Road User Charging Schemes

Louie French Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for securing this important debate. I also thank not only all those constituents of mine who have signed the petitions, but the 6,000 constituents who have signed my petition against the Mayor of London’s ULEZ expansion to Bexley and all of Greater London.

The subject of this debate is of huge concern to my constituents. The planned ULEZ expansion—a tax raid on drivers in outer London and the neighbouring countries, as we have heard already—will hammer families, small businesses and emergency service workers with bills of £12.50 per day, or around £4,500 a year. As the petitions highlight, and as we have already heard from Conservative Members, the ULEZ expansion is overwhelmingly opposed by the public. The debate has also raised a number of serious issues and questions, including about the process and powers being used by the Mayor to push it through. I hope that the Minister will look closely at that again, given these petitions.

First, there are questions about whether the Mayor has the mandate to do this. As we have heard already, it was not in his manifesto, and the impact of the expansion will be felt far outside the Greater London boundaries. That is alongside the fact that local authorities also have a statutory duty over air quality, and, as we know, several boroughs are opposed to the policy.

Secondly, as highlighted already, the proposals were overwhelmingly rejected in the consultation by around 70% to 80% of people in outer London. Unsurprisingly, the number of black taxi drivers who reject them is even higher. Even Unite the union, one of the biggest funders of the Labour party, is against Labour’s policy and has described ULEZ as “anti-worker”. Despite that, in a rare moment of consistency, the Labour leadership is supporting the policy and doubling down on its support for the Mayor of London.

It is clear why people are so furious about the decision, given the current cost of living challenges. In Bexley alone—the area that I am proud to serve—around 31,000 vehicles will be directly impacted. It is hammering us—businesses, families and key workers—with those bills. According to the RAC’s own independent estimates—they are far different from those provided by TfL, which I think we have all started to question—851,000 vehicles will be impacted in outer London. That is just inside those Greater London boundaries.

By introducing the charge in August, with less than a year’s notice, the Mayor has given people hardly any time to switch vehicles, which was one of the main points raised by objectors in these petitions and elsewhere. That may suit the Mayor, as he and Labour desperately hope that people will forget about ULEZ before May’s election. However, I have some news for the Mayor: Londoners will not forget, and barely a day goes by without a constituent stopping me in the street and highlighting how ULEZ will impact them. That also goes for the upcoming by-election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where voters have the opportunity to send Labour a message when it comes to ULEZ.

Those constituents include pensioners who rarely drive but need their car to go shopping or to hospital appointments; families who need to drop off their kids, perhaps to different schools each morning; and, as we have heard, tradesmen who need their vans for their tools and to get to jobs. As my Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) has highlighted, shops on the boundary of Bexley, in places such as Bexley village, face a particular issue. Many customers come from neighbouring Dartford or Rochester to use their services, and people are so scared that there will be a significant drop in customer footfall.

Alongside the clearly negative impact of the ULEZ expansion on businesses and hard-working families, it is also important to again highlight that over 50% of blue-light workers in London live outside the capital, and 90% of care workers nationally use their own cars for work. Those are not my figures but official figures. The expansion will create many knock-on issues for the emergency services in the likes of Bexley, including, as we have heard, the doubling of charges for those working nights. It will also negatively impact patients, with my local hospital in Sidcup, Queen Mary’s Hospital, sharing a number of services and nurses with the likes of Dartford.

Those are all issues that I do not believe have been properly thought through as the Mayor of London desperately seeks to fill the black hole in Transport for London’s finances, which he is responsible for. Bexley does not have the underground, and, like many other London boroughs, it does not have the same transport options and connectivity as central London, so it is extremely unfair that the Mayor of London is proposing plans for ULEZ expansion.

In recent years, as I have said, our bus and other services have been cut by the Mayor of London, and there is nothing in his so-called reinvestment plans that will help areas such as Bexley and the south-east. For example, when we last debated this subject in this very room—I believe it was back in December and that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford secured it—the Mayor’s office sent out a glossy press release just before the debate. It went to all Members of this House, highlighting that we should support ULEZ because he would expand the bus network in outer London. But what actually happened in reality? The very next morning, the B13 service in Bexley, which serves my elderly constituents and others, had its frequency cut.

Since then, we have heard what we call the super-flop announcement. Bus routes are getting rebranded in outer London but they are not helping anyone at all. We are expected to tell our constituents, “We’re really sorry, but you should drop your opposition to ULEZ because the Mayor of London is rebranding an existing bus route in our area.” It is complete nonsense. Unfortunately, it is also a prime example of the problems that we have had with this disastrous Mayor of London. All we hear is press release after press release, but when it comes to substance and helping hard-working Londoners, he fails time and time again.

