Electric Vehicles and Bicycles

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Jesse Norman)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I am only sad that I have, now, four minutes, until 5.43.

[Steve McCabe (in the Chair)]

Until 5.45.

[Jesse Norman]

But do I not have to allow two minutes for my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous)?

[Steve McCabe (in the Chair)]

You do not have to.

[Andrew Selous]

I will give you one of those minutes.

[Jesse Norman]

I do not have to, but I have been ceded one of those minutes. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. That will allow me to cover at least a tiny fraction of the many points that enthusiastic colleagues have raised.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on convening this third debate. I doubly congratulate him on adding the vital topic of e-bikes to his original subject. That he has managed to add e-bikes to the subject for the third debate is proof that Parliament can evolve in its thinking. As I said, I congratulate him.

We have had mention of Dutch tulip fields and men in Lycra and a lot of references to sweat. That is a little unsettling, but I will try to make progress either way. I have been very impressed by the lobbying energy, if nothing else, of the e-bike industry in relation to so many of my colleagues, who have the feel of latter-day converts to a new religion. As a man who has been riding a bike for 45 years and riding an e-bike for some years, I am delighted that colleagues have come to the table and I congratulate them. Of course, I invite them to submit any of these new-found revelations and the evidence for them to the cycling and walking safety review, which addresses precisely these issues, including air quality and health effects, in a very holistic way.

The Government want to position the UK as the best place on the planet to develop, manufacture and use zero-emission vehicles. I think that that is perfectly clear from what we have said. It will clean up our air—

[Nick Smith]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jesse Norman]

Of course I will, but I have to make progress at some point.

[Nick Smith]

Can the Minister please update us on his discussions with the German Government about holding Volkswagen to account for the emissions scandal?

[Jesse Norman]

Yes, I would be delighted to. I have recently written to Volkswagen to draw attention to the continuing dissatisfaction that I and my colleagues have with its performance. I have raised the matter not merely with the operating personnel but with the supervisory board of that company, and I understand that my colleagues in other parts of the Government are in touch with their German counterparts, to make it clear that we remain exceedingly dissatisfied on behalf of consumers, Volkswagen customers and the general public in this country by the performance of the company and we expect it to continue the process of making amends through the scheme it has in place, extending it as and when that may be required.

Let me proceed. I have said that we want almost every car and van to have zero emissions by 2050. We have said that we will end the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire asked whether that target was too far out. I say to him that it is not. If he reflects on the experience of the past 12 months, he will see that one of the results of the Volkswagen scandal has been that diesels—in many ways, diesel is a thoroughly excellent technology, which is rapidly improving and is useful especially for journeys of distance and between cities in particular—have taken the brunt of that. The result has been a worsening in performance on air quality or rather on emissions, and that is precisely the kind of counterintuitive response that would come from a failure to manage the process effectively. I draw his attention to that.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend the Minister give way?

[Jesse Norman]

I will give way once more, but tragically I will not have a chance to address any of the other points that were made.

[Andrew Jones]

The Minister has just mentioned air quality. Does he agree that electric buses, which are, so to speak, rolling out in Harrogate this year, are critical to providing a solid public transport system that will tackle the air quality in our towns and cities?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

I can only yield, in these circumstances, to a person so distinguished as my immediate predecessor in this job. I congratulate him on raising the profile of electric buses in Harrogate and using them as a template for further developments in the bus industry around the country. He is right.

In the minute and a half that remains to me, let me just say this: we also believe that e-bikes can play a very important part in the decarbonisation of our transport system. As I have said, I am a great believer in e-bikes. Colleagues will be surprised to learn that we have been thinking about this issue for some time. It is important to draw a distinction between e-bikes, the price of which is falling, the diversity of which is increasing and the market for which is working quite satisfactorily in many ways—although I can understand that colleagues recently discovering them might like a subsidy from the Government —and e-cargo bikes, which have a very important potential public purpose in substituting for diesel-using small vans, especially in urban contexts. We will be looking very closely at that particular issue as part of the wider picture.

Let me quickly respond to the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who I know is also a cyclist. She asked when the Road to Zero plan would be published. The answer is that it has, for very proper reasons, been held up by purdah, but we expect to publish it fairly shortly.

I now yield to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire.