Greater London Low Emission Zone Charging (Amendment) Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Kerry McCarthy

Friday 22nd March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

As a Bristol MP, I suppose I have to apologise for daring to take part in a debate that is primarily about our capital city, but millions of our constituents visit as tourists and come here to work, and as a nation we all want to see it as a healthy, safe and pleasant place for people to visit, and to live and work in, regardless of which constituency we represent.

I want to challenge the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), who brought in the Bill, for saying that this is not an air pollution issue. It is clearly not an air pollution issue from his point of view. We know why he has brought the Bill forward: because of the elections coming up on 2 May. It is a desperate last-ditch attempt to try to boost the Conservative vote—and I think we know how that will turn out. Perhaps some Conservative Members ought to be out and about, talking to voters on the doorstep, rather than taking up our time here today, if they really want to influence the result of that election.

The hon. Member, who has left the Chamber now, may not feel that ULEZ is an air pollution issue, but I very much feel that it is because low emissions are a public health issue. In my role as shadow Climate Change Minister, people often come and talk to me about air pollution as though it is primarily a net zero issue, and we have seen some depressing attempts to make net zero part of the anti-woke culture wars by saying that net zero comes at a cost. We saw the Secretary of State for Transport buy into the whole conspiracy theory about 15-minute cities at party conference, which is incredibly depressing. Reducing emissions from transport is obviously very much part of our ambition to meet net zero, but the immediate driver is the need to clean up our air.

We have heard mention of the switch to electric vehicles. It is obviously the long-term objective that we want to ensure that all the vehicles on our roads reach safe emission standards. It was therefore disappointing that the Government rowed back the 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles. The signal that that sent to the market and consumers was entirely counterproductive. Although initially there was some resistance to a 2030 target—rather than a 2035 target—within the car manufacturing trade, the trade then got with the programme and was critical of the Government for that row-back, because it affected sales. It had made the switch and was producing EVs; it is still bound by zero emission vehicle mandate, so it is making the new electric vehicles.

The most important thing we can do—this goes to the points about people not being able to afford cleaner vehicles that are compliant with the ULEZ—is to develop a second-hand electric vehicle market as quickly as possible. We do that by increasing new EV sales. The figure has gone down a bit, but it was the case that of new EV sales, 80-something per cent were fleet vehicles. We know that they then come on to the second-hand market pretty quickly. We have to bring down the cost of buying EVs—I can see the right hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) nodding—and we do not do that by pushing the ban back to 2035; we need to bring it in now.

We also need action on EV charging infrastructure. I will say thank you to the Government for providing some new money for charging infrastructure in the west of England—I think that Bristol is the best place outside London in this regard—but what is lacking is a national strategy to put the infrastructure into places where the market will not meet the need because there is not the necessary footfall, or whatever the driving equivalent is, particularly in our rural areas that depend on tourism. Those travelling down to Devon and Cornwall can use Exeter services, but after that it is pretty difficult to find somewhere to charge a car.

As I have an EV and cannot charge it at home because I live in a block of flats, I welcome the public charging points in Bristol. I spend far too much time sitting in car parks doing Duolingo and practising my very bad Russian while charging my car. It is quite sad when constituents spot me doing that. Although we need more charging points in our cities, including London, this is national infrastructure and we must roll it out to other parts of the country.

As I have said, I believe that the immediate imperative is not reducing transport emissions with the aim of reaching net zero but dealing with air pollution, which we know has a significant impact on people’s health and on children’s health in particular. When I was at school there was just one girl in my class with asthma, but nowadays the majority of kids in any inner-city primary school probably have it. Children are more vulnerable in this regard because their airways are smaller and still developing, because they are closer to traffic fumes because they are small, and because they breathe more rapidly. They are also more likely to develop more serious lung conditions in later life—although of course asthma can be very serious.

Moreover, air pollution affects the lung development of foetuses in utero, and increases the chance of miscarriage. If a mother is exposed to a large volume of air pollution during pregnancy the baby is more likely to be born prematurely and with a lower birth weight, which is correlated with the development of certain health problems as a child grows up. I pay tribute to groups such as Asthma + Lung UK and Mums for Lungs, which has been doing some very good campaigning in my constituency, while St George Breathing Better has been pushing for school street schemes to restrict the entry of high-emitting vehicles, especially when children are going in and out of schools.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend has found this in her constituency, but in mine there has certainly been a significant rise in the incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The response has not been particularly helpful in recent years, in terms of acknowledgment, proper diagnosis and speed of reaction to the problem; but that, too, relates to the air pollution issue.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I think that is true, and it is also connected with poor housing conditions. We have talked in this place before about the need to ensure that homes are fit for human habitation. A young boy tragically died recently because of the mould in his home. All these things are connected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

I was on the Environmental Audit Committee and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee at the time, both of which took part in that inquiry. It was difficult to bring those Committees together, but the inquiry produced a really good, significant report, which we should still pay heed to when we as House think about what to do on this issue going forward.

[John McDonnell]

There seems to be a focus on motorists, but there is now a multiplicity of electric vehicles. I have got one of them. I used to have an electric bike, but I now have an electric scooter—not a sit-down scooter. I find it particularly effective in my constituency, although to be frank my constituents do frown when I turn up as the MP because they think I should be delivering a pizza. There is a multiplicity of vehicle options that we can deploy to tackle some of these air pollution problems, but we need more incentives from central Government to develop that multiplicity.

[Kerry McCarthy]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. I did have an e-bike; it was stolen from inside the Houses of Parliament. One would think that there would be nowhere more secure, but when the Queen was lying in state, whoever was acting as her security removed all the bikes and took off a £130 lock—presumably with an angle grinder or something—and my bike was not seen again. Try explaining to the insurance company that it was people from Buckingham Palace or from the Queen’s lying in state who took the lock off! That is another story, though.

My right hon. Friend is entirely right. I used to hold the shadow green transport brief, and e-bikes are hugely important in allowing people to do those longer journeys. I could not make it up the hills in Bristol without a bit of extra help from an e-bike, but when it comes to delivery vehicles, one of the issues is deliveries inside the areas covered by zones. If we can have hubs outside the city centres and electric vans or e-cargo bikes making those deliveries, that could have a huge impact. Obviously, everybody making food deliveries and similar things really ought to be using clean modes of transport.

I am conscious of time, so I will finish my point about the Bristol scheme. There were concerns that it would lead people to take diversions and increase pollution outside the clean air zone, but air pollution outside the zone has also been measured as down: it has reduced by 7.8%, because the CAZ has encouraged a modal shift among people. I appreciate that people cannot always afford to make that shift in vehicles, but it has happened.

Another concern raised by opponents was that the CAZ would harm the local economy and communities by discouraging people from coming into the city centre. In fact, the opposite happened: retail footfall across four major retail hotspots in central Bristol actually rose from the previous year. There was also an argument that people would become isolated and stuck at home because they could not afford to pay the £9 charge, but again, that was not the case: the number of journeys into or through the CAZ per month was higher at the end of the year than at the start of the scheme, and the percentage of compliant journeys rose every single month. That is what we want to achieve.

It is the same with the landfill tax, for example. That tax is not about raising money because lots of people are sending stuff to landfill. If a landfill tax is effective, the revenues go down and down, year on year. There is actually an issue with the fact that the tax is not keeping pace with inflation at the moment, but assuming it is effective, the revenues will dwindle—it is the behaviour change that we want to make happen. As I said, ideally we would not have introduced a clean air zone, but we have made it work. It is also worth noting that the Government take £2 from every £9 CAZ charge, which we would very much like to be able to spend in Bristol instead.