Comment
HOWARD COX
Sir Keir Starmer has just 31 days to stop his smug Mayor Sadiq Khan ripping off hard-up motorists with his ULEZ madness
I WAS in the High Court yesterday as Mr Justice Swift handed down a verdict that will leave millions of Londoners and those in the surrounding counties disappointed and frankly perplexed.
Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has won a legal battle to extend his hated Ultra Low Emission Zone to the edges of the M25 on August 29.
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It means that in 31 days’ time, anyone who drives into the Ulez zone in a car, van or lorry that doesn’t meet the strict new pollution regulations will be forced to pay at least £12.50 every time.
It wasn’t the judge’s place to decide on whether the Ulez expansion should go ahead, but to examine how the decision was arrived at and whether the process was lawful.
Despite the fact that in Mr Khan’s consultation, two out of three people said they are against the expansion, the five Greater London councils opposing this new Ulez zone did not manage to convince the judge.
This manifestly dishonest mayor will now crow to everyone that he has the legal right to punish low-income families and struggling tradespeople to, allegedly, bring about cleaner air.
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What the judge has done is allow Sadiq Khan to fleece more and more people for his own ego-driven political agenda.
Yesterday Mr Khan hailed “this landmark decision” and announced that a £100million scrappage scheme will be extended so people with polluting vehicles can afford to buy cleaner cars and vans.
That works out at £2,000 for a car owner to buy a new vehicle — but that is nothing compared to the price of a new car, especially an electric one.
The best form of scrappage would be for this form of daylight robbery to be scrapped altogether.
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Last week Labour failed to take Boris Johnson’s old West London constituency, Uxbridge and South Ruislip, because of the Ulez changes.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has flip-flopped all over the place.
One minute he supports Mr Khan then, when Labour lost Uxbridge and South Ruislip, he realised that the Ulez is an issue.
It is now time for the Labour Party to realise how hard-working people are being ripped off by anti-car cash-generating schemes that are appearing like an epidemic all over the country.
Another Labour mayor, Andy Burnham, wants to make Greater Manchester the world’s largest “Clean Air Zone” and tax motorists too.
All these low-traffic neighbourhoods and 20mph zones are going to hit working people the hardest — sole traders, small businesses, the sort of folk that Labour should be appealing to get a working majority next year.
It is time for Sir Keir to get off the fence and ORDER Mr Khan to think again and scrap the Ulez extension.
Even Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has told Mr Khan “now is not the time” to “clobber people with extra charges”.
And the mayor’s own body, Transport for London, has admitted that extending the Ulez to the M25 will not make any demonstrable difference to the air quality of London.
Forcing people into debt
All it will do is bring in a load of money to fill a black hole in City Hall’s finances.
His inept debt management is going to affect the poorest the most.
I recently produced a report that actually calculated the impact of the new London Ulez on the economy.
A sum approaching a billion pounds — £800million to be exact — will be taken away from the capital’s economy because people won’t want to drive into the extended Ulez zone.
Hailing the court’s “landmark decision”, Mr Khan claimed that nine out of ten vehicles in London are Ulez-compliant.
But using Freedom of Information data, the RAC calculates that there could be up to 700,000 cars in Greater London that don’t meet Ulez standards.
And that does not include cars from outside the M25 going into the capital.
Nor does it not include vans and trucks.
TfL estimates 30,000 non-compliant vans go through the city every day — and there are only 23,000 vans that do meet the Ulez standards for sale in the whole UK.
The mayor says that from next week anyone who claims child benefit or who runs a small business employing fewer than 50 people will get help from his scrappage scheme.
He will give them two thousand quid, but where are they going to get the other £20,000 to buy the car?
With production of all new petrol and diesel cars ending in just six years’ time, most people would want to buy an electric vehicle and the cheapest start somewhere between £15,000-20,000.
The scrappage fund allocates some tradespeople up to £9,000, but the EV equivalent of Britain’s best-selling van, the Ford Transit, starts at £48,000.
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It is ridiculous that a Labour mayor is actually forcing people to borrow money to get rid of their so-called polluting vehicle to buy cleaner vehicles and put them into more debt.
So, Sir Keir, you have just 31 days to put a stop to this madness and show us whose side you’re on.
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