Jim
Fitzpatrick: I am not in a position to give chapter and
verse on the discussions that departmental officials have had with the
UK and other European manufacturers. We are in fairly regular, direct
contact with trade bodies and individual manufacturers, so I assume
that there has been dialogue, but I cannot give details to the hon.
Gentleman.
Stephen
Hammond: If there were to be knowledge sharing, it would
imply that EU competition rules would need to be relaxed. Is that the
Government’s understanding, and what is the Government’s
attitude towards any relaxation of competition
rules?
Jim
Fitzpatrick: I am not sure that that is the
Government’s
understanding.
Stephen
Hammond: It has been suggested in a number of documents
that what I have described would be the case. I should be grateful if
at some stage the Minister could confirm whether the Government believe
that. The
chief executive officer of Renault has urged that there should be
greater funding of research and development in this area. Have the
Government a view on whether they would support greater public
assistance for R and
D?
Jim
Fitzpatrick: We would always support engineering research
and development. It would come down to whether we wanted to pay for it,
whether the manufacturers would be expected to pay for it or whether we
could assist with that. From his Front-Bench experience, the hon.
Gentleman is aware of the low carbon vehicle partnerships and the
various platforms that we have helped to create in the UK with
manufacturers and academic institutions to develop research on such
vehicles. How our support would manifest itself is another
issue.
Mr.
Bailey: I want to press a point alluded to by my hon.
Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins). I understand that
vehicles registered in Europe will be subject to the regulations. What
will the policy be on vehicles registered outside the EU? Will they be
allowed to conduct their business as
normal?
Jim
Fitzpatrick: Under the regulations covering free movement
of labour, if a vehicle comes into the country, it will be able to ply
its trade, provided that it is not committing an
offence.
Mr.
Bailey: In the light of that response, does the Minister
know whether the EU has done any research on the potential for the use
of vehicles registered outside the EU countries to evade the
provisions?
Jim
Fitzpatrick: I am sorry, but I did not hear the
question.
Mr.
Bailey: I will rephrase it. Has any work been done to
identify the potential for the use of registration of vehicles outside
the EU to evade the
regulations?
Jim
Fitzpatrick: I am not aware of any work that has been
undertaken.
Mr.
Leech: I got a fairly emphatic no to my last question, but
have the Government made any assessment of the percentage of vehicles
that will reach the Euro VI standard by
2014?
Jim
Fitzpatrick: I think that my emphatic no to the hon.
Gentleman’s last question was actually a don’t know. The
answer to this question is that I do not know the number of vehicles
that would not
conform.
Mr.
Leech: In that case, can the Minister give us any
indication of the date on which he would expect all vehicles to reach
the proposed Euro VI
standard?
Jim
Fitzpatrick: I would need to research that and get back to
the hon.
Gentleman.
Kelvin
Hopkins: I am not alone in having serious emissions
pollution in my constituency. The M1 goes right through the middle of
it, with convoys of heavy goods vehicles frequently jammed and churning
out emissions during the rush hours and, indeed, most of the day. Is
there not a case, in a densely populated, urbanised society such as
Britain, for investing much more in rail freight capacity so that we
can get much of that traffic off the roads and on to rail, given that
rail freight emits one twelfth of the volume of CO 2 among
other things, compared with the same mileage of road
freight?
Jim
Fitzpatrick: My hon. Friend and I have debated that
subject in other Committees and he knows that the Government are very
supportive of rail freight. I cannot remember the exact percentage, but
I think that there has been a 42 or 52 per cent. increase in the amount
of freight carried by rail. We are making investment; we are making
grants available. Clearly, we support rail freight, but my hon.
Friend’s line is that we should support it much more and spend
even more money on it. I understand and respect that point of
view.
Stephen
Hammond: Article 10 of the proposal would allow member
states to offer fiscal advantage for early compliance. The guidance to
MEPs states the Government’s
view, which is that they regard article 95 of the treaty, under which
this proposal is being made, as an inappropriate legal base for fiscal
provision. I should like the Minister to explain why there are no early
fiscal incentives and why the Government regard article 95 as an
inappropriate legal
base.
Jim
Fitzpatrick: We do not agree with the Commission that it
needs to set this matter out in the document, because we believe that
we have that right and that the Commission’s setting it out
almost transfers to it the right to decide whether fiscal arrangements
would be appropriate or not. We are saying that that is not its
territory and that it is, has been and will be for us to decide. We are
not disputing that there may be fiscal incentives—that is not
where we are—but were we to choose to go down that road, that
would be a matter for the United Kingdom to decide, not the
Commission.
Stephen
Hammond: Therefore the Minister is saying that the
Government are placing limits on the EU’s competency in this
area.
