APPG 2030 Ban

Fair Fuel APPG for UK Motorists and UK Hauliers August 2021 Page | 43 We must do this right first time and there is a need to be logical and data-based in the endeavour. We must base any legislation only on facts rather than innuendo, class division or green evangelism. But nowhere in The London Mayor’s Transport Strategy can we find any incentives for consumers to change their behaviour. All we are seeing are punitive charging tactics. If fossil fuelled vehicles are so heinous, why are they not banned completely. The answer is simple, they have become a valuable and easy source income for Mr Khan. The modal shift from cars will continue to be pushed forward by extra costs through taxation and road and zone restrictions. Simply put, there will be places in London where you won’t be able to use or park a car at all and other places where you’ll have to pay for every mile you travel. Staggeringly, even within the current errant policy position, there are contradictions. There is no mention of concessions for EV drivers who could have been offered free parking, bus lane use or even road priority access. TfL have been practicing a car- reduction strategy for a long time – and this seems to even extend to EVs. Why is it, drivers are the only ones punished? What about other sources of emissions? For example, while NOx - nitrogen oxides - are being blamed for health issues, those making these claims are unable to demonstrate why there is no association between illness and cooking with gas, which produces a large amount of NOx in a home, versus cooking with electricity which does not. Thought provoking! When students prepared spaghetti with tomato sauce over two gas flames for 15 minutes, the indicator jumped to 1,300 micrograms nitrogen dioxide per cubic metre – more than 30 times the threshold limit outside. By the way, there are no explicit pollutants warnings for candles or gas stoves. Why not? The 'doublespeak’ which enables campaigners to call for reduced NOx emissions, based on no credible data, and encourages drivers out of their safe vehicles, into the soot filled underground, has caused fossil fuelled road users to exclusively bear the brunt of the environmentalists’ assault against pollution. 260 diesel buses an hour on Oxford Street generates NOx and PM10 pollution (16% of it comes from buses in the centre of London) and adding 175,000 Private Hire Vehicle licenses for the new army of Uber drivers has just added 18,000 extra cars a day to an already long and winding traffic jam. To clean up our urban air we need to take 37 million UK drivers with us. Nobody objects to clean engines. No-one argues against improved efficiency which cuts emissions. But the emissions agenda is currently being dominated by the concept of panic and global catastrophe. In such a charged environment, it is difficult, or even impossible, to create rational, data- based policies. In addition, while Particulate Matter (PMs) is being blamed for various health problems, authorities such as Transport for London are entirely relaxed about forcing drivers off the roads and into the London Underground, where PM levels can be 2,900% higher than on busy roads.