16:47 Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Turner. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on securing this debate. One quite good thing about Westminster Hall debates is that they give me a chance to agree with Conservative Members, and I pretty much agreed with everything he said, including his recommendations and conclusions. He mentioned the need for continued tough regulations and targets on climate change and air quality after Brexit. I agree with that, but from a Scottish perspective I hope Scotland will remain in the EU, as the Scottish people wish.

Everyone agrees that electric cars are good for the environment and they have the bonus that their running costs are estimated at 2p to 3p per mile, which is way cheaper than 16p per mile for the average family car that runs on conventional fuels. But, as the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton pointed out, up-front costs are a barrier to many people being able to purchase these cars, so the uptake has been way too small for us to start to make inroads in climate change targets. The Government need to take more action, and that action has to be joined up across the entire energy sector if it is to contribute to meeting climate change targets. I emphasise that I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s recommendations.

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17:06 James Heappey (Wells) (Con)

I am enthusiastic about electric vehicles but realistic about the pace at which they can be rolled out, so while I will of course talk about the digitised and electrified nirvana that awaits, it is important to recognise that biofuels will probably need to do the heavy lifting in the meantime, as we try to meet our decarbonisation targets on the roads. I want to talk briefly about three areas of Government policy: fuel duty, low-carbon generation capacity and the preparedness of our energy system.

On generation capacity, Bloomberg envisages that, on current expectations, by 2040 electric cars will require about 1,900 terawatt-hours of electricity around the world. That represents about 10% of what we are currently generating globally. That is quite a challenge, because the easiest thing to do is to build gas-fired power stations or, worse, coal-fired stations to meet that increased requirement for generation immediately. However, then we would not actually be achieving any sort of decarbonisation, because the cars would be charged with electricity that has been produced from dirty fuels, which are potentially more polluting and send more carbon into the atmosphere than using some modern petrol engines.

The Secretary of State has been to see the Energy and Climate Change Committee, on which I sit, on many occasions, and she has told us of a mythical cross-departmental Cabinet-level working group that is working on all these things. We have pushed her quite hard on who sits on it, how often it meets and where we can see the minutes of those meetings, but they do not seem to be forthcoming. Will the Minister reassure us that the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Department for Transport and the Treasury are working on these issues in parallel? If he can give us an update on any of the issues I have raised this afternoon, that would be helpful.

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17:10 Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)

The Scottish Government have an ambitious climate change target that includes phasing out all petrol and diesel-fuelled vehicles by 2050, although I am sure we will continue to see classic car events to look at the history. The electric vehicle road map, “Switched On Scotland”, which was published in 2013, sets out the Scottish Government’s ambitious vision to free Scotland’s towns, cities and communities from the damaging emissions of petrol and diesel-fuelled vehicles by 2050. This year has already seen the introduction of more than 200 electric vehicles across Scottish local authorities.

The “Switched On Scotland” road map focuses specifically on battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles, which are collectively referred to as plug-in vehicles. Electric vehicles have a positive impact on health, wellbeing and the environment. They can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve local air quality and reduce noise pollution. In Scotland, a third of all car journeys are less than two miles long, and nearly a quarter of all trips are one mile or less. Regular cars making those journeys emit a disproportionate amount of carbon into the air, whereas electric vehicles provide a cleaner method of transport.

Electric vehicles require power to run them, and the Scottish Government have done an incredible amount of work to ensure that renewable energy powers 100% of our energy use by 2020.

That work is not being helped by the Tory Government’s policies on renewable energy. They need a rethink.

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17:15 Barry Gardiner (Labour)

“ensuring almost every car and van is a zero emission vehicle by 2050.”

The Committee on Climate Change’s progress report to Parliament last week showed that the UK is set to miss its legal climate commitments for the 2030s by 47%. That is a staggering shortfall. Boiled down, the reason is that outside the power sector there has been

One of the principal reasons that the committee gives for that slow progress on decarbonising is the lack of progress on decarbonising transport. It says that

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17:20 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)

A number of Members have mentioned the referendum. Let me be clear that our determination on electric vehicles and standards is not in any way changed by the result of the recent referendum. The drivers of transition to zero emissions are global in nature and will continue to apply regardless of our place in Europe.

The benefits of electric vehicles include securing the manufacturing of the future and health benefits. Let me run through the actions that we are taking. In our manifesto, we committed to the goal that by 2050 nearly every car and van on our roads should be a zero-emission vehicle. That will require all new cars and vans on sale to be zero-emission by around 2040. We have in place one of the most comprehensive support packages anywhere in the world, with committed funding of more than £600 million in this spending review period. Progress to date puts us in a very encouraging position. Vehicles that used to be exotic are now considered commonplace on our streets. In total, about 28,000 ultra-low emission vehicles were sold in the UK last year, which is more than in all the years since 2010 combined. We have had more than 70,000 claims for our plug-in car and van grants. I am particularly pleased that many of those vehicles are manufactured by Nissan at its Sunderland plant, which last year produced 20% of all electric cars sold in the EU.

Hydrogen vehicles have been mentioned. It was interesting to see the Riversimple vehicle, brought to Parliament in partnership with my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Chris Davies). I had previously met representatives of the business at the London motor show. We are technology-neutral and I see hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles playing an important role in decarbonising road transport. Because we are technology neutral, I prefer to talk about ultra-low emission or zero-emission vehicles rather than electric vehicles. The Government are providing £5 million to help develop 12 hydrogen refuelling stations to support the roll-out of fuel cell vehicles. All 12 stations are being commissioned this year and will provide a significant step in the refuelling network.

Our agenda is about tackling the infrastructure, providing incentives to purchase and communicating the benefits. Colleagues have raised many questions, including about duty. Mercifully, that is a question for the Treasury, but I will highlight Members’ concerns. These issues are being discussed at cross-departmental groups, particularly with the Department of Energy and Climate Change, because it is clearly understood that we only really see the benefits of moving to electric vehicles if we have sustainable power generation.

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