Zero-emission Buses and Air Quality in Sheffield
Debate between Paul Blomfield and Ian Paisley(5 months ago)
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Paul Blomfield
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I thought that on this occasion I had secured a Westminster Hall debate on which he could not find an angle, but I was obviously mistaken. He is right, and I hope that Sheffield, with the support of the Government, can pave the way alongside Northern Ireland on this issue.
Older polluting vehicles are a major source of the problems. We worked in partnership with the Government to deliver a solution, encouraging owners of commercial vehicles to replace them with compliant vehicles. It is not easy, and we would have welcomed additional support, particularly to help taxi drivers to transition to cleaner vehicles, but buses are the key. Several of our air quality hotspots in Sheffield are primarily influenced by buses. We have a fleet of about 400 and they are older than in most cities, with an average age of about 12 years.
We worked with the Government to tackle emissions, and the approach that they suggested to us, to which we were happy to respond, was to retrofit the fleet. Before the introduction of our clean air zone, the Government awarded the council cash through the clean bus technology fund. The project ran in two phases from 2018 to 2022. It delivered 292 vehicle retrofits using selective catalytic reduction technology, with the expectation that the emissions of those vehicles would then be equivalent to Euro 6 standards. Buses operating on high-frequency services on routes where air quality levels were being breached were prioritised throughout the project.
When the clean air zone was introduced, 94 buses operating in Sheffield were older than Euro 6 and had therefore not been retrofitted. In the discussions between the council and the Joint Air Quality Unit on the clean air zone, run by the Department for Transport and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, it was agreed that there would be clean air funding to provide sufficient support for further retrofit devices to be installed in the remaining non-compliant fleet.
Our clean air zone assessment forecast that all our buses would be retrofitted to a minimum Euro 6 standard and would deliver the significant reductions in nitrogen dioxide emissions that we needed, and so we were, in partnership with the Government, on course—until the Government hit a problem. After the launch of the clean air zone in late spring, the DFT informed the council that it had undertaken some initial studies on the real-world performance of the bus retrofit devices that it had required us to install.
The broad conclusion was that the performance of the retrofitted buses showed considerable variability, and that many were not performing at the expected equivalent Euro 6 standard. As a result, the Government paused new funding for selective catalytic reduction exhaust retrofitting and recommended that no further retrofit purchases be made until the research was completed. The DFT did not propose any changes to the clean air zone compliance status of the buses that had already been retrofitted while it carried out the further studies, and the council provided local exemptions from charges for the buses whose planned retrofit work could not proceed.
As a result of the initial study, the DFT commissioned further research and evaluation, which I understand it is on the brink of completing. The council was informed that the expected duration of the study was about six months, so I am guessing, given the timeline, that a formal position from the DFT should be imminent. From discussions with the Joint Air Quality Unit, the council understands that the main problem with the retrofit devices running in urban areas is that they do not reach the required temperatures to treat emissions as a result of the regular stop-start conditions. That happens significantly when buses run downhill, and anybody who knows Sheffield knows that there are a lot of hills to run down.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s raising this issue, because public transport is the key. It is a major solution to a lot of problems, including clean air. The strategy appears to be all over the place, and retrofitting diesel buses is not the answer. The Government have the ZEBRA—zero-emission bus regional areas—scheme for public transport, but I understand that of the 4,000 buses promised, fewer than half have been made, and 570 have been built by companies outside the UK. That worries me, because I think most of them should be built by UK companies.
Ian Paisley
Sheffield does have a lot of hills, and the answer is not batteries but hydrogen, which is a much better way of fuelling buses on hills. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to look at that, and I urge the Government to take resource away from diesel buses and to give councils and transport companies the opportunity to buy hydrogen or hydroelectric buses.
Paul Blomfield
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) will make some observations about hydrogen, which I think has enormous potential.
The Government’s study is clear that retrofit will not be a suitable way of mitigating the emissions from buses, so alternative solutions will be required. The point of today’s debate is that we need alternative solutions, including replacement buses—not refits—and electric buses, and exploring the potential of hydrogen. I will focus on electric.
