16:45 Steve McCabe (in the Chair)

The transport sector is now the largest source of carbon dioxide in the country. Emissions in the transport sector went up in 2017. If we bring forward the 2040 date, that would address a large part of the gap to which the Committee on Climate Change has drawn our attention.

There is the serious issue of company car tax. There is a lunatic progression: at the moment, the rate of company car tax for zero-emission vehicles is 9%, which is due to rise to 16% before going down to 2%. Let us get it down to 2%; let us signal our intention, not make it worse for the area that we are trying to encourage.

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17:01 Jim Shannon (DUP)

We must learn to rely less on petrol and diesel, and look to environmentally friendly methods of transport. We encourage people to use public transport and to car-pool. Condensing five vehicles heading from Newtownards to Belfast into one, or getting 50 cars off the road through vibrant, frequent and reliable public transport, would certainly be the most effective way of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

“EVs have lower emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants over their lifetime compared with conventional vehicles. Although EVs generally have higher manufacturing emissions than conventional vehicles, they have lower emissions from use, meaning that generally they have lower emissions than the equivalent conventional fuel vehicles.”

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17:06 Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)

People who live in constituencies such as mine, who are fortunate enough to enjoy a beautiful rural setting, know only too well that it is through careful protection of the environment that we will ensure that future generations experience similar sights. Unfortunately, pollution and climate change have come to pose serious threats to everyday life. From the poor air quality in our cities to the growing concern about plastics and the coastal erosion that affects constituencies such as mine, it is apparent that more needs to be done.

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17:11 Alex Sobel (Labour)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr McCabe. The take-up of electric vehicles and electric bikes is vital in our fight against irreversible climate change and to improve our air quality—especially in cities, given that so many of our cities exceed both EU and World Health Organisation safe air quality levels. I represent a constituency with no public electric vehicle chargepoints, which is an issue I have raised with the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth, the right hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), both publicly and privately. I can now add this Minister to the list of those I am raising it with.

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17:27 Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)

The trust also operates a cycle hub at Whitelee wind farm, which is the second biggest onshore renewable energy site in Europe. It encourages people to get out there and cycle in the great outdoors, which is a fantastic co-location idea, harmonising renewables with getting people out and about. I pay tribute to my constituent, Alan Vass, who led the expansion of the cycle hub. It is getting bigger and better, and I wish him well for the future.

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17:32 Rachael Maskell (Labour)

Thank you for chairing the debate, Mr McCabe. I congratulate the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who was incredibly helpful in the advice that he gave the Government. Whether in the Paris agreement, Committee on Climate Change reports or numerous High Court rulings, the Government have clearly had serious warnings about how pollution is killing our planet—and is also killing us. Of course, transport is the major pollutant.

The Government’s spending around active travel is woeful. Cycling and walking must come centre stage and must be seen as the mode of choice for shorter journeys, supported by more public sector options. We also need to address the strain that the increased use of electric vehicles will put on our national grid and look at the options available to decarbonise our energy at the same time. We need to ensure that investment goes in the right place. We heard how investment in our manufacturing sector will give a real boost to our economy, but we must not ignore the threats, particularly from China and the investment opportunities that it will see in the future.

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17:38 Jesse Norman (Conservative)

The Government want to position the UK as the best place on the planet to develop, manufacture and use zero-emission vehicles. I think that that is perfectly clear from what we have said. It will clean up our air—

Let me proceed. I have said that we want almost every car and van to have zero emissions by 2050. We have said that we will end the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire asked whether that target was too far out. I say to him that it is not. If he reflects on the experience of the past 12 months, he will see that one of the results of the Volkswagen scandal has been that diesels—in many ways, diesel is a thoroughly excellent technology, which is rapidly improving and is useful especially for journeys of distance and between cities in particular—have taken the brunt of that. The result has been a worsening in performance on air quality or rather on emissions, and that is precisely the kind of counterintuitive response that would come from a failure to manage the process effectively. I draw his attention to that.

In the minute and a half that remains to me, let me just say this: we also believe that e-bikes can play a very important part in the decarbonisation of our transport system. As I have said, I am a great believer in e-bikes. Colleagues will be surprised to learn that we have been thinking about this issue for some time. It is important to draw a distinction between e-bikes, the price of which is falling, the diversity of which is increasing and the market for which is working quite satisfactorily in many ways—although I can understand that colleagues recently discovering them might like a subsidy from the Government —and e-cargo bikes, which have a very important potential public purpose in substituting for diesel-using small vans, especially in urban contexts. We will be looking very closely at that particular issue as part of the wider picture.

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