The Heathrow Airport expansion, the proposed London Ultra Low Emission Zone and time to rethink Vehicle Excise duty

After approving the Heathrow Airport expansion an

'Ultra Low Emission Zone' for vehicles in London proposed

If there was a league of stupidity, this is the sort of thing they might come up with, except this is actually a nanny state type of proposal.

With a new increase in flight movements at Heathrow, which will create more CO2 from Britain's biggest single CO2 emitter, to redress the balance, it is proposed to create an ultra low emission zone. For vehicles. Not aircraft.

But, the aircraft which do not pay tax on their fuel, go on increasing the damage they do.

The reality is that the most fuel usage and CO2 production an aircraft does at a peak part of its operation, is on taking off. And they use A LOT of Kerosene to do this.

The requirement to display a Vehicle excise disc has now gone

Those facts on aircraft use may surprise you, but aircraft, along with shipping produce a lot of CO2.

Car efficiency has increased but some ecological measures

actually make them less efficient, such as Ethanol in fuel

Cars on the other hand have become much cleaner over the last 30 years.

Leaner burn, the switch to fuel injection and other measures have reduced the pollution. You will know if you used to commute in a city all that time ago how you don't smell a Diesel engine like you used to nor a petrol engine over rich on mixture.

And the blanket light goods class of excise duty has gone and has been replaced by a staggered banding arrangement according to the amount of CO2 the engine produces.

The banding takes no account of actual use

The staggered banding method is wrong and unfair.

It takes no account of actual vehicle usage. It is ridiculous that a car that has a Zero rate can drive thirty thousand miles a year for free, yet a Band M car that does 2000 miles a year has to pay £515 a year. Where a Zero rate car pollutes more.

Clearly there is a discrepancy.

In the past a flat rate was paid for all Private Light Goods classes which covered cars and light vans, the more you drove, the more fuel you bought and paid tax for. A much fairer system. And more logical.

And it gets worse.

If you convert a petrol engine to run on LPG, you run a very clean engine, yet you still pay the same amount of excise duty as if it had not changed fuel. Unless the car was manufactured with the LPG system.

That is a complete farce.

Converting a car costs £1500 to do on average, yet you do not get any excise duty reduction for doing so, although LPG is cheaper as a fuel to buy.

Poorly adjusted modern cars can be polluting too

Another farce concerns the Historic vehicles class.

Many of these vehicles do less than 5000 miles a year. If the vehicle is 40 years old, it gets free vehicle tax by way of exemption.

However, those 15 years old and less than 40, pay full tax.

In France, cars over a certain age are exempt from excise duty, at a lower age than in the UK. They are also MOT exempt at this earlier stage.

The MOT is just a useless piece of paper, it does not guarantee the condition of a vehicle once that vehicle has left the testing station.

The only relevance is that the piece of paper has to be 'in force' and valid if you have to produce it.

The reality is that in the UK, classic or historic vehicles are a small part of the total vehicles on the road, the duty could be slashed for anything over 15 years old, which would mean that most vehicles on the road in the UK would still pay. Many vehicles 15 years and over have been scrapped by now.

It seems ridiculous for an MGB of 1979 vintage to pay perhaps £200+ a year duty when a 1976 model MGB is exempt. Both produce the same emissions.

More so when you consider the Band A car doing 30,000 miles a year or more at no excise duty cost. Which does the more damage?

Then you consider the damage that will be done by the big increase in aircraft movements thanks to the Heathrow expansion and it makes the piddling vehicle emissions a complete farce and just a money grabbing exercise.

Time for a rethink.......