My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 176, in particular, in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Greenhalgh. Beyond the focus of the amendment on low emission zones, I think in this Bill—which promotes, after all, outsourcing a range of decisions to greater numbers of local and regional bodies—one area where local authority decisions are clashing not just with mayors but with local citizens, in terms of their needs and wants, is in restricting and controlling people’s car use and movement, in the name of tackling the supposed triple threats of air pollution, climate change and congestion.
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Instead of improving mobility infrastructure, it seems to have become policy to restrict the use of the infrastructure that already exists and to limit travel choice options. During the pandemic, scores of low-traffic neighbourhoods, for example, were introduced using bollards, planters and camera enforcement to block through traffic in residential areas. They were introduced by councils of all political shades to encourage people to walk and cycle instead of using their cars. There has been quite widespread public disquiet and growing protests against these town hall impositions.
An example of the effect that they can have is 53 year-old Christiane Comins, who has multiple sclerosis. Although a blue badge might make her exempt from the proposed LTN in her neighbourhood, Barnsbury, she explains:
“Because I’m disabled, I’m not only reliant on taxi journeys to and from the hospital but also reliant on friends coming to visit me … I am reliant on food deliveries to the house.”
An LTN will stop these. Meanwhile, Nicholas Mason explains that how long it takes him to pick up his granddaughter in Tottenham has tripled. We can talk about levelling up, but we have to consider when decisions such as these are having such a negative impact on ordinary people’s lives. It is those sorts of stories that give us the context for an increasingly hostile public reaction to clean air zones wherever they are being implemented, not because people do not want clean air but because of the problems democratically.
Amendment 176 addresses the important democratic deficit in terms of the clash between the London mayor and local authorities which might well be opposed to the expansion of, for example, the London ULEZ, which has been explained very well by previous speakers. This is not a technical matter of a clash between local councillors and Sadiq Khan, and it is certainly not party political. I think that is an important thing to stress. These clean air zones are happening all over the country, and they are controversial with the public all over the country. As with all broader traffic schemes, public consultations are often ignored, and that is gnawing away at faith in local democracy and devolved bodies, and we should take account of that.
This tussle between whether individual boroughs need to give TfL permission to install cameras, to allow roads to be charged and so on, and whether the mayor has the right to overrule dissent and force unpopular decisions on residents in a wide range of boroughs needs to be addressed in a Bill that is proposing more mayoral powers and more devolved bodies because I think that faith in local democracy is at stake.
One thing I found galling was when Sadiq Khan recently proclaimed at the Partnership for Healthy Cities Summit held at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel:
“I stood for re-election. I received more votes than any sitting mayor in [the] history of [UK] elections, so the silent majority are with me in relation to the ULEZ”.
The slightly inconvenient fact is that the expansion to cover all Greater London was not included in Mayor Khan’s 2021 election manifesto. We also now have a legal challenge after it emerged that the mayor’s officials secretly ordered hundreds of numberplate-reading cameras worth £15 million in April 2022, a month before 60% voted to reject the ULEZ expansion in May. This is after accusations of voter gerrymandering, where, for example, 5,200 votes from those supporting the FairFuelUK campaign were not even counted. It is no wonder that people feel that these traffic schemes are accompanied by sham consultations, and as this whole Bill is dependent on saying that it is giving ordinary people more control, we need to consider the consequences of those who consider that they know better ploughing ahead regardless.
Then there are the embarrassing recent revelations about the Birmingham clean air zone. Again, this is not party political. I note that this clean air zone was championed by the Conservative mayor, Andy Street. We now know that one in 20—up to 50,000—fines has been successfully challenged, and the council has backed down and scrapped penalty charge notices after motorists refused to pay because they believed the fines were unfair. That was only to the end of 2022. A further 20,000 have not even been pursued by the council. Despite this, the council still expects to make a whopping £50 million profit by the end of 2023. At a local rally in Birmingham last week organised by local campaigners and the campaign group Together, this was denounced as a stealth tax. However, Birmingham City Council justifies these profits and zones by saying that it is about improving air quality in the city.
In London, Sadiq Khan boasts that his ULEZ requires vehicles to
“meet the toughest emissions standards enforced by any major city in the world”
and claims that 4 million people now breathe cleaner air and that toxic air has been reduced by 50%. Indeed, the mayor has a forthcoming book called Breathe aiming to help create a world where we can all breathe again. TfL’s director of strategy and policy goes further, claiming:
“Thousands die prematurely each year as a result of toxic pollution and it causes children to grow up with stunted lungs and increases the risk of dementia”.
I am afraid there is a danger that we end up with scaremongering misinformation to justify these clean air zones. According to government statistics, between
1990 and 2008, PM10 has declined by 53%; black smoke emissions have declined by 85%; carbon monoxide by 69%; nitrous oxides by 49%; methane by 53%; and lead by 98%. Of course, we all want clean air, but we do not want scaremongering.
Distorting the data and evidence to justify political behaviour change and amass money for municipal coffers is a real threat to any faith in democracy— which I thought the Bill was trying to promote. It is also worrying to read in the Times that the traffic counters being used to monitor the impact of low-traffic neighbourhoods—which are cited by councils to show success and are the primary source of data in academic studies cited by the Department for Transport—are, in fact, faulty, misleading and underreporting.
Yet, on this sort of dodgy evidence, those paying the cost are those who can least afford it. The Mayor of London’s office will pocket £400 million per year by expanding ULEZ, but this is a raid on household budgets. In this levelling-up Bill, it is those on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum who are less likely to be able to upgrade their vehicles and far more likely to own older vehicles. They may be people like Steve Cowan from Dagenham, who notes:
“I’ve just spent five years paying off the truck on finance and working my arse off, then they bring this in.”
As his mum lives in a care home in Chingford, he says
“I’ll have to pay the fee whilst going back and forwards to see her … I also work on the other side of the water in Erith and will have to pay £12.50 every time I leave my door.”
Meanwhile, a self-employed carpenter from Eltham is in despair and speaks for so many when he says:
“I can’t afford to buy another vehicle … the ULEZ is just a way to make money.”
Jeremy Hunt told us last week that his budget would save the average driver £100 next year, but that £100 will be spend in two weeks travelling into a ULEZ zone, and in three weeks in Birmingham’s clean air zone. In the process, this is creating public cynicism about the motives, with few convinced that this is anything to do with clean air. It is also undermining relationships between many members of the public, as well as between local and regional democratic institutions. Amendments 176 and 178B go some way to rebalancing these arrangements, but my main concern is to restore some public faith in local democracy.