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Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, has vigorously defended plans to expand a flagship clean air policy in the UK capital after the scheme was blamed for Labour’s failure to win Thursday’s by-election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.
Conservative and opposition party figures on Friday both cited widespread fury among voters at Khan’s blueprint to enlarge the ultra low emission zone from the inner city as the main reason the Tories narrowly retained former prime minister Boris Johnson’s old seat.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer declined to say that Ulez should be shelved but stressed there was “no doubt” that its expansion “was the reason we didn’t win in Uxbridge”, despite his party having been the favourite.
Steve Tuckwell, who was elected for the Tories with a majority of 495, said “absolute opposition” to expansion had been the “number one message” from voters during the campaign. He added that the mayor “now needs to listen”.
However, Khan told the BBC that his policy to widen Ulez — which levies a £12.50 daily charge on older and highly polluting vehicles — to London’s outer suburbs was a “tough one, but the right one”.
Khan, who will face re-election next May, vowed to continue “monitoring” the plans and “listening” to people’s views on them. But he warned that Londoners were “suffering the consequences of air pollution” as well as rising living costs, with about 4,000 people dying prematurely each year.
Research by City Hall, the mayor’s headquarters, this year found that all London boroughs exceeded limits for toxic air pollution as set out by the World Health Organization.
Vehicle pollution is seen as a key area for cutting emissions in the UK, with more than one-third of CO₂ emitted in 2022 coming from road transport.
Ulez was first introduced to a small part of central London in 2019, and then extended in 2021 to cover all areas within the north and south circular roads that ring inner London.
But the expansion into the outer areas of the capital, set for August, has sparked controversy because fewer public transport options exist there. Five Tory-led councils have legally challenged the move by Transport for London, which is responsible for the capital’s main roads, with a verdict expected this month.
The prospect of enlargement has riven Labour, with a string of the party’s London MPs, including shadow business minister Seema Malhotra, warning of its economic impact on residents and small businesses.
Critics argue many people and businesses cannot afford either to pay the charge or change vehicle, and that a £110mn scrappage scheme to support a switchover to less polluting vehicles has been insufficient.
Scrapping or reversing the expansion of the scheme has become a central pledge of Susan Hall, who was selected this week as the Tory candidate to run against Khan next year. Johnson, who announced the scheme while mayor, has in recent weeks also come out in favour of reversing its expansion.
According to TfL estimates, the London-wide zone due to come into force in August will generate up to £200mn a year in revenue for its first two years, but there will be no surplus by the 2026-27 financial year.
The body has said that since Ulez was introduced, the proportion of diesel cars on London’s roads has fallen. There has also been an overall reduction in vehicles and traffic in the zone and pollution emissions “have reduced dramatically”, leading to 4mn people “breathing cleaner air”.
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