Currently, about 75% of our bus fleet is not performing at the required Euro 6 standard, and a further 25% has had no change. Under direction from the Government, we were required to implement our clean air policy in the shortest possible time, but the failure of their retrofit strategy is putting our compliance at risk. That echoes the point that the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) made about the lack of coherence in the clean air strategy.
The Government need to commit to clean air solutions fast. I hope that, as a first step, the Minister will welcome the bid that the council is submitting, in conjunction with the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, to ZEBRA 2. Further flexibility in the use of our funding from the clean air fund, including drawdown of stretch funding and the potential for additional funding to support electric vehicle roll-out, must also be considered. However, we understand the pressures on the relatively small funding—it is a problem that it is so small, with £129 million available for the ZEBRA 2 programme—and we know that there are other priorities.
We recognise that with all ZEBRA bids, the funding provides only a proportion of the cost of vehicles, so co-operation with operators is key. Therefore, I want to reassure the Minister about the close dialogue that is happening with both major operators in Sheffield—First and Stagecoach—and about the relationship that they have with the council. Stagecoach’s managing director was in touch with me before this debate and stressed that Stagecoach is looking at the opportunities provided by ZEBRA 2 to lever in its own investment to provide 65 new electric vehicles on key routes in Sheffield. I know that First is looking at key routes that operate through both Sheffield and Rotherham.
In summary, reducing bus emissions in Sheffield is key to achieving the legal levels of nitrogen that we want and that the Government require of us as a city. Bus retrofit technology, recommended to us by the Government, has been found to be underperforming; 75% of our fleet, which has had it, is non-compliant, and the other 25% has not been treated at all. We do not have a timescale for when the Government will confirm the findings of their in-depth review of bus retrofit performance, but action is needed urgently.
Sheffield City Council has delivered all its clean air plan mitigations in the shortest possible time, which I know the Government have welcomed. However, we need Government support for our ZEBRA 2 submission. Further flexibility in the use of funding from the CAF, including the drawdown of stretch funding, will also help. We hope that a wider review of the potential for wider grant funding to upgrade buses in South Yorkshire will also be considered, with the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority.
High Cost Credit Bill
Debate between Paul Blomfield and Ian Paisley
Paul Blomfield
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Affordability is indeed at the centre of the Bill, and is an issue to which I will also return.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
The average payday loan in Northern Ireland is about £270 over 14 days, on which I think approximately 55% interest is charged. The people who take out these loans are the most vulnerable in society and cannot afford to repay them. I welcome the Bill. There should be more regulation for these products.
Paul Blomfield
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. That is precisely the point that the Office of Fair Trading made recently. The suggestion is that the ideal customer for many companies is one who can afford to pay back the interest, but not the original loan. The debt is then rolled over and over. There is limited outlay for the company, which turns into a significant profit.
If I could make some progress, I want to address how the sector has grown in the UK. Back in 2004, it was worth only £100 million. By 2009, that had increased to £900 million and it is now estimated to be more than £2.2 billion. Between 7.4 million and 8.2 million new loans are estimated to have been taken out in 2011-12, causing serious debt problems across the UK. According to the OFT, approximately 2.7 million payday loans were given to people who could not afford to pay back on time, confirming many of the points that have been made. They make up a staggering one third of the total number.
The number of people needing debt support has exploded in the past year. The debt charity StepChange this week reported that during the first six months of 2013 it was contacted by 30,762 people—almost the same number as for the whole of 2012. The increase in average individual debt from payday loans has risen from £400 to £1,665 since 2011.
A series of damning reports in May underlined the urgent need for action. A survey by Citizens Advice found that payday lenders had broken 12 of their own 14 promises to reform the industry. Which? called for regulation to redress what it described as
“the imbalance of power between lenders and borrowers”
in a report that highlighted
“sky high fees and irresponsible lending practices”.
