Sir Sadiq Khan’s controversial decision to expand the Ultra low emission zone (Ulez) across all of London was not “an anti-motorist policy”, the mayor has claimed in a podcast interview.
Speaking with Dr Hilary Jones on The Dr Hilary Show, Sir Sadiq said he is “not anti-car” and described himself as someone who “loves driving”.
The Labour mayor argued that the policy was in fact “anti-poison” and that the Ulez involved “a combination of carrots and sticks” to reduce air pollution across the capital.
The zone’s expansion, which took place in August 2023, was fiercely resisted by Sir Sadiq’s Tory opponents, who said the £12.50 daily charge for non-compliant vehicles was piling misery on London’s poorest drivers during a cost of living crisis.
Conservative mayoral candidate Susan Hall put her promise to scrap the Ulez expansion at the heart of her campaign for City Hall last year, but she was defeated by a margin of over 275,000 votes.
A recent analysis based on the first year of the zone’s expansion found that levels of roadside nitrogen dioxide (NO2) – which is created by NOx exhaust emission gases – were on average up to 4.8 per cent lower across outer London than would have been expected if the expansion hadn’t occurred.
TfL sources said this change had resulted in a “substantial improvement” in the capital’s air quality, with the benefits “rippling beyond London” across the Home Counties.
The Tories said the analysis was a “fantasy” based on guesses and assumptions, and which failed to highlight that transport emissions were already decreasing as Londoners switched to cleaner cars, many of them electric.
But the mayor insisted on his recent podcast appearance that the policy was necessary to bring pollution levels down.
Sir Sadiq told Dr Hilary: “We had to have a combination of carrots and sticks. So the first thing is, this is not an anti-motorist policy. I'm not anti-car. I love driving. The issue is anti-poison.
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“You may not realize it, but if you're driving a non-compliant vehicle, an older diesel or an older petrol [car], you as the driver are breathing in this poison. Your kids in the back, they're breathing in the poison. If you've got an older parent next to you, he or she's breathing in the poison and those around you are as well.
“So what we did from City Hall is give support financially in terms of a scrappage scheme, to make it as easy as possible for a small business, for a charity, for a family to transition.”
He added: “When I began this journey in London, there were only 39 per cent of vehicles compliant. It's now 97 per cent of vehicles [that] are compliant. There were only 12 per cent of vans compliant. It's now [over] 90 per cent of vans that are compliant.
Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan spoke with Dr Hilary Jones on his podcast about his decision to expand the Ultra low emission zone (Ulez)
The Dr Hilary Show
“So we're not making money from this, because if your vehicle's compliant, you don't pay a penny more and you get the benefits of clean air. So, you know, it has been important to take people with us. And the way we've done it, if I'm honest, Hilary, is incrementally.
“We began in central London. There was initial opposition. We showed it worked. We then moved to inner London, with more boroughs involved. We showed it worked, then we moved to all of London. The research published last week is a year's worth of analysis of these various monitors across London and we can see it works.”
In his re-election manifesto, the mayor committed to “keeping the London-wide Ulez standards the same over the next four years”. He reaffirmed that promise in an interview earlier this month, as he pledged not to “move the goalposts” in relation to which cars and vans are exempt from paying the levy.
