Electric Vehicles: Supporting Access

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My noble friend is right that many people do not buy any vehicle. Indeed, fleet operator businesses represent around half of the new vehicles purchased in this country. It is important that those vehicles then come into the secondary used car market once they have ended their useful life within businesses. That happens after around three years, so we expect a number of zero-emission vehicles to come into the used car market in due course. We recognise that there are probably not enough of them there now, but that is just a function of time. We can work with fleet operator businesses and get them to buy new zero-emission vehicles, which will then come into the used car market.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that, because of the paucity of public transport outside London, many workers—including quite low-paid ones—are absolutely dependent on a motor car? Does she also accept that the private sector, which is so praised in the department’s latest guidance, does not have a good record of making sure that facilities such as this are provided at reasonable cost? Is it an objective of the Government to make sure that people who have cars for their work today will be able to afford and run them in future?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Lord raises a number of issues. It is worth pointing out that the private sector has been incredibly successful in the rollout of energy sources in the past. I do not believe that previous Governments would mandate petrol stations in certain places, nor spend billions of pounds supporting their introduction, but we are very clear that we will support the introduction of charging points. On public transport, I beg to differ: this Government are investing billions of pounds of both capital and revenue to support public transport in our great cities and our rural areas.