‘The key battle at the moment is to stop Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ expansion’-Keith Prince AM.
Havering and Redbridge GLA Member Keith Prince today shares his response on the recent Road User Charging article in the Havering Daily.
Biddy Baker from Rainham recently contacted the Havering Daily concerned about the introduction of the Road User Charges.
In response Mr Prince said:
I am afraid that the Rainham resident appears to have got the wrong end of the stick on road-user charging. The link she includes is to the London Assembly’s Transport Committee’s investigation into London-wide road user charging. It’s certainly worth responding – and I would encourage all Havering residents to do so – but, to be absolutely clear, the Committee’s findings will not mean that distance-based charging is introduced in London.
However, that is not the end of the story. Sadiq Khan is currently seeking to expand the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to cover almost all of London. This will do virtually nothing to improve London’s air quality, of which in any case Havering’s is already better than any other borough in London. What it will do is ensure that London would be covered in cameras, which would enable such a charging scheme to be introduced at some point in the future. Whilst we know that such a scheme could not be brought in before May 2024’s Mayoral Election, if Sadiq Khan wins then his plan is to introduce it before the end of the decade.
That is why the key battle at the moment is to stop the Mayor’s ULEZ expansion. It is not too late for Havering to join with the 5 Conservative boroughs, which are taking Sadiq Khan to court to stop it. Beyond that, we know that the current Mayor will keep pushing and that the only way to stop these plans for good is to vote him out and replace him with a Conservative Mayor next May.
The final point worth making is that road user charging could be acceptable, but only if it were a national scheme that replaced current taxes like Vehicle Emissions Duty and Fuel Duty. In that way it could actually save Londoners money. If, on the other hand, Sadiq Khan were to bring road user charging in on a London-wide basis it would simply be another expense for motorists and, in particular, outer Londoners.
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*This will do virtually nothing to improve London’s air quality, of which in any case Havering’s is already better than any other borough in London.*
Keith Prince loves wild generalisations and this is a good example. The most toxic car based emission is virtually unchecked with only two air quality stations measuring the lethal PM2.5 in the whole of Havering. As a consequence there’s no data. For Keith no data is the equivalent of it not existing. He should go to Queens children wards and see the children suffering respiratory illnesses. Or, more chillingly, attend the three funerals a week caused by air pollution in Havering.
The Tories are playng politics – Grant Shapps originally approved the expansion of ULEZ to the north and south circular roads as part of the financial agreement between the government and TfL. There has been no change of view from the government as far as I know. This is part of a campaign to remove a Labour Mayor – and the Tories show no concern for the illnesses and deaths caused by air pollution. Outer London has more deaths from air pollution than the rest of London.
Ian Pirie….”.Outer London has more deaths from air pollution than the rest of London.” Proof please, show me death certs with that as the cause of death
The reason why only Ella Kissi-Debrah is recorded as having died from pollution is that her mother insisted on a post mortem and inquest to identify the cause. Lots of people (sadly) die from lung disease etc with no investigation of what caused it. Scientists can tell when particles have entered people’s .lungs, but it requires dissection – obviously. If you want to know more about the scientists who are looking into all this here is a link to an article by Inperial College researchers: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/enterprise/long-reads/air-pollution/#:~:text=Across%20the%20European%20Union%2C%20air,particulate%20matter%20in%20the%20environment.
Statstical methods are used in the absence of direct medical evidence – and I’ve no idea what the next bit means but I looked up about such methods and here you are, from an OECD publication:
“The mortality calculations for each disease is based on this formula:
Drt= AF∙BDtr
with
AF=(1−1RF)
Where deaths related to air pollution (D) are derived as the product between baseline deaths (BD) for each disease and the attributable fraction (AF), namely the fraction of baseline mortalities that can be associated with air pollution. The attributable fraction (AF) is derived as (1-1/RF), where RF is a disease-specific risk factor, which reflects how, for each disease, the risk of dying because of air pollution increases with higher concentrations of pollutants (PM2.5 and ground-level ozone).”