DAILY MAIL COMMENT: A green con trick to fleece the motorist

When politicians claim to be ‘on the right side of history’ it invariably means they are on the wrong side of the present. So it is with London mayor Sadiq Khan, whose roundly hated Ulez extension comes into force today. It is a model of how to alienate the public against green initiatives.

The scheme has been imposed against overwhelming opposition, backed up by spurious (some would say deliberately exaggerated) statistics, and will affect the poorest most.

It is also profoundly undemocratic. Mr Khan’s 2021 mayoral manifesto didn’t mention the extension, and consultations have shown up to 70 per cent opposition in the affected areas.

Yet, like a despot drunk on his own power, the mayor closes his ears to all dissent, and ploughs on regardless. Most bizarrely, he claims that only climate change deniers, those with vested interests and far-Right conspiracists oppose him. Has he even read the results of his own consultations?

The Ultra Low Emission Zone, which drivers of non-compliant cars are charged £12.50 per day to enter, has been in force in central London since 2019.

Sadiq Khan’s 2021 mayoral manifesto didn’t mention the extension, and consultations have shown up to 70 per cent opposition in the affected areas

Ulez has been imposed against overwhelming opposition, backed up by spurious (some would say deliberately exaggerated) statistics, and will affect the poorest most

It was intended to cut levels of two key air pollutants, nitrogen dioxide and fine particulates, which can cause or aggravate respiratory and cardio-vascular illnesses.

However, a study carried out by Imperial College London in the early weeks of Ulez, found it had had an ‘insignificant’ effect on particulates and cut NOx levels by just three per cent. Indeed, at several monitoring sites, pollution had risen.

This should have tempered Mr Khan’s zeal. Instead, he doubled down, dismissing the study’s findings and sticking to his own flawed statistics.

Let’s look a little deeper into one of the scariest of these. Mr Khan states: ‘Every year 4,000 Londoners die prematurely from air pollution.’

No one apart from him even tries to pretend this is literally true. The figure relies on modelling the reduction in overall life expectancy in London deemed to be the result of air pollution, then converting that calculation into ‘equivalent deaths’.

The study claimed each Londoner could be losing up to 2.8 days of life expectancy and roughly equated that to between 3,600 and 4,100 deaths.

It is at best a vague estimate, at worst an educated guess. Yet Mr Khan quotes the 4,000 toll as hard fact. It is scaremongering of the most blatant kind.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of families and businesses will suffer hardship because of the mayor’s hubris.

Following the shock Uxbridge defeat, Sir Keir Starmer backtracked on a commitment to bring in clean air zones across the country (Yes, another U-turn)

The poor and elderly are most likely to have older, non-compliant vehicles and least likely to be able to afford a compliant replacement, so will be faced with paying £12.50 a day.

This applies not only to Londoners but also those living in areas bordering the capital – Kent, Surrey and the other Home Counties – who need to enter the zone for business, school runs or shopping.

And while the mayor will rake in £1 billion from this and his other road charging schemes, many pensioners will lose their freedom of movement and may also be cut off from visits.

There is already a furious and growing backlash, as the Uxbridge by-election proved. Everyone wants cleaner air, but this scheme fails to deliver it, serving only to make ordinary people poorer. For all Mr Khan’s bluster, it’s little more than a money-making racket.

Following the shock Uxbridge defeat, Sir Keir Starmer backtracked on a commitment to bring in clean air zones across the country (Yes, another U-turn).

But with so much money to be made, it’s hard to believe he and his virtue-signalling colleagues could resist fleecing motorists even more if they were to win power.

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