Oral Answers to Questions

Kirsten Oswald Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

Details of how that £8.3 billion of funding will be allocated to local authorities will be published in due course, and I hope we will be able to make an announcement about that in the not-too-distant future to give my hon. Friend that reassurance. It will be for each individual local highway authority to decide how to spend that money and to focus on the most important parts of their network. They have the local knowledge to do that and we trust them to spend that money wisely, and I am sure my hon. Friend will make representations to them about which parts of his constituency that money should be targeted at.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

T7. Scotland has had a far more progressive approach to encouraging the switch to electric vehicles with incentives including interest-free loans for electric vehicles, enhanced home-charger grants and a far more comprehensive charging network with twice as many rapid chargers per head as England. The Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for net zero has described the delay on banning petrol and diesel car sales as an “unforgiveable betrayal of current and future generations”,putting the UK on the “wrong side of history” on climate change. She is right, isn’t she?

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Jesse Norman)]

I do not think that, for the reasons we have described, there is anything to complain about in relation to the progress we are making across England. Charge point roll-out remains very rapid—43% in the last 12 months —and there are 49,000 public charge points at the moment and 400,000 private and business ones, and new regulations and a new mandate have just been laid.