Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to his oral contribution of 22 June 2021, Official Report, column 751, if he will place in the Library the evidential basis for his statement that the UK now has more rapid charging points per mile than any country in Europe other than Norway.

The Chancellor’s claim, made on 22 June 2021, is based on statistics provided by the European Alternative Fuels Observatory (www.eafo.eu). Their statistics show that compared with mainland European countries the UK has more high-powered, or ‘fast’ (22kW+) chargepoints per 100km of highway than any other country, with the exception of Norway.

When compared with all European countries (EU and EFTA), Iceland, which has a significantly smaller road network with only 13,034 km of road compared with 424,083km in the UK, also has more chargepoints per 100km than the UK. The Chancellor will issue a Ministerial Correction to correct the record in due course.