Greater London Low Emission Zone Charging (Amendment) Bill

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Friday 22nd March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Johnson]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that he has done in this respect. He is entirely right: we will see today whether Labour Members are in favour of the workers or in favour of Sadiq Khan.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am following the hon. Gentleman’s arguments with interest. In Bristol we have experienced the first year of a clean air zone, which was actually imposed on us as a requirement by the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), because the Government had been taken to court by ClientEarth for being in breach of air pollution limits and therefore insisted that we should adopt the scheme in Bristol. If I have a chance to speak later, I will comment on how successful it was, but in any case that seems slightly at odds with the hon. Gentleman’s argument about local autonomy.

[Gareth Johnson]

I am grateful for that intervention, because it gives me an opportunity to smash the myth that the expansion of the ULEZ scheme has anything whatsoever to do with air pollution. If it was about air pollution, the Mayor of London would ban motor vehicles from going into London, but he does not want to ban them; he wants to make money out of them. If those motorists give the Mayor £12.50, they can drive all day long in London. He does not give a damn. Take my constituency in Dartford, for example: many people who previously used the Blackwall tunnel with ULEZ non-compliant vehicles are now having to use the Dartford crossing to get across the Thames. It is adding to pollution in areas such as Dartford, not removing it.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Kerry McCarthy]

This goes back to what I was saying about the fact that the Government insisted that Bristol had a clean air zone. Obviously that will have a significant impact on people from Bath, for example, who drive down the A4 into my constituency, causing a huge amount of congestion and air pollution, but that is basically how politics works. I entirely agree with what my hon. Friend just said: the duty of politicians is to look after people in the patch they represent.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. I will come on to address how we best tackle the issue of air pollution and, at the same time, protect those who are impacted by this charge.

From 21 August last year, every Londoner with a non-compliant vehicle became eligible for a £2,000 grant to assist them in replacing their vehicle. I understand why people have said that £2,000 is not enough, but that has been provided despite central Government giving no financial support to the Mayor of London for it. Of course, if the Government are concerned about the impact—[Interruption.] If they are concerned about the impact of their clean air charging zones, they could have provided additional assistance—

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

In the last few weeks I have been diagnosed with adult-onset asthma, which is on the rise. We know that 30% of cases are triggered by allergies, and that much of this is linked with mould in people’s homes. What my hon. Friend is saying—and she is making a powerful speech—goes to the heart of why we need to tackle this issue for all our constituents, whether young or old.

[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.

[Lilian Greenwood]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that this is sometimes presented as a binary choice between motorists and everybody else, such as the children in the hospital, when these improvements are actually beneficial for everyone? One thing that came out of the 2018 report is that some of the worst air quality is inside vehicles, so motorists directly benefit from improvements in air quality.

[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.

[Lilian Greenwood]

It is quite difficult to assess the effectiveness of a clean air zone, because it is not about whether vehicle numbers go down, but about whether those numbers are higher or lower than they would have been if we had done nothing. When thinking about the effectiveness of ULEZ in central London, for example, we need to model what would have happened if we had not had ULEZ, rather than just look at whether the numbers have gone up or down.

[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.

[Stella Creasy]

Given that the evidence shows that ULEZ has cut pollution in central London by almost half, the challenge that the Minister is presenting slightly misreads how people travel around London. As an outer-London MP, I am acutely conscious that people also drive within the borough to work, as well as between outer London boroughs. The idea that we would have the same impact on reducing pollution just by focusing on the centre misses the challenge that we are all trying to address. Nobody is saying that this is easy or that it is not controversial. I have the north circular running through my constituency, and I see the pollution. I see children and adults struggling with the consequences, and I am sure the same is true in south London. We have to consider how people travel around London to understand the best way of tackling these issues. It cannot just be theoretical. It has to be a practical model, does it not?

[Kerry McCarthy]

My hon. Friend is right, and she brings me on to my final point. Her borough of Waltham Forest hosts the mini-Holland scheme, which I have cycled around on an e-bike. Each week, the council’s transport lead takes people on a tour so that they can learn from the scheme. These local schemes can transform neighbourhoods by designing out some of the traffic and making them pleasant places to live, by building things like sustainable urban drainage schemes and areas where people can sit and talk.

A liveable neighbourhood pilot is just about to start in my constituency. It is important to engage the local community, to explain how it will work for them and to listen when they say how it might cause problems in certain areas. Although there has been some opposition, groups such as St George Breathing Better—which was founded by a group of parents whose children are suffering because of the city’s air pollution—are very much behind the pilot.

I return to the Secretary of State’s disappointing remarks about 15-minute cities. As well as bigger measures, such as ULEZ to address Greater London’s transport problems, we need to consider local solutions such as liveable neighbourhoods and school street schemes to encourage people to walk to school and work, and to make it as easy as possible for people to get around without resorting to their car. This should be about giving elected politicians the right to implement such solutions in consultation with the people they represent.