Under the guise of benign environmentalism, towns and cities far smaller than our county town have seen self-employed van drivers, and working people with older cars subjected to crippling charges just to go about their daily life. I don't believe that voters here want to see their pockets raided in that manner.
Ultra-Low Emission Zones, or ULEZ, are schemes cherished by Labour and Lib Dem councils up and down the country because they rake in huge sums of money. They're sometimes rebranded as "Clean Air Zones", and it's not just a London phenomenon, where numerous protests have taken place against the expansion of Sadiq Khan's ULEZ scheme.
Portsmouth (population 210,000), Oxford (160,000) and Bath (94,000) all have populations smaller than the 250,000 or so who call Northampton home, yet their Labour and Liberal councils chose to impose this tax on motorists, making it a very real risk for Northampton in particular. Van drivers in Bath have to pay £9 every single day, just to go about their business, while Oxford City Council is set to double its ULEZ charges later this year.
While some areas choose not to impose a charge on private cars, the consequences of making anywhere a more expensive place to do business should not be overlooked. Many smaller companies cannot simply accept the extra cost, so it ends up being passed on to ordinary consumers creating yet another deterrent to doing business in town centres as opposed to satellite retail parks. At a time when the economy of Northampton town centre is being revitalised, we cannot take such a risk.
As Conservatives we believe in looking after our local environment. That means preserving our green spaces, and ensuring that sensible steps are taken to reduce pollution, but a crude war on motorists is not the way forward. We have worked closely with the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to put together an Air Quality Action Plan, and two of our monitored areas for air pollution have recently come back into acceptable parameters.
Coupled with the ever-advancing improvements in vehicle efficiency and the switch to zero emission vehicles, our air quality will continue to improve without busy bodies at the Council telling hard-working plumbers, roofers and other small business owners that they're irresponsible polluters and need to pay through the nose to drive their van to the next job. Conservatives know just how hard it is to run a business, especially when National Insurance costs have just been increased by Labour and they're promising even more red tape.
Look up and down the country and you will see a dozen councils, all Labour or Liberal-controlled, imposing these sorts of schemes. Voting Reform will only open the door to the other two, so the only way to stop ULEZ coming to Northampton is to vote for the Conservatives.