With the recent publicity over the outstanding Congestion Charge payments due from embassies in London (see pdf document here), triggered by the arrival of the new US ambassador representing the Obama administration, once again we have to rehearse the arguments why the diplomats should shut up and pay up.
Firstly, and contrary to the claim by the US embassy, the Congestion Charge is clearly a user-charge – not a tax, from which diplomats are exempt under the Vienna Convention on consular relations. The Congestion Charge requires drivers to pay to use a small geographical area in central London during specific hours, and as such it is no different in principle from the charge made to drive along an American toll road, which British and other foreign diplomatic staff in the US are all required to pay.
And let’s not forget that the diplomats who refuse to pay the charge neverthless benefit from its results – not only from the freer movement of traffic in central London but also from the local and global environmental impact of the reduction in CO2, PM10 and NOx levels.
It should be remembered that the US embassy paid the congestion charge for more than two years following its introduction in February 2003. It was only in July 2005, after the charge increased from £5 to £8, that they announced they were not going to pay it any more. Quite how a £3 increase transformed a user-charge into a tax they did not explain.
The refusal of embassies to pay the charge means that Londoners are having to carry the burden of a total of £30 million of embassies’ debts on their shoulders during a recession – over £3 million of which is owed by the US embassy alone. If any of us behaved like that we would have had the bailiffs around a long time ago. l don’t think that’s acceptable at all, and it stretches our hospitality too far.
The US embassy’s refusal to pay the Congestion Charge was exactly the sort of regressive political decision we had come expect under the presidency of George Bush. Now that we have a new administration, which has emphasised its green credentials, particularly in the build-up to the Copenhagen climate change negotiations in December, we expect something different. Hence my letter to President Obama (pdf here) urging him to reverse the decision made under his predecessor.
Everyone in the UK with progressive politics, myself included, greeted the election of President Obama with enthusiasm, hoping that it represented a change in direction for the US. One straightforward way the President can demonstrate to Londoners that his administration has indeed broken with the politics of the Bush period is to instruct the US embassy to start paying the Congestion Charge and clear its outstanding debts to Transport for London. Otherwise this one is not going to go away and will be a continuing source of political embarrassment to the US government. It’s not as though the richest country on the earth can’t afford to pay up.
Last week I had an opportunity to pedal for the future when Oxfam held a screening of The Age of Stupid at the Laban Centre off Deptford Road, as our cycling was used to generate power for the film.
The evening kicked off with a short speech by the local MP and Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change, Joan Ruddock, followed immediately by the film itself. This was the second time I have seen the movie, and I was still struck by its opening imagery of central London flooded. Its clear message is that we can collectively do something about climate change, not dissimilar to the campaigns in the last century to win suffrage for women and working men and the ending of apartheid in South Africa. So, while looking at what lies in store for us if we continue with our present way of life, the film does leave you with a sense of hope.
The Q&A session that followed the movie was the first I’ve done after 10 o’clock in the evening! And I was pleasantly surprised at the numbers willing to stay to discuss both the movie itself and climate change issues. The other panellists were Martin Kirk, Head of UK Campaigns at Oxfam International, and Daniel Vockins, Campaign Coordinator of The Age of Stupid, and the session was chaired by Lucy Aitken-Read from Oxfam. We had a number of very informed questions from the floor, which got us all thinking.
On returning from a very wet Lewisham that night I could see a new social trend beginning, where we go to the cinema and have some of the audience pedalling to power the showing of the film. Who says we can’t do some hard labour in today’s comfortable society, in order to reduce our carbon footprint?
The black cab is one of London’s most famous icons. Along with Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and the Routemaster bus, it regularly features in stock footage for films set in the capital and retains a nostalgic appeal for many people, particularly visitors to London.
However, figures from Transport for London show a different side to the story. They reveal that, in 2007-8, the 21,000 black cabs in London produced almost the same amount of carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) as the capital’s 46,000 private hire vehicles (PHVs) and even more of the emissions (PM10 and NOx) that are responsible for air pollution. So it is quite clear that black cabs have an adverse environmental impact, both on climate change and air quality, out of proportion to their numbers.
When Ken Livingstone was Mayor of London the annual licensing inspection for cabs was tightened up and in October 2007 an additional mid-year test was introduced. Nearly 40 per cent of cabs failed the test, with excess emissions a major factor. Despite this, Ken’s successor, Boris Johnson, has scrapped the mid-year inspection for black cabs – while retaining them for the less-polluting PHVs.
When I raised the issue of the pollution caused by black cabs at Mayor’s Question Time this month, Boris admitted that emissions of small particulates (PM10) were especially problematic for Londoners suffering from respiratory illnesses and said this issue needed to be “addressed”. But he refused to consider reinstating the twice-yearly checks.
