19:25 Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)

Respected economists from the Centre for Economics and Business Research have shown that such policies are hugely detrimental to the economy. Many such policies also fail to account for the huge differences between old-fashioned diesel engines and so-called cleaner diesel alternatives of the sort manufactured by Jaguar Land Rover in my constituency. Those cars are just as clean as petrol alternatives. In fact, What Car? recently named a diesel as its car of the year, saying that it combined the low CO2 for which diesels are known with lower NOx output than many petrol alternatives. What is worse—this is perverse in many respects—many people are now switching to petrol without realising that they could be buying a more polluting vehicle than the diesel that they could have bought instead, perhaps at a good discount.

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19:39 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Richard Harrington)

I make no apology for the Government’s bold vision on ultra low emissions vehicles, which we set out in our road to zero strategy. I am sure that, in the long run, Jaguar will be a major beneficiary of that strategy, as, of course, will be the environment of this country, Europe and, I hope, the world. We want to be at the forefront of this and aim for all new cars and vans to be effectively zero emission by 2040. Hopefully, by 2050 and beyond, every car will be zero emission. I agree with the critical point made by my hon. Friend: diesel plays an important role in reducing CO 2 emissions from road transport during the transition and it will continue to have an important role for years to come. We need to be clear on this point, both in our own minds and in our communication with industry, and I believe that we have been.

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