Outer London Congestion Charge

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab) [V]]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Rees. We are here today because of the failure to give Transport for London the long-term support it needs to keep London’s public transport financially viable. If it cannot survive financially, public transport in London will grind to a halt, and frankly so will London. The Government’s failure to support the finances is yet another sign that they are ignoring both the needs of hard-working Londoners and the role that London plays in the UK economy.

From scrapping the Government grants in 2015, to trying to scrap free travel for under-18s last year, refusing to devolve train travel to London because the then Transport Secretary did not want it in “the clutches of” a Labour Mayor, or sitting on their hands over Hammersmith bridge, successive Conservative Governments have a long record of simply refusing to give the UK’s capital city the support it needs to keep moving.

London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has not only been standing up for London; he has also been cleaning up the mess left behind by his predecessor, who is now Prime Minister. Because of this funding history created by Conservative Governments, TfL is almost totally reliant on fare sales. I am proud of Sadiq Khan’s record on public transport over the past five years. He not only opposed efforts to cut free travel for under-18s, but has worked to introduce new, cleaner, low-emission buses, to cut the deficit at TfL, and to support much-needed action to clean up toxic air pollution, including here in my constituency.

By the start of 2020, the Sadiq Khan had fixed the financial mess left by his predecessor, who had raised fares in London by 42%. He also inherited a TfL that was making a loss of £1.5 billion on a like-for-like business. He reduced TfL’s operating deficit by 71% and increased its cash balance by 13%, ensuring that it was in a strong financial position prior to the pandemic. That is despite the fact that London was one of the only major cities in the world without a Government grant for day-to-day transport operation. For instance, Madrid gets 47% of its operating income from national and regional subsidies; Singapore gets 56% from Government grants; and Paris gets 16%. As with all the world’s major cities, London’s transport network is vital for key workers and business. It has kept our NHS workers going into work, it has kept supermarkets staffed, and it has kept our city moving.

The pandemic has had the same devastating effect on TfL’s finances as it has had on the failing privatised rail companies, yet the Government immediately bailed out those companies, handing out 18-month support packages to keep rail moving, with next to no strings attached. The same was not done for London, and there is simply no reason why that could not have happened. The Mayor has asked the Government to consider another option for funding London’s transport: to let London keep the £500 million in annual vehicle excise duty, which is spent almost exclusively outside London, but the Government will not countenance that.

Because of the lack of any alternative option, Mayor Khan is proposing a Greater London boundary charge for non-residents, which would apply only to vehicles registered outside Greater London that are driven into the capital. The charge would apply only once a day, when vehicles are driven across the Greater London boundary, and Londoners would not pay. A thorough public consultation process and impact assessment would be required before any charge could be introduced. This would take at least two years, meaning that any new charge would not be levied until after the capital’s recovery from the pandemic.

I accept that this proposal is not ideal and that it is quite a crude measure, but it is better than the impact of public transport in London grinding to a halt; an impact that would be felt not only by all Londoners, but by commuters from the constituencies of the hon. Members who have already spoken. London does not get any income from drivers from outside London who drive into the city. That is despite 1.3 million vehicle trips being made every weekday from outside London into the capital, which is about 25% of all journeys. Around 1 million of these trips are into outer London alone; 80% of car trips from outside London into the capital terminate in outer-London. The majority of those journeys are made by vehicles registered to addresses outside the London boundary, which highlights that drivers from outside London greatly benefit from using the capital’s roads, but without having to contribute to their upkeep.

Initial estimates suggest that such a boundary charge for non-residents, if levied at £3 50 a day and applied only to non-Londoners, could reduce the total number of weekday car trips across the Greater London area by 10% to 15%, and the vast majority would switch to more sustainable modes of transport. You could charge more. For example, £5.50 for the more polluting vehicles—those that do not meet the ultra low emission standard—is a possibility, although I am not proposing that. However, assuming two-way journeys in and out of London, total traffic coming off the road each weekday could reduce trips by around 250,000 to 400,000 vehicles, with the amazing associated air-quality benefits.

In conclusion, all of the UK deserves and should expect decent transport and decent public transport. The more good quality, affordable public transport there is, the less we need to be dependent on the private car, leaving the space available for those for whom a private car journey is the only option.

Public transport has to be paid for somehow. If this scheme goes ahead, I do not think that asking those drivers not paying the London council tax precept to pay a bit more towards the costs of running London’s transport network and contribute to the cost of the congestion and pollution they cause is unreasonable.