Jim
Fitzpatrick: If that is the language the hon. Gentleman
wishes to use, that is a matter for him. We are certainly saying that
this is not the EU’s area of competence; this is a matter for
the United Kingdom Government—so we agree on
that.
Stephen
Hammond: The Minister stated earlier that he sees this as
a chance to align EU and US product standards. Can I therefore take it
that the Government support, or would be keen to see and to try to
achieve, a common world
standard?
Jim
Fitzpatrick: We are not yet in a position to achieve
common European standards, so common world standards would obviously be
some way further off. However, as I said in my opening remarks, the
American standard and the European standards are coming together in
this regard and, in that instance, it means that manufacturers will be
able to sell the same product across two continents, which would assist
them in manufacturing and producing with greater certainty for greater
volumes.
Stephen
Hammond: Finally, the briefing document provided for
today’s sitting says that the Minister has undertaken to provide
a regulatory impact assessment. Am I right in thinking that that is
still yet to be provided? If so, when might one see
it?
Jim
Fitzpatrick: The impact assessment and the details of the
different options are clearly laid out at the back of the document
bundle, starting at page
111. Stephen
Hammond: My
apologies.
Motion
made, and Question
proposed, That
the Committee takes note of European Union Document No. 5127/08 and
Addenda 1 and 2, draft Regulation on type-approval of motor vehicles
and engines with respect to emissions from heavy duty vehicles (Euro
VI) and on access to vehicle repair and maintenance information;
endorses the Government's support for a package of measures to reduce
vehicle emissions substantially, leading to improvements to health and
the environment, whilst
allowing appropriate flexibility for industry in the short-term; and
notes that the Government will continue to seek the right balance
between environmental and other benefits, and burdens on
industry.— [Jim
Fitzpatrick.]5.13
pm
Dr.
Ladyman: I strongly support my hon. Friend the
Minister’s motion, but I should like to make a few points about
the principles involved and where I would like to see things go in
future. One or two of the questions asked by Committee members indicate
that colleagues do not fully appreciate that these standards apply only
to new vehicles that are entering on to our roads. It was never the
intention that existing vehicles on the road would have to be upgraded
to achieve the new standards—that is impossible—which is
why I asked the Minister about the point at which we should start
thinking about making some of the older category vehicles illegal on
European roads. I was not suggesting, as he implied in his answer to
me, that we should provide money to people to take their old vehicles
off the road. There comes a point at which we have to say that some of
the old categorisations are no longer healthy and that people should
not be driving those vehicles any more. I hope that the Minister will
start talking to the Commission about the point at which it would
become appropriate to say, for example, that category III vehicles
should no longer be used in Europe, because of their health and
pollution
effects. Another
matter to which I referred in my initial questions is that there are
various techniques for making a vehicle meet the required standards.
The current categorisation V, for example, can be achieved with a fuel
additive or by having a more efficient emissions control system in the
vehicle. It is more expensive to produce an engine with a more
efficient emissions control system, but when that has been done and the
vehicle is on the road, it will always have a clean engine and always
achieve categorisation
V. The
problem with additive-based systems is that if someone does not use the
additive, because they cannot be bothered or they want to save a bit of
money, the vehicle can still operate just as well, in theory, but in
fact it starts to become a polluting vehicle and no longer operates at
the standard that we expect from the categorisation that the vehicle
was sold to
achieve. I
would like category VI to require that the vehicle have an operating
emissions monitoring system at all times, and that if the emissions
start to exceed category VI, the vehicle should not
operate—it should not be possible to operate it with the system
disconnected. In other words, if there is no additive, the vehicle will
not run, but if there is additive, the necessary standards will be
achieved and the vehicle will operate efficiently. That should be built
into category
VI. I
would like my hon. Friend the Minister to give some thought to another
matter, which comes back to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member
for West Bromwich, West when he explained why the Scrutiny Committee
passed the document to us for consideration. He pointed out that a
vehicle that produces pollutants at a lower level might be less
fuel-efficient and produce more carbon dioxide. I must tell him and the
Scrutiny Committee that I am not sure how a suitable proportion between
particulates and CO 2 is worked out. The particulates that we
are talking about have a more short
term and direct effect on people’s health, because they include
lead and oxides of sulphur and nitrogen, which have a direct, rapid and
short-term impact on people’s health if they are in too high a
proportion in the air in our towns. CO 2 is harmless to
people’s health, but it contributes to global
warming. I am not
suggesting for one second that we should ignore the problems of
increased CO2 production, but in reaching a conclusion on
category VI, my hon. Friend the Minister may have to decide that
reducing lead oxides and getting lead particulates, sulphur and
nitrogen oxides out of our city air is more important than a small
increase in CO2, and insist on that to improve the health of
children in our
cities. I
support my hon. Friend’s resolution, and I believe instinctively
that the Government’s time scale for the introduction of the new
categorisation is correct. I am always keen for manufacturers to be
pushed, because they can usually do things.
