Draft Clean Air Zones Central Services (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026

Steff Aquarone Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 General Committees

[Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I will briefly explain why the Liberal Democrats oppose the draft regulations before us today, which I intend to vote against. The first rule of politics is “learn to count”, and the Government’s counting in relation to this is quite something. They admit that the fee at its present level covers 86% of the expenditure on transactions, leaving them with a 14% shortfall. If they were bringing us a 14% increase in the charge today, the conversation might be a bit different. Instead, to cover that shortfall, they want to charge an extra 100% on the current fee. To borrow a phrase from a younger generation, “The math ain’t mathing.”

Councils have bought into a central scheme to try to lower their costs relating to the charge. The Government have a monopoly, as running their own scheme would be entirely unfeasible for councils. Many local councils are already suffering severe funding challenges, and now the Government are doing what looks to many like price gouging. What will happen is simple: councils will see an extra barrier to using clean air zones, so there will be fewer clean air zones and people in our urban centres will suffer as a result. Will the Minister be telling people in Bath, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Portsmouth, Sheffield and Newcastle that clean air is a privilege for which the Government would like to charge more? Or will his Department take the reasonable approach by going back to the drawing board to produce a proposal that feels a little less like a rinsing of local transport strategy budgets?