<address redacted>
Mark Harper MP
Secretary of State for Transport
Great Minster House
33 Horseferry Road
London
SW1P 4DR
CC: Jeremy Hunt MP (South West Surrey)
CC: Cllr Penny Rivers (Surrey County Council)
CC: Cllr Steve Cosser (Waverley Borough
Council)
CC: Cllr Steve Williams (Waverley Borough
Council)
CC: Sadiq Khan (Mayor of London)
30 March 2023
Dear Mr Harper,
I write to you in
your capacity as secretary of state for transport. On this occasion, the main focus
of my ire is the extension of the London Ultra Low Emissions Zone to outer
London, as proposed by Sadiq Khan, mayor of London. Above and beyond that, I am
very angry at the extreme anti-car policies, which have been imposed on
motorists by successive UK governments over more than 30 years, and which show
no signs of being eased.
Only a week or so
ago, GB News reported [[1]]
that last November Mr Khan said: “Around 4,000 Londoners die prematurely each
year because of long-term exposure to air pollution, with the greatest number
of deaths in outer London boroughs.” I used to live in outer London, though I
left there almost 40 years ago; so, I have an interest in this case. And to say
that 4,000 individuals a year have died in London because
of air pollution, is to assume causation, when even a correlation is not
clear and proven.
I also have some relevant
expertise in the subject matter. In 2017, when the ULEZ was first proposed, I made
some social cost calculations on air pollution from cars
in the UK. I published them on-line, together with a lot of background and
back-story on the issue. You can find that paper here: [[2]].
My conclusion was: “There is no case, on social cost grounds, for such charges
on Euro 5 diesels (2010 to 2014) or on any petrol cars. For all these cars, the
excess of the social cost of the pollution they emit, compared to a new (Euro
6) car of the same type, is £25 a year or less. Two entry fees to the London
ULEZ would cover the social cost of this pollution for a whole year. To levy
such outrageous charges on drivers of these cars is unreasonable.” The
back-story to the case, and in particular how COMEAP used a US study whose data
was dubious to say the least, and invented a novel and debatable technique for
assessing the error range of their estimates, is also quite damning.
I hope you will
agree, Mr Harper, that to levy such outrageous charges on the people of outer
London, and particularly those who live in boroughs such as Harrow, Hillingdon,
Bromley and Bexley, where air pollution is quite low, is even more
unreasonable. Gareth Bacon, MP for Orpington, wrote about this in the Telegraph
last month: [[3]]. He was
also present at the recent protest in Orpington over the issue, and spoke in no
uncertain terms to the reporter: [[4]]. I commend Mr Bacon for doing what every
MP should be doing, to wit, standing up strongly for the interests of his
constituents when they are threatened by policies that are being made for
vested interests and against the people.
I hope you will also
agree, Mr Harper, that it would be a grave injustice against the people
affected, if any such schemes were ever to be extended beyond Inner London and perhaps
the very worst polluted areas of other large cities. I also hope that you are
fully aware that very many people who live in rural areas, suburbs and towns,
and some even in cities, need a car simply in order to live their daily lives.
Yet many, indeed I would hazard most of us, cannot now afford either to replace
our existing cars with electric cars, or to pay any more than the exorbitant
charges that government already levies on motorists.
No democracy worth
the name would ever treat its people in such ways. No MP worth the name would
ever impose policies hostile to the interests of the people who elected him. And
yet you Mr Harper, as MP for the Forest of Dean, a rural area, are allowing to
go “full steam ahead” schemes that, if implemented in your own local area,
would lead to life grinding to a halt for many of your constituents.
I very much hope
that my MP Jeremy Hunt, to whom I have copied this letter, agrees with what I
have said here to Mr Harper. I hope he is willing to defend the interests of
the people of his South West Surrey constituency against agendas such as “sustainable
development.” These agendas are in effect being imposed by unaccountable, non-democratic
parties such as the United Nations, and are now being used as excuses to
restrict, and to make more expensive, the mobility and independence which we
all need. I also hope that he will be willing to use his influence to stop the
imposition on local governments, by means of national level mandates, of
policies which are inappropriate to the local area, and hostile to the people
of the area. Particularly given that in more than three decades, we the people
have had no chance at all to object, either at local or national level, to
these policies.
