London drives ahead with controversial scheme charging motorists for driving older cars

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has ignored criticism and pressed ahead with the citywide expansion of a scheme that charges motorists £12.50 (€14.55) per day for driving cars that don’t comply with modern emissions standards.

The Ulez (ultra low emissions zone) scheme has been extended to cover all of London’s 32 boroughs, including the suburbanised outer portions of the city. It was introduced in 2019, covering only the parts of central London where the £15 per day congestion charge separately applies. The charge was later extended to cover most of London inside its north and south circular roads.

Under Ulez, most petrol cars registered before 2006 and diesel cars from before 2015 are likely to fail the emissions standards, meaning their owners will have to pay the £12.50 charge every day the car is driven within the zone. The scheme is enforced through a comprehensive network of cameras with number plate recognition technology.

If the owner of a non-compliant car or van drove their vehicle every day, they could be hit with charges of more than £4,500 annually. Critics of the scheme, including political opponents of Mr Khan, have suggested that Ulez will hit poorer people the hardest.

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Mr Khan has resisted pressure, including from within the Labour Party, to scrap the expansion. Speaking on Tuesday, he insisted it was a “really effective policy” for cleaner air in inner London.

“What about outer London? Why shouldn’t they breathe clean air? Why should they carry on dying prematurely in numbers that can be reversed?” he said.

The mayor’s office has relied on scientific studies that suggest up to 4,000 people per year die prematurely in London from diseases related to polluted air. Supporters of the Ulez scheme say it is responsible for cutting by up to a third the number of children admitted to hospital with illnesses related to air pollution.

The issue has proved controversial at a wider political level. Ulez was first envisaged by the Conservative party’s former mayor of the capital, Boris Johnson, who now says he never envisaged it being extended to the suburbs.

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The issue was blamed in July for the surprise defeat of the Labour candidate in a byelection in the west London Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat formerly held by Mr Johnson, who quit last year as prime minister and, this year, stepped down as an MP.

Following the Uxbridge defeat, party leader Keir Starmer suggested its environmental policies should not be so strict that they anger voters. He also said, later, that Londoners were entitled to breathe clean air.

Mark Harper, the transport secretary, said Ulez was part of Labour’s “war on motorists”.

A shadowy group of vigilantes known as the Blade Runners has been vandalising Ulez cameras in the weeks leading up to the expansion. A demonstration against the scheme took place in Whitehall on Tuesday.