London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan has urged the Conservative central government to provide him with more funding to finance a more generous scrappage scheme for owners of older cars caught by his plans to expand his flagship clean air zone to cover the whole of the UK capital.
Khan is under mounting political pressure to rethink his plan to enlarge the ultra low emission zone (Ulez) at the end of August, a decision which Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has blamed for his party’s failure to seize the outer London seat of Uxbridge in a by-election last week.
Khan told the Financial Times the central government had handed out large sums of money to other UK cities to pay for their clean air zones, including Bristol and Bradford which had received £42mn and £30mn, respectively.
“The government has given other cities hundreds of millions of pounds for scrappage schemes and clean air zones,” Khan told the FT. “All we are asking for is fairness and that London gets the same,” adding: “It’s not right that the government hasn’t provided a penny for Londoners while giving so much to other cities.”
Transport for London, which is chaired by Khan, has set up a £110mn vehicle scrappage scheme for small businesses, charities and Londoners in receipt of child benefit or universal credit affected by the Ulez. But drivers have complained that the £2,000 on offer for cars is only a fraction of the cost of replacing their vehicles.
In recent years, relations between Khan and the Tory central government have become increasingly strained after ministers gradually withdrew an annual £700mn grant for TfL and then applied onerous strings to Covid-19 rescue packages to keep the capital’s transport system running during the pandemic.
A government spokesperson said air quality was a devolved matter for the London mayor, and said it was up to him to justify his decision to expand the Ulez. He said London had received almost £102mn of government funding on projects to tackle pollution, albeit over the last 12 years.
One City Hall figure said the mayor was examining options to mitigate the financial impact for those caught up in the expansion of the clean air zone. “It could be the amount or eligibility of the scrappage scheme or the Ulez payment itself, but it is still early days,” they said.
However, one of Khan’s aides said no such decision would be made until after the conclusion of a legal challenge against the scheme’s expansion by five Tory-led councils — which could come as early as next week.
Under the scheme, drivers must pay £12.50 per day if they drive a more polluting vehicle within the zone. This generally applies to petrol engine vehicles built before 2006 or diesel ones built before 2016. Khan said it would affect fewer than one in 10 drivers in outer London.
Ulez was designed to clean up the British capital, where all boroughs exceed the limits for toxic air pollution as set out by the World Health Organization. It was first introduced in a small part of central London in 2019 and extended in 2021 to cover all areas within the north and south circular roads.