The reason is not hard to find. Some of Boris’ most effective allies during his mayoral campaign were black cab drivers. According to his campaign office, they distributed over seven million receipts with the slogan “Back Boris” to their passengers – a figure equivalent to the entire population of London. In exchange, Boris made a number of promises to the cabbies, including the abolition of the six-monthly test.
It was not as though Ken had treated black cab drivers badly. He gave them exemption from the congestion charge, the right to use central London bus lanes and an increased night-rate tariff. But, unlike Livingstone, Johnson appears happy to sacrifice Londoners’ health and the struggle against climate change for short-term political gain.
Black cabs are a permanent and necessary part of London’s transport network and no one is proposing to replace them with PHVs. However, as things stand, for the eco-conscious Londoner who needs to use a taxi service, a licensed private hire minicab is the greener option. Black cabs need to clean up their act. The Mayor should take a lead on this crucial issue and do everything he can to reduce emissions – rather than pander to drivers’ convenience in pursuit of electoral advantage.
Today at the launch of Client Earth outside City Hall, I expressed concern that London’s hosting of the 2012 Olympics may have been undermined by Boris Johnson’s regressive environmental decisions.
The International Olympic Committee’s evaluation of London’s bid (pdf here) expressed concern about London’s “increasing levels of ozone pollution” but said that “legislation and actions now in place, such as the ‘low emission zone’ and ‘congestion charge’, are aimed at correcting that trend and ensuring all air pollutants are within World Health Organisation and EU target levels by 2010″.
Since this evaluation was made, Boris Johnson has been elected Mayor, and London’s measures to tackle its poor air quality and ozone pollution have been rolled back. The Congestion Charge Zone will be halved in size and the third phase of the Low Emission Zone, which was due to prevent the most polluting vehicles from entering Greater London, has been indefinitely suspended.
A recent London Assembly report into the city’s air quality, Every Breath You Take (pdf here), found that it could be responsible for up to 3,500 premature deaths and 12,000 children being hospitalised for respiratory failure. It has been reported that the Government is considering countermanding the Mayor because his actions may have undermined their fight against a possible fine of £300 million for failure to meet EU standards on air quality.
It’s bad enough that over three thousand Londoners have their lives cut short each year because of the state of our air. The last thing we want is for this still to be an issue when the world comes here in three years time – as it was in Beijing and Athens. If the Mayor continues down this road, that sadly could well be the case. At the least, the Mayor should now reverse his short-sighted decision to cancel the next phase of the Low Emission Zone.
On a number of fronts, it has become all too clear what the environment strategy Boris Johnson is offering to Londoners actually consists of: a bit of charm with a lot of hot air, bluster and the hope that no one looks too closely at the details.
At a recent conference on eco-vehicles, London’s Tory Mayor declared that the capital’s car owners had responded enthusiastically to his personal appeal to “go electric”. In reality, many had already committed themselves to the introduction of electric vehicles in response to the congestion charge and the low emission zone, which penalise polluting lorries and vans. Both these initiatives were introduced by Johnson’s Labour predecessor, Ken Livingstone.
Next it was revealed that a report Boris commissioned from consultants Ernst & Young on the potential of London’s low-carbon economy had cost £85,000. This expensive report says nothing new. It is no more than a re-hash of information already in the public domain. It could easily have been produced in-house by the Mayor’s environment team – which he is now proposing to cut by half. Evidently, Boris prefers outsourcing to private companies, irrespective of the additional cost to Londoners.
This was followed by the publication of the Mayor’s Annual Report for 2008-9, in which he confirmed what many had suspected was his motive for suspending the third phase of the low emission zone, despite the disastrous impact of this on Londoners’ health. In his view, it was an “onerous environmental regulation” on small vans and businesses – in other words, on “white van man” in the London suburbs and the core supporters of Boris Johnson.
Then came the results of an investigation by the London Assembly into the Mayor’s environmental spending. This found that less than a third of the total will be spent on tackling climate change and less than 4 per cent on reducing waste. Most of the money will be used to fund initiatives which Boris claims will “make London a greener and more pleasant city”. Unfortunately, the environmental benefits of these initiatives are questionable.
For example, the Mayor’s cycling programme has a budget of £111 million and accounts for half of the Greater London Authority’s total environmental spending. Yet the scheme is likely to have only a minimal effect on car usage and consequently carbon dioxide emissions and air pollution levels.
Boris was in his element at the Green500 awards, where even Chelsea Football Club received recognition for its environment efforts. The Mayor charmed his audience with warm words about “London’s top organisations truly grasping the nettle to become greener”. This easy-going affability is one of Boris’s great skills as a politician. But problems as profound as those concerning the urban and global environment require something more serious. Such “greenstanding” at an awards ceremony is no substitute for an effective programme aimed at combating poor air quality and climate change.
On a number of fronts, it has become all too clear what the environment strategy Boris Johnson is offering to Londoners actually consists of: a bit of charm with a lot of hot air, bluster and the hope that no one looks too closely at the details.