I have also copied
this letter to Cllr Penny Rivers of Surrey County Council. I note with alarm that
Surrey is a member of the “UK 100” network of councils. These councils have “pledged
to lead a rapid transition to Net Zero with Clean Air in their communities
ahead of the government’s legal target.” It is precisely this kind of agenda to
which I am implacably opposed. With my degree in mathematics and considerable scientific
knowledge, I consider “Net Zero” to be unnecessary and counter-productive. (Nor
is it practical; but that is another matter). Worse, the policy has been driven
by panic about a so-called “climate crisis,” for which there is no objective
evidence in reality. Just recently, I have published an article on this
subject: [[5]].
Long, but extremely relevant.
I have copied this letter
to my two Waverley Borough councillors too. As both of them live within a few hundred
yards of my home, I hope they will agree that to live in our area, over a mile from
and 170 feet in altitude above Godalming town centre, and with only one, rather
poor, bus service within half a mile and at anywhere near the same altitude, a
car is all but an essential. And that they will be adamant that no further restrictive
or confiscatory schemes to hinder car use must ever be imposed on people who
live in such areas.
Last on my copy list
is Mr Khan, the mayor of London. I expect he must be aware of the Imperial
College report from 2021, which showed that any
improvement the ULEZ might have achieved in air quality, even in central
London, was only marginal: [[6]].
And that, as Sky News reported, the biggest pollution reductions all took place
before the ULEZ came into effect in 2019. Knowing this, I find it hard to believe
that his motivations were good and honest ones when he decided to go ahead with
the proposed ULEZ expansion.
Mr Harper, I wrote to
you by e-mail about six weeks ago about transport policies in general, and I
feel a need to expand upon a most important point I made then. We all know that
this government has persistently favoured policies hostile to the interests of
car drivers. These include the ULEZ in London, traffic gates and 15-minute
cities in Oxford, “Low Traffic Neighbourhoods” and “Clean Air Zones,” and
schemes being planned by “C40” city councils and “UK 100” county and local
councils. It is stunning that the wishes of the people, whom government exists
to serve, have been totally ignored in these matters.
For example, a
significant majority of those who responded to the consultation on the original
ULEZ were against the scheme, yet it still went ahead. Based on a statement by
the two Oxford councils here [[7]], I calculated that between 68% and 89% of
those who responded to the 15-minute city plan were against it. Yet that, too,
is going ahead. As to the ULEZ expansion, one of the accusations in the court
case against Mr Khan by Hillingdon and three other outer London councils – and,
to be fair to them, Surrey County Council as well – is “Inadequate consultation
and/or apparent predetermination arising from the conduct of the consultation.”
[[8]].
I should mention also the July 2021 “consultation”
on “bringing forward the end to the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans
from 2040 to 2035, or earlier if a faster transition appears feasible.” I
myself submitted a 58-page, detailed response. My response and the responses of
others like me to that “consultation” were totally ignored. And the ban was
moved forward to 2030, without any feasibility study being published. What a
sham.
It would appear that
UK transport policies are being driven, not by what the people want, as should
be the case in a democracy, but by political agendas – such as “nett zero” and
“clean air” – that originate with the United Nations and their “sustainable
development goals,” and are being imposed on the people of the UK against our
wills. The views of those who respond to consultations are being ignored, and
schemes are going ahead without government making even an attempt at rigorous
cost-benefit analysis. A recent report by consultancy Cebr, for example, has
shown that, even using the UK government’s own methodology, the costs to the
people of the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars outweigh any environmental
benefits by a factor of at least 5 to 1 (and probably far more). Such pointless
and damaging policies are not something that those, who are supposed to
represent the people, ought ever to allow to be imposed on those people.
As secretary of
state for transport, you have the power to correct this appalling situation
that allows costly and destructive policies, favoured by globalist élites and crazy green activists, to be imposed
against their wills on people who are just trying to go about their daily lives.
Please use that power to intervene to stop all these bad and undemocratic
schemes from going ahead, and to ensure that no arm of government, either at
national or local level, ever again tries to stop the people of the UK from
enjoying the affordable, convenient, private transport which we both need and deserve.
Yours sincerely,
Neil Lock
[[4]] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twGjux08IMg
(0:47 to 8:47)
[[5]] https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/15/climate-crisis-what-climate-crisis-part-one-the-evidence/
[[6]] https://news.sky.com/story/londons-ultra-low-emission-zone-resulting-in-only-marginal-air-quality-improvements-12469903
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