the attractiveness of public transport, because the buses can get to where they are meant to be without being stuck in traffic.

[Guy Opperman]

Surely the hon. Lady is making an argument in support of the Bill—for having small congestion zones in the centre of cities, allowing the public transport to get to where it is meant to be, but not massive 600 square mile congestion zones such as the present expanded ULEZ?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I was thinking in the context of the right hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) saying that he does not have a tube station in his part of Greater London, as though the only alternative to the tube is driving. London has a pretty decent bus system, but we need to make sure that people have that alternative.

Again, I am going to say something nice: we have had confirmation today that First Bus has received funding under the next wave of the zero-emission bus regional areas scheme to turn all of our buses into electric vehicles. We have been experimenting with biogas, but that funding will do an awful lot. We do have some clean biogas buses, and my right hon. and learned Friend the leader of the Labour party got to drive one on one of his previous visits to the city. He was like a little boy with a new toy, it has to be said—I think he greatly enjoyed it.

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[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in opposition to the Bill. It is interesting to follow the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell). On the day that he was elected to this place, I remember campaigning and talking to residents, who said, “We are not going to vote Labour, as we have always done before, because we’ll have to pay £12.50 every day to drive on our local roads.” My colleague said, “How will it affect you? What car do you drive?” and the guy at this one house said, “Well, there it is—it’s a Toyota Prius.” On the day of that election, thousands of people were told, and some still believe, that every single person driving a vehicle in Greater London has to pay £12.50 a day. That is not true, and that myth is still going around.

I do not want to undermine the fact that about 5% of vehicles in London are non-compliant. I accept that the expansion forced people who drive non-compliant vehicles, for work or for personal use, to make decisions, as others had to when the original ULEZ boundary was introduced. I will come on to that aspect of the scrappage scheme later.

[Guy Opperman]

The hon. Lady will be aware that Transport for London’s impact assessment states that there is likely to be a disproportionate negative impact

“for people on low incomes who travel by a non-compliant private vehicle in outer London to access employment…or opportunities”.

It is those organisations and individuals who are being affected by the policy.

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[Mr French]

No, the hon. Gentleman has only just come in.

The public do not need me to tell them that London devolution is broken, with TfL requiring Government bail-out after Government bail-out, London now being the slowest city in the world to drive in, and the Metropolitan police and London Fire Brigade in special measures.

[Guy Opperman]

I credit my hon. Friend for the speech he is giving. Is not the key issue here the democratic deficit for those outside the mayoral zone? A decision was made by the Mayor, which we know was not backed by a manifesto, and it is now impacting the wider communities my hon. and right hon. Friends represent, from Harlow to Bexley and Crayford. Surely the issue is how we navigate the desire to comply with the legislation—that is why the Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) does not say that we are scrapping it entirely—and the ability of individuals to have their say on whether this is the appropriate measure.

[Mr French]

I thank the Roads Minister for his intervention. I agree completely; there is a huge democratic deficit at play here. As he correctly points out, the charge affects people outside the zone who need to come into London, and it is having a significant negative impact on the likes of Crayford and Bexley village in my constituency, which are hundreds of meters away from the so-called London boundary and whose businesses are losing customers every single day because of the expansion.

The people of Bexley, who quite clearly rejected this policy in the sham of a public consultation we had, have been completely ignored. That is why I have no doubt that in a few weeks’ time they will be voting, like I will, to sack Sadiq Khan after eight years of failure. The public out there do not need me to tell them that London and the surrounding counties cannot afford another four years of Sadiq Khan and Labour running London. The plans to toll the Blackwall tunnel and install cameras on small residential closes and roads shows that ULEZ is not the end of the Mayor’s desire to hammer motorists in Bexley and outer London—people can look up Project Detroit themselves.

On 2 May, Londoners will be able to vote for Susan Hall and vote for change, to make London better and safer for everybody. People in Greater London do not need me to tell them who is on their side; they will see it with their own eyes as the Labour party desperately tries to block this Bill.

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[Fleur Anderson]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend is right that a fair amount of the vehicle excise duty is not being spent in London. Despite being hamstrung in many ways, the Mayor of London has been world-leading—he is going around the world to talk about the action he is taking on clean air. What we really need is the Mayor of London being able to pull in the same direction as the Government. We need a national strategy that goes as far and as fast on clean air as the Mayor has done in London. That is why it would be good if there was not only a Labour Mayor, but a London Government, because they would be able to work hand in hand to achieve that. That would be good for all of us wherever we go, and not just in London, but across the country.

[Guy Opperman]

The hon. Lady criticised the funding in answer to her hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), but surely she is aware that the Department for Transport has given £6.4 billion in funding to the Mayor of London. That is not insignificant by any stretch.

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank the Minister for raising that, but that is not equivalent to the amount actually raised by Londoners and that goes to the rest of the country, which we understand, but that should be a factor when talking about how the ULEZ money, for example, is paid. Further to the Minister’s point, there are the concerns about those areas outside ULEZ that do not receive the same amount of funding. They are represented by their local representatives, who should have a strategy for responding to ULEZ being expanded to those areas of London as well.

