Parents and children in Barnet mounted a protest on Thursday outside their local MP’s office, in support of plans to expand London’s Ultra low emission zone (Ulez).
Theresa Villiers, Chipping Barnet’s Conservative MP, had spoken out against the expanded Ulez in Parliament on Wednesday, garnering agreement from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
But in a protest mounted 24 hours later, on Clean Air Day, members of the campaign group Mums for Lungs, along with Mothers CAN [Climate Action Network] and Barnet Friends of the Earth, turned up outside her office to show support for the London-wide Ulez.
“What we’re asking our MP Theresa Villiers to do is to work with us, and help us clean up the air in Barnet,” said organiser and local mother Sara Hall.
“It’s really bad [the air quality]. My son has to cross the North Circular to go to school every morning and on his way back and he says to me it’s really awful - the smell, the air, it’s so bad.
“There’s all this scientific evidence to show how it harms children’s health, and really for us the expansion of the Ulez can’t come soon enough.”
The zone, which requires non-compliant vehicles to pay a £12.50 daily charge, is expanding to cover the whole of Greater London on August 29.
Ms Hall added that she was concerned to see Ms Villiers host an anti-Ulez protest on May 20, at which she posed for a photograph with someone holding a sign which read ‘STOP THE TOXIC AIR LIE’.
Huge turnout today for Theresa Villiers’ protest against ULEZ expansion.
— Barnet Conservatives (@BarnetTories) May 20, 2023
Sign our petition here: https://t.co/OEADWvmP8p pic.twitter.com/UYyFGQSIiN
Ms Hall said: “I really think clean air is universally popular, but somehow this one policy intervention, the expansion of the Ulez, has galvanised a lot of conspiracy theorists.
“What we need our MP Theresa Villiers to do is to work with us, talk to members of the public, talk to the constituents, [about] what is actually happening with the Ulez, what support is available, and then really lobby for more funding [for the scrappage scheme] to ensure no small business or low-income family, or charity in Barnet is penalised by the expansion of the Ulez.”
The group of parents and children gave a letter urging support for the Ulez to a staff member at Ms Villiers’ office, who accepted it on her behalf, along with an air purifying plant.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Ms Villiers had said the Ulez expansion was “completely wrong” particularly given worries around the cost of living.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Ms Villiers was “absolutely right” to raise the issue.
He told MPs: “While we are getting on providing significant support to families with the cost of living, the Labour Mayor of London, to whom transport is devolved, is busily putting it up, imposing the Ulez charge against the overwhelming views of residents and businesses.”
Approached for a response to the protest, Ms Villiers told the Standard: "Of course I want to clean up air quality in my constituency, but Ulez expansion will not deliver that.
“The independent impact assessment published by the Mayor concluded that expanding the zone would have only a negligible impact on pollution.
“This is the wrong scheme at the wrong time, hitting my constituents in the pocket without delivering any significant environmental or health benefits.”
Addressing the poster she was seen standing next to, she said: "This was not a poster I provided at the event I organised.
“I have never asserted that problems with air quality do not exist. It is just that I do not believe Labour's Ulez expansion is an effective way to address those problems.
“It was a public protest at which people expressed a range of views on why they opposed the Mayor's plan for new charges on driving."
Ms Villiers’ claim that the expanded Ulez will have a “negligible impact” on pollution is in reference to an official assessment report on the impact of the expanded Ulez, carried out by the firm Jacobs.
It said that the "Proposed Scheme is modelled to result in a minor reduction (-1.3%) in the average exposure of the population of Greater London to NO2 [nitrogen dioxide] and negligible reductions (-0.1%) in average exposure to PM2.5 [particulate matter]".
City Hall has previously responded to that point by saying it is "important to understand the impact of this [the expanded Ulez] policy in absolute terms".
"For example, although NO2 concentration reductions are smaller in percentage terms than for the central London Ulez, in absolute terms there is a much larger volume of NOx emissions saved equating to 362 tonnes. This is in comparison to the 240 tonnes saving we saw in central London," a City Hall spokesperson has said.
