£200 charge for dirty lorries to enter Merseyside proposed

Feb 18 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

AGEING lorries, vans and motorhomes should pay up to £200 to drive into parts of Merseyside to stop people choking to death, an MP has proposed.

Crosby MP Claire Curtis-Thomas called for a controversial “low emission zone” – pioneered in London this month – to be adopted in Sefton and elsewhere.

Under the scheme, operators of lorries and vans more than six years old must pay £200 a day to enter the capital or face a fine of £1,000.

The zone applies to lorries over 12 tonnes, but will quickly be extended to all diesel-engined vehicles over 3.5 tonnes, including motorhomes and larger delivery vans. From 2010, all vans and minibuses over 1.2 tonnes will be covered.

Supporters of the scheme point to the 1,000 people who die prematurely in London each year because of polluted air, although they accept air quality will improve by only 1%.

Meanwhile, it has triggered howls of protest from business groups, with small operators warning they will be driven to the wall by either the charge, or the £3,000 bill for making their vehicles exempt by fitting particulate traps.

Now Ms Curtis-Thomas has urged her own borough of Sefton to follow suit, telling ministers: “Every day, my constituents have to endure thousands of belching vehicles travelling through the constituency, which has some of the highest asthma rates in the country.”

Congratulating London on its initiative, the MP urged the Government to help her explore “the way in which it can be introduced in places such as Sefton, so that we, too, can save lives”.

Ms Curtis-Thomas was in Africa on Parliamentary business yesterday and could not be contacted to discuss, in detail, how such a zone would operate in Merseyside.

However, Sefton Borough Council said it had no plans for a low- emission zone and expressed surprise at the Labour MP's criticism of air quality, pointing to its Beacon Award last year.

Congratulating Sefton on beating targets for air quality, the Beacon panel chairman told the council: “Well done on your good work in delivering cleaner air.”

In fact, Liverpool City Council has examined setting up its own low-emission zone amid criticism that the city is an air pollution blackspot.

Last year, maps produced by the Carbon Trust named Liverpool as among the 10 worst places in Britain for emitting carbon dioxide, with business responsible for 40% of the 2,776,000 tonnes produced every year.

However, Liberal Democrat-run Liverpool quickly ruled out the idea. A city council spokesman explained: “We decided not to take it further because there were difficulties, including the impact on business.”

Older lorries emit up to 40 times more air pollutants per mile than new ones, but London’s scheme will lose money heavily – costing £49m to set up and £10m a year to run.