Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they intend to take to assist the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association to deliver its 2018 Plug-in Pledge that will see its members' combined plug-in vehicle fleet size increase from 50,000 to 720,000 by 2025.

This initiative from the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association is most welcome. Many forward thinking businesses and consumers are already benefiting from whole life cost savings that can be made from choosing plug-in vehicles. The Government already offers the Plug-in Car Grant to help with the cost of purchasing electric vehicles and has pledged that this will continue in some form until at least 2020. Consumer incentives in some form will continue to play a role beyond 2020. The Government has established a favourable tax regime to incentivise the purchase of the cleanest vehicles, in particular zero emission vehicles.

The Government recognises that the availability of adequate charging infrastructure is vital and offers a variety of grant funding schemes to support recharging infrastructure in motorists’ homes, workplaces and on residential streets. The Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund (CIIF), funded with £200m of new Government investment and matched by £200m from private investors, will accelerate the roll-out of charging infrastructure and enable thousands more publicly accessible chargepoints. The full range of steps that the Government is taking was set out in the Road To Zero Strategy in July 2018.