Sunak Calls for Review of London ULEZ Expansion as Mayor Accused of Steering Consultation Result

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks during a major speech at Plexal, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London, on Jan. 4, 2023. (Stefan Rousseau/PA Media)

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday said London Mayor Sadiq Khan should “properly reconsider” plans to expand the capital’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ).

It comes after Khan was accused of manipulating the ULEZ consultation result and making “dishonest” statements to the London Assembly.

Greater London Authority (GLA) Conservatives on Tuesday published around 200 pages of emails and documents obtained through freedom of information requests, which they say prove that interventions by the mayor’s office and the Transport for London (TfL) have skewed the opposition percentage, likely by between 3 to 6 percent.

GLA Conservatives’ transport spokesperson Nick Rogers submitted a formal complaint to GLA Monitoring Officer, alleging that the Labour mayor had made six “false and dishonest” statements and ten “misleading statements” to the Assembly and that his senior staff “improperly used GLA resources to interfere with the ULEZ expansion consultation process to skew the results in the mayor’s favour, most likely under the mayor’s instruction.”

Howard Cox, founder of pro-drivers campaign FairFuelUK, which supporters were allegedly excluded from a key part of the consultation, called for an “immediate independent public enquiry” into the allegations and urged Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to suspend Khan from the party.

Khan’s spokesperson dismissed the allegations as being “simply untrue,” saying neither Khan nor Transport for London (TfL) had sought to influence the results.

Speaking during the Prime Minister’s Question on Wednesday, Sunak told Parliament that it is “disappointing” that Khan, with Starmer’s backing, is “choosing not to listen to the public.”

“I urge the Mayor to properly reconsider and respond to these serious concerns,” he said.

TfL is a local government body that is run by Interim Commissioner Andrew Lord and chaired by the mayor of London. ULEZ is a zone in which vehicles that do not meet certain emissions standards must pay a daily charge of £12.5 to drive or face fines.

Undated photo of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. (Andrew Matthews/PA Media)

ULEZ was confirmed during Boris Johnson’s mayorship and launched by Khan in 2019. It originally covered the same central London area as the Congestion Charge was extended to the North and South Circular Roads in October 2021.

Question 8

After running a ten-week consultation last year, Khan announced in November that the zone will be expanded to cover all London areas from Aug. 29, 2023, despite the fact that the published consultation report said 59 percent of the respondents opposed the expansion.

Among those who answered question 8 in the consultation questionnaire, 33 percent said the proposed expansion date is right or should be earlier, 8 percent said it should be delayed, and 59 percent said the expansion shouldn’t be implemented at all.

Under the so-called Gunning Principles, Khan was not required to abide by the consultation responses, but had to give them “conscientious consideration.”

According to the Evening Standard, Khan told the publication in May 2022 that he would drop the plan if the consultation respondents overwhelmingly rejected it.

Targeted Campaign

The released emails and documents appeared to show that a YouGov poll and a PR campaign targeting younger groups were launched during the consultation, which GLA Conservatives said had swayed the result.

By July 14, the weekly analyses emailed to Mayor for Transport Seb Dance and Deputy Mayor for Environment Shirley Rodrigues showed that around two-thirds of respondents, or between 66 and 67 percent, opposed the ULEZ expansion.

According to an agenda for a July 13 meeting between Dance and TfL personnel, the ethnicity ratio of the respondents was comparable to the London baseline while females and people aged 18–35 were under-represented.

The agenda listed a number of actions that could be taken to “encourage equitable participation,” such as expanding reach to the younger age group and polling.

On July 14, TfL’s then-Director of City Planning Alex Williams emailed Dance and Rodrigues an age breakdown of answers to question 8, showing that younger age groups were more likely to support ULEZ.

Meanwhile, a YouGov poll of question 8 was carried out between July 15 and July 20, yielding a much more positive result (pdf) for the mayor. Only 27 percent opposed the ULEZ expansion, while 22 percent said they didn’t know.

However, GLA Conservatives said YouGov survey respondents were less likely to understand what ULEZ is and accused the Mayor’s office of designing the survey in a way that would skew the result. A parallel YouGov poll (pdf) commissioned by GLA Conservatives, which formulated the question and the options in a different way, had 51 percent of the respondents opposing the ULEZ expansion.