The Public Accounts Committee strongly criticised the OFT for failing to stop lenders targeting vulnerable people, highlighting its failure to hand out a single fine to any of the 72,000 firms in the market, and for only rarely revoking companies’ licences.
Paul Blomfield
The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point, and one that rankles with credit unions as they try to develop their support for people.
The first set of measures in the Bill relates to advertising and information. Citizens Advice recently published results from its payday loan survey on implementation of the sector’s own good practice customer charter. It found that 21% of respondents were not clear about total repayment costs. The Bill would therefore require lenders to display interest payable in cash terms, so that people knew and could compare the cost of borrowing in a consistent way to be determined by the FCA. The Bill would also require that lenders state all fees and charges—crucially including default charges—and the circumstances in which those charges would be invoked on loan applications, so that people were clear about what they were committing to.
Many organisations are tackling the promotion of payday lenders in their own way. I am delighted that on Wednesday the university of Sheffield announced that it was banning payday advertising from its campus, which the National Union of Students has called for nationally. Many football clubs have also taken a strong stand. I congratulate Millwall, Bolton Wanderers and, although all my life my heart has been on the other side of the city, Sheffield Wednesday on the stands that they have taken.
Paul Blomfield
Some people would call for that.
My Bill does not go that far, but it would require that all advertising carries a health warning about the nature of these loans and signposts people to free and impartial debt advice, as an option before they proceed.
The OFT highlighted the problem of
“a pattern of advertising that emphasised speed and easy access to cash, at the expense of giving customers balanced information about the cost of lending, the risks if things go wrong and the consequences of non-payment.”
The Bill, therefore, would require that advertising complies with rules set and regulated by the FCA, which would be absolutely in line with Government thinking; the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has already commissioned a study on advertising of payday loans, and the FCA is keen to look into it. The Bill does not prescribe the rules, but it states that there must be rules. The advertising code for gambling illustrates the sort of approach that might be adopted as well as a possible restriction on the sponsorship of certain activities.
The Advertising Standards Authority recently banned three text messages promoting loans to young people out clubbing. The Bill therefore would require texts and phone calls not to be used to promote high-cost credit. It would also require lenders properly to explain liability to guarantors, where loans asked for them, and the signing of consent forms; credit brokers to provide borrowers with the names and details of lenders; and lenders to disclose details of lead generators to the FCA.
Following on from the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), the second set of issues covered by the Bill relate to affordability. Although most lenders claim to assess affordability, the OFT’s recent report said that
“the vast majority of those we inspected were unable to provide us with satisfactory proof that they applied such assessments.”
Citizens Advice found that only 36% of respondents were asked questions to check whether they could afford to pay back the loan. The Bill therefore would require lenders to assess the affordability of loans and introduce an affordability ceiling to be determined by the FCA, either based on credit repayment as a proportion of monthly income or on the total value of loans.
The Bill would also provide for the FCA to set a cap on default charges and the circumstances in which those charges could be applied. It would require lenders to share information with credit reference agencies as an interim measure, pending the establishment of a central real-time database requiring lenders to log details of loans and to seek information to ensure that they do not lend above the affordability ceiling determined by the FCA. It would also provide for a levy on the sector to run such a database, which would be a powerful tool to aid regulation and support evidence-based decision making.
As hon. Members have mentioned, we need to consider a cap on the total cost of credit, which Parliament has empowered the FCA to impose. The Bill does not seek a cap, but it would require the FCA to report on how it intended to exercise that power and to keep the issue under review. As mentioned, central to the concerns of spiralling debt is the issue of loans being rolled over. The OFT found that 28% of loans were rolled over at least once and that they accounted for 50% of lenders’ revenues. Furthermore, 19% of revenue comes from the 5% of loans rolled over four times or more; roll-overs are profitable business. As I mentioned earlier, the OFT said:
“Our evidence suggests that encouraging roll-overs is a deliberate commercial strategy of some firms”.