The Putney Society in my constituency is a local amenity group of fantastic local people. They have chosen to concentrate on clean air because it is one of the issues of most concern. As a result of concern over the levels of atmospheric pollution in Putney, especially on the high street, the society has carried out a series of citizen science exercises over the past 10 years or so to measure the levels of nitrogen dioxide. Those have been one-off exercises measuring pollution for a month at a time. With the generous help and support of the local environmental health team, they have been able to mount a series of monthly tests, enabling them to see what the levels look like in the longer term. The highest level they found was—not surprisingly—at the northern end of Putney High Street, where it was 62.9 micrograms and 57.6 micrograms per cubic metre of air. In Putney Bridge Road, it was almost as high at 50.7 micrograms. Putney Cross and Upper Richmond Road were both in the mid-40s.

To put those results in context, we need to bear in mind that, although the agreed statutory maximum level is 40 micrograms per cubic metre of air, that is essentially an interim target level, whereas the agreed World Health Organisation safe level is 10 micrograms per cubic metre. Consequently, the levels that Putney Society recorded are still disturbingly high. I went into that detail because I do not think the high levels we have on our London roads are properly acknowledged in the Bill. Reining back the good results of ULEZ to a smaller area would mean leaving those larger areas outside the South Circular, which cuts through my constituency, and people in the whole of that area with those high levels of air pollution. That is simply not acceptable.

I support the implementation of ULEZ because we have a public health emergency. I am concerned about the impact on the health of children and vulnerable adults, so action is needed. I do not want to die earlier, and I do not want any of my constituents to die earlier, but that is what is happening. The existing ULEZ has been proven to change behaviour, and we need that change in behaviour to clean our air so that more Londoners will benefit. I welcome the extension of the scrappage scheme, which happened after consultation, for low-income and disabled Londoners and for charities to have their minibuses exempted. I welcome the additional time given to charities and small businesses to comply with ULEZ. I support and wish to see in the Bill no more bus route reductions, improvements in public transport and 100% green buses. I welcome investment in better public services as a result of the fines charged by ULEZ and the introduction of the Superloop. We also need to invest in more safe cycle routes, safe cycle storage and local cycle delivery bikes. We are proud in Putney to have an e-bike delivery scheme for our local businesses, which picks up waste and gets rid of it. We also have more local bus delivery routes available.

We need to make clear what is being funded by the ULEZ fund so that Londoners see the benefit of investment in local services and cycle provision as well as knowing that the air is healthier and that their lives will be healthier. I have been inspired by parents campaigning for change, including Mums for Lungs, which is based locally, and Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, the mother of Ella Kissi-Debrah, who died of asthma 11 years ago. If I had a daughter die in such tragic circumstances, I do not know what I would have done, but she has been so brave, courageous and inspirational in finding out and exposing the reasons for Ella’s death—the high levels of pollution—and in taking so much action to counter that issue. I also thank the Putney Society, Putney Pollution Busters, the London Sustainability Exchange, King’s College London, Clean Air in London and the Healthy Air Coalition for all the work that they do exposing pollution and taking action together for local people.

This is a huge issue for people across my constituency and across London. We cannot start to meet clean air targets without ULEZ. People in outer London are disproportionately affected, as more older people live in outer London. Recent analysis by Asthma and Lung UK has shown that the UK has the worst death rate for lung conditions in western Europe. Surely that demands urgent action, not reining in our action.

Toxic air is also shortening lives. Every year, 36,000 people in the UK die a premature death as a result of toxic air, and 4,000 of them are in London. We can see that we need action in London, but we also need it across the country. Let us look at outer London. In Dartford, for example, the equivalent of 66 deaths a year are attributable to long-term exposure to particulate air pollution. This is not just an inner-London issue; we need ULEZ expansion to the outer London boroughs.

Air pollution is killing us, and children are particularly vulnerable, but poor communities and black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are the worst affected. Eleven Londoners a day die prematurely because of air pollution. In Wandsworth—my constituents’ borough —129 deaths every year are attributable to the effects of toxic air. Before the ULEZ expansion, which the Bill would undo, only a small part of my constituency was covered by the ultra low emission zone, because the south circular cuts through my constituency. My constituents faced a postcode lottery, with only those on one side of the road covered by the clean air zone. Why should only some of my constituents, who live on the right side of an arbitrary boundary, be able to breathe cleaner air? It is far better to have a larger area covered that is much more consistent with where the polluted air is. If we sit back and do nothing to reduce air pollution, about 550,000 Londoners will develop diseases.

I have talked about the impact on small businesses. It is an issue that I have raised with small businesses on Putney High Street, who have said that the dirty air is holding back their businesses. We want Hammersmith bridge reopened—I cannot resist saying that and will do so whenever I can—but we also need the continuation of the ULEZ.

A report commissioned by the Clean Air Fund concluded that improving air quality could bring an annual boost of £1.6 billion to the UK economy through 3 million additional working days and a reduction in early retirement. The evidence shows us that ULEZ works, and that it has been hugely successful, with 5 million more people expected to breathe clean air.

I end with the words of a constituent—a doctor—who wrote to me and said:

“This Bill will send the capital backwards and is counter to the devolutionary system of our politics. Just as we are beginning to see the benefits of ULEZ, I am dismayed…that this Private Member’s Bill will make already poor air quality worse, harming Londoners’ health—particularly that of children. To make matters worse, the Bill takes the important decision about the air we breathe away from us as Londoners, and undermines our democratically elected mayor—who is accountable to us and will shortly be tested in the May elections.”

That is where such a decision should be made. I urge all hon. Members to put our health first, to support Mayor Sadiq Khan’s action to clean up our air, and to oppose the Bill.