Greater London Low Emission Zone Charging (Amendment) Bill

Steve Tuckwell Excerpts

Friday 22nd March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steve Tuckwell (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) for introducing this Bill, which it is my great pleasure to support.

Members across the House will agree that we want clean air for our residents today and for generations to come. Across London and in my constituency, in the outer suburbs of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, we all agree that nobody wants dirty or poor-quality air. However, the Labour Mayor of London’s expansion of ULEZ to outer London has nothing to do with air quality and everything to do with punishing hard-working families and businesses of all sizes. Several months after he totally ignored Londoners and pressed ahead with expanding the ULEZ tax across outer London, like fellow Conservative Members I continue to be contacted by people sharing examples of financial hardship, collapsed businesses and negative social consequences.

As it stands, I believe the Bill would go some way towards rectifying a blatant money grab, by calling for the Transport Secretary to consent to any expansion of ULEZ and the ULEZ boundaries, once they have been amended as per the Bill, which spells out a number of important qualifications. Among them is whether any proposed changes are in accordance with a Mayor’s manifesto commitments at the most recent mayoral election.

The Mayor of London made no mention of ULEZ expansion in his manifesto, and he certainly made no mention of it to the people of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, but that is not all. The ULEZ expansion’s democratic deficit does not stop there. Along with the lack of any mention of ULEZ in his manifesto, the Mayor of London embarked on a consultation that, due to a raft of allegations, including on the weighting given to particular consultation responses among other issues, has left multiple questions about its validity. I am glad to see that confronted in the Bill, which would require the Secretary of State to consider responses to any consultation conducted on proposed changes.

If the Mayor had put more time and effort into speaking to residents across outer London—and, indeed, in Uxbridge and South Ruislip—he would have understood that they were not far-right conspiracy theorists. These hard-working families and business owners were ignored, and continue to be ignored. Why did the Mayor of London not consider using funds to bring about a new fleet of green buses, electrify the taxi network, plant more trees or ensure that the tube runs on much cleaner energy? Let us not forget a properly funded scrappage scheme. Those alternatives would have produced real, binding changes in people’s lives: not just in how they travel around outer London, but in how they interact with their communities and their surroundings.

Rather than exploring sensible, common-sense alternatives, the Mayor of London chose to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on ULEZ enforcement cameras. Uxbridge and South Ruislip is heavily reliant on car usage due to the nature of its outer-London geography. The people I have the privilege of representing could opt to use public transport, but we see how the Mayor of London is decimating local bus services and continues to preside over the ongoing catastrophic failure of the Central line. Emails and social media comments flood in from constituents who are rightly angry about an unacceptable and unreliable public transport service. Why force ULEZ expansion on areas with minimal and long-term unreliable public transport without first rectifying those issues? Why not invest more in the public transport network so that people can rely on it and then decide to make the switch? Why did he push ahead with ULEZ expansion first? The answer is clear: to continue ignoring hard-working Londoners and punish them with a destructive money grab, thinly disguised as an environmental strategy, with little or no substance.

I know all too well about the anger and frustration felt by ordinary, hard-working people in Uxbridge and South Ruislip—and indeed those across outer London —about the Mayor’s cynical money grab. In my maiden speech, I stated:

“I stand here—no longer the local candidate, but the Member of Parliament—still determined to fight the Mayor of London’s money grab and reduce the burden placed on my residents and local businesses.”—[Official Report, 13 November 2023; Vol. 740, c. 389.]

Those words still ring true.

Only this week, the Mayor of London made comments citing that

“the sky didn’t fall in”

following the expansion of ULEZ. Well, it did for businesses who can no longer afford to trade and for households who have incurred financial hardships. Those flippant and arrogant comments cement the view that the Mayor of London is out of touch with hard-working Londoners.

The Bill has my full support as it looks to vary ULEZ boundaries and ensure that safeguards are in place for oversight and consultation. In addition to supporting the Bill, I want to place on record in the House my wholehearted support for the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, Susan Hall.