Failure to deal with air pollution caused by vehicles in the capital could have major implications for commerce as well as health, delegates to a Conservative party London Mayoral candidacy hustings heard last week.

Steven Greenhalgh, the Deputy Mayor for Policing & Crime, who is one of four candidates hoping to secure the Tory nomination to run for Mayor next spring, said the capital’s air pollution “is not just a public health issue but an economic one too”.

“It we don’t deal with air pollution in central London businesses will move – and not just to Manchester or Birmingham but out of the country and we will lose our economic engine,” he said.

Mr Greenhalgh added that the incoming Mayor must use the Congestion Charge to tax the most polluting vehicles and said more buses must be powered using hybrid and electric technology.

A second Mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith, the MP for Richmond Park, said that next year is the 60th anniversary of the Clean Air Act “and the tragedy is the problem (of pollution) has returned, with thousands of people dying as a consequence”. He claimed that 14% of all particulate emissions come from construction vehicles and said this was a problem that can be solved relatively easily, with retrofitting.

Mr Goldsmith added that all cars, sooner or later, will be electric. He said the next Mayor “must use every single lever available to facilitate that transition” by building infrastructure so cars can be charged. The new Mayor, he added, must also make sure that “all new developments are kitted out to accommodate the inevitable surge in demand” for electricity.

A third candidate, Syed Kamall – a Conservative member of the European Parliament for London – suggested that poor air quality in the capital was “in some ways a result of a successful London; the fact that people want to travel to and work here”.

But he said there needs to be more “carrots than sticks” to tackle the pollution issue and it was time to encourage more people to use electric vehicles. “We need to look at rapid charging points at no cost to the taxpayer and smart innovative solutions that don’t change people’s behaviour too radically, but actually nudge them towards electric vehicles,” he remarked.

A fourth candidate Andrew Boff – a member of the London Assembly – said: “Air quality is a big issue and it is highly possible that in the future it is going to be a more important issue than housing. New transport schemes that have to go ahead include the Silvertown Tunnel, but we can’t ignore that it will have air quality issues. Each scheme needs to take air quality into account.”

♦ Nearly four in five businesses in London say improving the capital’s transport infrastructure is the number one issue for the new Mayor next year, according to a report published yesterday by the Confederation of British Industry and real estate services company CBRE.

Photo courtesy of Alvey & Towers