Last week, I received a reply from Jeremy Hunt MP to an e-mail I sent him on 11th September 2023 regarding ULEZ expansion. I thought it would be worth re-publishing both his reply and my recent response.
Dear Neil,
Thank you for your email regarding the ULEZ expansion and I apologise for the immense delay in my reply. I would just note that due to transport within London being devolved to the Mayor of London, he is not legally required to consult either central or local government before implementing the scheme. But the government is clear that the Mayor needs to put TFL on a financially sustainable footing and disagrees with the expansion of ULEZ. I do also welcome that the government prevented the mayor from using government money to fund the expansion.
I do understand your comments on the democracy surrounding ULEZ and the negative impact of the expansion on those who travel into London by car. However, regarding tradespeople, it may be useful to know that self-employed tradespeople driving vehicles that do not comply with ULEZ may be able to recoup the money spent on the ULEZ charge via their tax returns. This is only if the journey that incurred the charge relates to the sole purpose of their trade.
Regarding cameras, I do understand your concerns but I hope it is of at least some comfort that TFL has confirmed that it does not use live facial recognition technology nor intends to deploy it for purposes of enforcing ULEZ. I hope it will also be useful to know that if there were ever any proposed extensions to a system which involved images or information is collected, this will be subject to consultation before the decision is taken. I hope this has been useful and if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to let me know.
Finally, if you do not already receive it, would it be helpful for you to receive my weekly update of events in Westminster and locally? You can sign up here and can unsubscribe at any time.
Thank you again for writing to me.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
Dear Mr Hunt,
Thank you for your reply to my e-mail of 11th September. Given that the government disapproved of the ULEZ expansion, I am still uncertain as to why Mark Harper MP chose not to overrule it on the grounds that it went against the government’s priorities, as I understand he had the right to do.
With regard to tradespeople being able to recoup the ULEZ charge, I am well aware of the “wholly, exclusively and necessarily” test, and if it applies here, this is OK so far as it goes. But it does nothing for people whose businesses are impacted because their customers can no longer get cost-effectively to and from them. Nor does it do anything for employees whose place of work is now inside the zone. The case of the West Lodge Park hotel comes to mind as an example of both these.
As to cameras, I would say that in this context the use of facial recognition technology is all but a red herring. Since most drivers drive their own cars, automatic number plate recognition is already enough to trace individuals as they move around. Blanket ANPR without a reasonable suspicion of real wrongdoing, I consider, is in itself a violation of the rights of privacy and freedom of movement.
As to consultations, after previous occasions such as the bringing forward of the deadline for banning new petrol and diesel cars – where all submissions which went against the party line were completely ignored – and the “consultation” on the ULEZ expansion itself, which went ahead despite a large majority being opposed to it, I am afraid that I now find the words “government consultation” to be something of a sick joke. I do not think either your party, or any of the other mainstream parties, have any real understanding of how far you have all lost the trust and the respect of the people you are supposed to be serving.
All this said, I do appreciate the time you have taken to reply to me on this, and I look forward in particular to your upcoming reply to the e-mail I sent you near the end of November regarding cost-benefit analysis for “Net Zero.”
Yours sincerely,
Neil Lock
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Related posts:
An Open Letter to the Secretary of State for Transport regarding ULEZ Expansion
Complaint to Transport for London on ULEZ expansion
The Back-story behind Anti-Car Policies in the UK, Part Six: Summary and Diagnosis
Close Down the Tube!
ULEZ expansion: damaging, dishonest, and a disgrace to democracy
The Back-story behind Anti-Car Policies in the UK, Part Two: The story up to 2008
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I’m divided about this because I can see the argument for it, and if the official studies are to be believed, these schemes do work in relieving congestion and cleaning up the air while providing funding for public transport alternatives. At the same time, I don’t like it because I think schemes of this kind should follow market forces or at least have democratic consent by way of a plebiscite. I can see the danger of this scheme to civil liberties in that there will be people who see that this works and will be emboldened to impose similar schemes elsewhere – for a variety of purposes, not just to restrict vehicles. It would be better if the Greater London Authority had found ways to encourage less car use and fuel efficient vehicles that rely on the exercise of choice rather than compulsion.
I think this sort of problem goes to the root of the big debate on this site about the legitimacy of political authority. On the one hand stands what seems to me an idealistic argument that all political authority is illegitimate and, at best, a necessary evil, and should be minimised, even removed altogether. On the other hand stands the pragmatic (maybe even Panglossian) argument that political authority, whether or not legitimate, is necessary to impose decisions for the purpose of social improvement that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve in a community of sovereign individuals.
Tom, I think it’s even more complicated than that.
From my point of view, authority over an individual can only be legitimate if the individual has consented to it, and that authority has done its job sufficiently well that there is no objective reason to withdraw that consent. (Think of the referee in a football match. His authority is legitimate unless and until he shows dishonesty or bias, or makes a sufficiently grave error or set of errors that he loses the confidence of one or another team.) I don’t think that argument is idealistic; it simply reflects the idea that any authority must meet certain standards of justice, objectivity and consistency if it is to have any right to maintain its authority. If not, rebellion could never be legitimate, and events such as the English Civil War could not have happened.
As to your “Panglossian” argument, one man’s idea of “social improvement” can be experienced by another man as intolerable tyranny. You cannot reasonably suppose that two individuals will necessarily agree as to what constitutes “social improvement,” unless they have already agreed with each other on that score.
I have maintained for a long while that such issues can only be justly addressed by means of proper, objective cost-benefit analysis, taking into account both sides of the argument. If one individual or group’s way of life causes provable, quantifiable damage to another individual or group, that is usually best dealt with (at least, unless the damage is big enough to be comparable with the benefit experienced by those causing it) by requiring the perpetrators to compensate the victims.
In this case, the situation falls a long way short of any such ideal. That is partly because the impact on drivers, particularly the poorest, of schemes like ULEZ is unjust and out of all proportion to any putative “air quality” benefits to anybody. Which, objectively, are more than slightly dubious anyway. It is also because the effect of the scheme is to enrich, not the people who suffer the most from any “air quality” problems there might be, but the coffers of activist politicians like Sadiq Khan and their organizational backers. ULEZ has been a scam from the get-go.
I believe authority is necessary whether people consent to it or not. I don’t believe a complex society can be sustained for a prolonged period any other way.
To put it a different way, the legitimacy of authority does not necessarily rest on consent and, I would assume, the origin of political and religious authority is in the use of force. Christianity, for instance, was imposed by force on Western European societies and was the militant Islam of its time.
People speak of the ‘rule of law’ in a ‘democratic society’, but the law itself is just an expression of force at one remove and society has never been democratic and probably never will be. In anything other than highly contingent conditions, things such as objective law, democracy and consent are ideals mostly, rather than reality.
I think the question of whether this is right or wrong is beside the point. It is a question of what works. A mass society based entirely on consent (taking different forms: express, implied, tacit) would work for a while and then collapse.
People have to be forced to do things against their will or, at best, encouraged to acquiesce in things – is my insight, based on experience of the ‘real world’ and human nature.
States may have their origin in force. The form they take after that is moderated by need for at least the passive consent of the ruled. So long as a state has that passive consent, the need for overt force is removed, and it is fair to talk about objective law and personal freedom.