Mr.
Bailey: I have listened to my hon. Friend’s
argument, and I understand its logic, but has he considered the
implications, when the Government are pursuing fiscal measures to try
to promote fewer CO 2—emitting vehicles, of
introducing a measure that, taken alone, increases those emissions, and
the public impact that that may have on people’s
behaviour?
Dr.
Ladyman: I entirely accept my hon. Friend’s point,
and I understand why the Scrutiny Committee sent the document to us for
consideration. If its implementation produces hugely more
CO 2, which will have a short-term impact on climate change,
clearly the Minister must strike a balance between that CO 2
production and other levels of pollution. He must bear in mind,
as must the Scrutiny Committee and the Minister, that the pollutants
that we are talking about, which the categorisation was introduced to
get out of the system, cause very serious health problems very rapidly.
Lead, for example, is strongly correlated with problems in childhood
development and if we were to have the same levels of traffic on our
roads producing the levels of lead particulates that were routinely
produced by vehicles 20 years ago, there would be very serious health
implications. The
Minister has a very difficult balancing job when he is in discussions
with the Commission. All I am suggesting is that he might be prepared
to sacrifice some CO2 reduction in order to reduce these
other very harmful pollutants in our city air. He must work out what a
gram of lead particulates is the equivalent of in health terms compared
with a gram of CO2. Maybe he will have to speak very closely
to experts in the Department of Health who can help him to strike that
balance, because it will not be a simple balance for him to
strike.
The time
scale that is being proposed is probably broadly right, but I would be
prepared to see it go out a year or two if that meant that the vehicles
that will be sold in the future that hit this categorisation will
always operate throughout their entire life at that categorisation. If
that meant that those vehicles could all be designed so that
intrinsically they are clean vehicles, I would be prepared to wait an
extra year for that categorisation. Equally, car and engine
manufacturers are often capable of doing things a lot more rapidly than
perhaps they suggest, because it costs them money to do things more
rapidly, so they always try to be a bit on the
conservative
side in saying what they can achieve. The Minister should not be afraid
of prompting them to be a little more aggressive with their time
scales. My
final point is that of course the European Union can be responsible
only for what happens in the European Union. Type approval ultimately
has to be decided by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe,
because that is the type approval that will include those countries in
Europe that are not in the European Union, such as Switzerland and
Norway.
In terms of
the worldwide position, I understand the need to try to get
globalisation. However, I think that I am right in saying that there
are very few diesel vehicles on the roads of the United States. The
United States, by and large, uses petrol-driven vehicles. It has a very
small diesel market compared with Europe, so European manufacturers
probably know an awful lot more about clean diesel technology than US
manufacturers. We should not wait for a worldwide standard to emerge
before we deal with what will effectively be a European health problem,
because while we are waiting for such a standard to emerge, the
vehicles on the roads of America will not be producing these
particulates; the vehicles on the roads of Europe will be. We should be
prepared to move ahead in advance of any worldwide agreement, if that
should become
necessary. 5.23
pm Stephen
Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con): It is a pleasure to follow the
hon. Member for South Thanet, particularly given his points about the
Minister’s rationale on the evaluation of the trade-off between
cleaner exhaust gases and the need to reduce greenhouse
gases. In
his response to one of my earlier questions, I think that the Minister
agreed that he would publish, or consider publishing, the guidelines
behind the advice that the Government have received. May I also invite
him, either in his closing remarks or by some other method, to inform
the Committee how the Government are going to look at the method of
evaluating that trade-off? That is a subject that is obviously right at
the heart of what we are discussing
today. We
support these proposals, as they are proportionate and achievable. One
should pay some credit to the truck manufacturers who have risen to the
challenges of the earlier EU directives. None the less, there are
clearly some challenges remaining and it seems that these are the sorts
of time scales that would be right and appropriate. A more ambitious
timetable or more ambitious limits would probably not be either
possible or necessarily environmentally beneficial, given the fuel
consumption hit that would have to be taken with lower pollutant
emissions. While it is always a concern to be supporting the Government
on a number of these proposals, I think they are right in the timetable
they are setting out here. I note that the shadow rapporteur, the
German MEP, is suggesting these time limits and they seem to be right.
The Opposition support these proposals as proportionate and achievable
and look forward to the Minister publishing the guidelines we have
requested. 5.25
pm
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