A sign at the expanded boundary of London’s ULEZ pollution charge zone for older vehicles on Oct. 25, 2021. (Yui Mok/PA)

By July 21, the percentage of consultation participants who opposed the expansion had dropped to 64 percent. Emailing the results to Dance and Rodrigues, Williams said, “These campaigns appear to be having a positive impact and there is a slight swing in percentages supporting the scheme but only by 2–3 [percent] thus far,” the documents show.

GLA Conservatives said the email showed that the intention of the campaigns was to “increase support for the ULEZ consultation in question 8 of the survey” rather than to “encourage equitable participation.”

GLA Conservatives said that later weekly updates and Air Quality Implementation Group meetings only tracked the age breakdown of answers to question 8, not other breakdowns.

They also noted that no actions were taken to reach more women, who consisted of 30 percent of the respondents by July 14.

Excluding Campaign Emails

Not all respondents participated in the consultation by filling out the questionnaire.

Some, including supporters of some campaigns, sent emails to TfL expressing their views.

TfL said they had entered all responses received by other methods to ensure inclusivity.

But the final weekly report, which showed 59 percent opposition to the plan, said 5,267 “copy and paste” campaign emails were not counted as responses to question 8, including 542 supportive messages from Living Streets and 4,725 from Fairfuel.com and British Drivers that started with “We oppose the expansion of the ULEZ to cover the outer London Boroughs.”

If the emails were included, the percentage of opposition would have risen to over 62 percent.

A file photograph shows a traffic jam as cars head towards the approach tunnel of Heathrow Airport, west London, Britain, on Nov. 26, 2015. (Peter Nicholls/files/Reuters)

The weekly reports started having a section called “known campaigns” since July 14, listing the names of the campaigners, summarised descriptions of the emails’ content, the number of responses, and links to the campaigns.

Living Streets, which gave its supporters templates voicing support for the ULEZ expansion, were on the list since the beginning while Fairfuel.com and British Drivers only featured in the last two reports.

Before the last report, there was no mention of excluding  “copy and paste” campaign emails.

The final report said the emails were excluded because “no consultation questions were answered” and that “they did not contain respondent specific information” such as postcode, location, frequency of driving in Greater London.

GLA Conservatives questioned the fairness and legality of the criteria, saying it was “arbitrary at best” and most likely “intentionally biased.”

They also pointed to the dates of email and meeting documents that appeared to show Khan and Dance were briefed on the results, saying their later claims of not being briefed in advance were false.

Cox: ULEZ Expansion a ‘Cash Grab’

In an email to The Epoch Times, Cox said the mayor had “deceitfully and consciously excluded 5000 supporters of FairFuelUK, and their legitimate responses to the ULEZ consultation because they objected to his uncorroborated expansion plans.”

The founder of FairfuelUK said Khan’s plan will be“environmentally ineffective as already proven by TfL’s very own data,” labelling it as being “purely a cash grab hidden behind a virtual signalling emotive approach to allegedly improving air quality.”

He called for “an immediate independent public enquiry as to his immoral behaviour in the way he has implemented the ULEZ expansion” and said he had written to Starmer, asking the Labour leader to suspend Khan.

Mayor’s Office: Real Scandal Is Toxic Air

Khan’s spokesman denied the allegations.

“The real scandal is that toxic air leads to the deaths of thousands of Londoners every year, which is why the mayor took the difficult decision to expand the Ulez London-wide,” he said.

The spokesman said Khan considered TfL’s report on the TfL’s consultation responses, adding that the consultation “was not a referendum.”

“TfL takes its responsibility to run robust and legally compliant consultations extremely seriously, with an independent consultancy putting together the final analysis and report, and any suggestion that TfL or the mayor has sought to influence the results of the Ulez consultation is simply untrue,” he said.

“As part of a rigorous consultation process, it was right for TfL to seek responses from as wide a range of Londoners as possible, including young Londoners—whose lives will be affected by air pollution for years to come.”