Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps the Government has taken to (a) quantify the amount and (b) assess the effect of extra air pollution produced by cars affected by emission data manipulation in the United Kingdom.

We are unable to estimate accurately the air quality impacts resulting from Volkwagen’s actions as it is not possible to quantify the additional emissions of the affected vehicles under all conditions of operation.

However the Department has made a comparison of the old software to the new ‘fix’ software under test track conditions. Results from tests of four Skoda vehicles (Roomster, Rapid, Superb and Octavia) indicate 25-40% lower NOx emissions with the new ‘fix’ software.