The scrappage scheme announced by the Mayor does not even come close to matching demand or addressing the costs and practical issues associated with buying a new vehicle. The fact that he is forecast to spend double the amount of taxpayers’ money to install cameras to fine people highlights how this policy is aimed not at improving air quality, but at raising money. When Labour members of the Greater London Authority had the chance to vote to expand the scrappage scheme to help more people, they did not do so, despite the fact that ULEZ is forecast to raise over £1 billion in the first two years of expansion, as revealed by freedom of information requests in the last week or two. The Government have also provided Transport for London with over £6 billion in taxpayer bail-outs in recent years—another figure that the Mayor frequently forgets to mention.

As we have heard, the Mayor’s own independent impact report on the policy highlighted that it will have a negligible impact on improving air quality in outer London. Our areas are very different from central London. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) said, we are already seeing improvements in air quality, but we need policies that actually improve it and encourage people to act more sustainably, not ones that are clearly greenwashed to raise money. If the Mayor of London actually wants to help tackle air pollution rather than raise money, further investment should be made to support people and encourage them to switch to electric vehicles where they can, including by installing electric vehicle charging points and leading by example with TfL’s own bus fleet. We have also heard about underground air pollution.

With traffic having been highlighted as one of the main causes of air pollution, there needs to be an urgent review of the impact of the Mayor’s road closures on increasing traffic and emissions across London. By pure coincidence, I am sure, those closures have also raised millions in fines for Labour councils in central London. Like ULEZ, they are clearly designed to penalise drivers rather than encourage improvements in emissions. I will highlight another unwanted statistic for the Mayor: London is now the slowest city in the world to drive in, despite the congestion charge and ULEZ. These schemes are not working. Traffic in the capital is getting worse.

While the Mayor of London is out trying to sell his new book, he is issuing more and more licences for private hire vehicles. The inconsistencies are stark wherever we look. The Mayor does not like to talk about it, but we have already heard about the last Labour Government’s proposals for the purchase of diesel vehicles. When Sadiq Khan was the Transport Secretary at the end of their time in government, he was also in favour of Heathrow expansion. He does not like to talk about that either. One of his most fundamental policies and investments during his mayoralty is the Silvertown tunnel, which will encourage many more people to drive through east and south-east London and increase the number of vehicles on the road—something that the campaigners against Silvertown tunnel like to point out.

We will not take any lectures from Sadiq Khan on air quality. His days are numbered; we have figured him out. Next May, Londoners across the capital have the opportunity to kick out this failing son of a bus driver, and ensure that they have people in charge who can get our great city moving again and make it safe for us all to live.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gill Furniss]

I thank the right hon. Lady for that question. She would perhaps would want to ask the candidate that; I am not here to put words in his mouth.

[Mr French]

May I ask the hon. Lady a question?

[Gill Furniss]

No, I will not give way.

We will accelerate the roll-out of charging points and give motorists the confidence to make the switch to non-polluting, CAZ-compliant vehicles. New targets will hold Government to account and provide long-term assurance for investors. We will rapidly scale up UK battery-making capacity by part-financing eight additional gigafactories, which will create 80,000 jobs and add £30 billion to the UK’s economy, all while powering 2 million electric vehicles and improving air quality, alongside clean air zones. The next Labour Government will build the infrastructure fit for the century ahead by delivering Northern Powerhouse Rail and High Speed 2 in full, unlocking the growth and investment that businesses are crying out for, and helping people to switch to clean public transport.

We are also committed to passing a clean air Act, building on the pioneering work of the Labour Government in Wales. The Act would establish a legal right to breathe clean air and would place tough new duties on Ministers to ensure that air quality guidelines are met. We will enshrine World Health Organisation standards for air quality in UK law and act quickly to bring down harmful emissions and air pollution through our own ambitious green prosperity plan.

That plan will allow us to invest in the green industries of the future, making the UK a leader in green industries such as clean and renewable energy. Rolling out more electric vehicles, greening our power sector and insulating 19 million homes within a decade will make a huge difference to the amount of air pollution emitted from UK transport, energy and homes.

Labour’s plans will ensure that people across the country are no longer forced to breathe air that is harmful to their health. While the Government are too busy tearing themselves apart to tackle these serious issues, Labour stands ready to decarbonise our transport, clean up our air and make Britain a world leader in the technologies of the future.

I have just one question for the Minister: why have the Government not done more about air quality for the past 13 years while they have been in office, and why have I got quote after quote from Conservative London MPs saying that they supported ULEZ, but now they are all backing off? I wonder why.