Electric Vehicles and Bicycles

Stephen Kerr Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous]

I have to very respectfully disagree with my hon. Friend. I bow to no one in my defence of high-quality British jobs. I absolutely accept the anxiety, but we can sustain those conventional jobs. Very soon, there will be so much pent-up demand for electric vehicles that the car workers in his constituency, and that of the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham), will not be able to keep up with the demand for these new energy vehicles—as they are called in China—from our constituents when we reach that 2022 tipping point. It is the obvious thing for our constituents to do.

The transport sector is now the largest source of carbon dioxide in the country. Emissions in the transport sector went up in 2017. If we bring forward the 2040 date, that would address a large part of the gap to which the Committee on Climate Change has drawn our attention.

We need to make huge progress in the fleet sector, and we can do that now. There are about 25,000 central Government fleet vehicles in the UK. The Government say a quarter of those should be electric by 2022—that is a much less ambitious target than India and China have announced for their fleets. Let us go for a 100% Government electric vehicle fleet by 2022, including those run by local councils. We have a long way to go; only two of the Ministry of Justice’s 1,482 vehicles are electric. Let me praise Dundee City Council, which has 83 electric vehicles—the most of any UK local authority. It has also brought in a charging hub for the public and taxis, with four 50 kW and three 32 kW chargers. Well done, Dundee.

There is the serious issue of company car tax. There is a lunatic progression: at the moment, the rate of company car tax for zero-emission vehicles is 9%, which is due to rise to 16% before going down to 2%. Let us get it down to 2%; let us signal our intention, not make it worse for the area that we are trying to encourage.

We should be ambitious on sales targets. Let us go for 15% by 2022, 45% by 2025 and 85% by 2030 and get on with electric charging infrastructure.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good point. We have the objective for 2040—I agree that it is not very ambitious compared with other targets that we could have set—but we do not have any adequate milestones to get us there. My hon. Friend has laid that out, and that is exactly what the Government need to do.

[Andrew Selous]

I have great confidence in the Minister. I think he gets it, and I am genuinely trying to be helpful to make sure that Britain is a world leader in this important industry of the future.

I said that this is the third debate on electric vehicles, but we are making history today, because I am informed that this is the first House of Commons debate on electric bicycles. Hon. Members who have read their Order Paper carefully will have seen that the debate is also about the take-up of electric bicycles. Most people probably do not know anything about them. Six weeks ago, I knew nothing about them, until I was asked to chair a meeting of the all-party parliamentary cycling group—I am delighted to see my co-chair, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) in the debate. I found out about them and I was lent an electric bike for 10 days or so by the Green Commute Initiative, for which I was very grateful.

In my constituency, I live on a hill. I cycle with a conventional bike in London, but at the grand old age of 56, I found that extra boost helped me to get to and from my constituency office on a daily basis, and on one day twice. With my electric bike, I took more exercise that week than I have probably taken all year. That is the thing about electric bikes: they open up cycling to older people, and people who are anxious about ability or fitness, people wanting to arrive somewhere sweat- free when there are no workplace shower facilities. They can deal with carrying luggage and shopping; even commercial cargo is easy on an e-bike.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kirstene Hair]

The hon. Lady is right. We need to get infrastructure built quickly, specifically in rural areas, but also in main towns and on roads, so that people can get geared up for this transformation.

[Stephen Kerr]

The hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) mentioned the Welsh Government, but in the whole of Wales there are only 31 publicly funded charging points. In Scotland, there are nearly 1,000.

[Kirstene Hair]

My hon. Friend is right. There is very much an onus on the devolved Administrations to put that infrastructure in place as swiftly as possible.

I welcome the UK Government’s decision to create the new charging infrastructure in the UK as well as facilitating greater uptake of electric cars and supporting research into charging technology. In total, Westminster has earmarked £340 million towards those endeavours, with a further £200 million promised from private bodies.

However, battery-powered vehicles are just one solution. Although less advanced, the merits and charms of the ordinary bicycle cannot be understated. From cycling to work schemes organised by schools and offices, to communal bicycle groups, more and more people are beginning to appreciate the options that exist on two wheels.

I sincerely hope that Government actions continue to foster a shift in the British public to engage with their daily commute and indeed any other commutes. By making alternative methods of travel more accessible, especially in more remote areas, we can seek a change that is beneficial to not just us but the planet as a whole.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I pay tribute to and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing the debate and on his impressive and powerful speech. I am a member of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, which is conducting an inquiry into electric vehicles, so that is a subject that I could speak about for a long time. In fact, I have chosen to speak not about electric cars but about my new-found enthusiasm for electric bicycles.

I would like to tell Members about the Stirling Cycle Hub, which is an organisation that knows about how to get people on to their bikes. It encourages and facilitates cycling throughout Stirling from its base at Stirling train station. It is a superb organisation that works through the Forth Environment Link to help Stirling to pursue a greener, healthier future.

Stirling Cycle Hub has acquired a number of electric bicycles for its cycle hire scheme at Stirling station. Last week, it let me have a ride on one. To be frank, it was a revelation. I have a bicycle, and, to be honest, it rests rather serenely in my garden shed, untouched in a very long while. [Hon. Members: “Shame!”] Shame indeed. I had never been on an electric bicycle. Emily Harvey, the development manager, guided me on a cycle route using the bicycle’s electric assistance to Stirling Sport Village and back, and it was a sweat-free, pleasant experience—it felt like I had never stopped cycling.

While the bike asked me to pedal, the ride was as effortless as a cycle through the flat lands of the Dutch tulip fields, yet we were negotiating all the hills and obstacles of an urban cycle. I would love to use one of those bikes to traverse the great peaks and troughs of my constituency, which as all Members know is the most beautiful in the country, and do so without breaking a sweat. The purists in the cycling fraternity may see that as cheating, but it is a great way of opening up the joys of cycling to a wider audience.

Stirling Cycle Hub has had a great deal of success: it has rented the bikes out 202 times in the last year. It tells great stories about how grandmothers are now able to cycle with their grandchildren and how, as I mentioned earlier, people are using electric bikes to make deliveries. It is a great way to get into cycling and, for those who are perhaps not as fit as they could be—I will move quickly over that passage, and I must say I include myself in that number—or, more importantly, those who are recovering from mobility difficulties or have disabilities, it is a great way of getting back on a bike and getting around.

It makes it possible for a wider range of people to commute, and makes it a more positive experience for those of us who live in constituencies, as I said earlier, with hills. The motor in the bicycle assists with pedalling, making it like a gentle cycle while going up a steep hill. I invite all my hon. Friends, and hon. Members from all parts of the House, the next time they are in Stirling—they should make that a regular trip—to go to the Cycle Hub at the railway station and hire one of those fantastic bikes, which will allow them to experience Stirling without breaking sweat. As colleagues know, my constituency is famed for its beauty and its glens.

I repeat the point that, for those with any kind of mobility difficulty or low levels of physical fitness, these bikes are a boon. I ask the Minister what more we can do to encourage the take-up of electric bicycles. The nextbike scheme in central Scotland, which includes my constituency, has seen over 40,000 journeys made by bicycle because of the work of those such as Stirling Cycle Hub, but can the Government play a more positive role in encouraging people? As we have heard, we are lagging behind the Germans, among others. Surely, we can rise to the challenge and get us all on electric bicycles.