12:41 Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)

The UK is one of the leaders in combating climate change and I am rightly proud of that record. Since 1990, the UK has decarbonised at the fastest rate of any G20 country and of course, we were the first to legislate for net zero by 2050. Last December, we went one step further and said that we would have an interim target of a 68% reduction by 2030. That is rightly an ambitious target and I am glad about that. However, if we are to achieve it, we need to focus on our transport sector.

The Government did undertake a consultation in 2019 on mandating electric vehicle charging points in new buildings, but we have not yet seen legislation as a result. However, I hope that this Bill is very timely because we should imminently have both the transport decarbonisation plan and the infrastructure strategy plan. I do not want to be too forward, but it would be good to see the Government adopting the thread of the Bill.

The Bill is also important because it forces developers to buy into net zero. That means that this is in everyone’s mind, because whenever people are in their house or in their office and see an electric vehicle charging point, they realise that the new norm is electric vehicles—because we do need to make it the new norm.

While this Bill does not seek to address all the issues with electric vehicles, we clearly do need a comprehensive and strategic national grid of charging points. We also need to focus on the consumer experience in terms of interoperability. This Bill will go a small way to encourage the uptake of electric vehicles, which is critical to meeting our target for net zero and making the world a better place.

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