London Mayor Sadiq Khan ‘Misled Public’ on Benefits of ULEZ Climate Car Tax: Report

Demonstrators hold placards as they protest against the expansion of the Ultra Low Emissio
HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has reportedly been accused by a media watchdog of “misleading” the public about the supposed benefits of the ULEZ scheme which uses spy cameras to impose green levies on drivers in the British capital.

A £9 million “marketing blitz” from the leftist Mayor’s office to promote Khan’s expansion of the Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) to all boroughs of London has reportedly been found by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to have misled the public.

According to a preliminary report leaked to The Telegraph newspaper, the advertising watchdog found that claims made by the Transport for London (TfL) media campaign including that ULEZ had “almost halved levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2)” in Central London was misleading given that the ads failed to inform the public that such claims were based on estimates and modelling rather than on actual statistics.

“In the absence of qualifying information consumers were likely to understand that the claims were based on actual figures, not estimates or modelled scenarios, and that NO2 concentrations had been seen to reduce by almost a half,” the report stated.

The ASA also found fault with claims that “most air pollution-related deaths actually occur in outer London,” given that this statement was based upon areas already covered by the ULEZ scheme.

“We considered … listeners would likely understand the term ‘Outer London’ as referring to areas that had not already been covered by the Ulez,” the investigators wrote.

“We, therefore, considered listeners would understand the claim ‘most air pollution-related deaths actually occur in Outer London areas’… to refer to the proportion of air pollution-related deaths in the areas that had previously not been covered by the Ulez.”

Again, the evidence to back up the claim was purely based on models and estimates rather than firm figures. The report also stated that the TfL had attempted to justify the ad by saying that “no single official definition of ‘Inner London’ and ‘Outer London’ areas existed.”

The leftist climate scheme that charges motorists between £12.50 to £27.50 per day for the privilege of driving in the city has faced steep backlash, with bands of citizen dissidents destroying or damaging hundreds of the licence plate-reading cameras used to enforce the green tax.

To sway the public opposition to the draconian scheme, Mayor Khan’s office has reportedly pressured scientists into publicly challenging studies that undercut the justifications for its expansion to the entire city, including an Imperial College London review that found that ULEZ had only resulted “in only small improvements in air quality soon after it was implemented”.

The BBC has also faced accusations of colluding with the Mayor’s office to shape how stories on the expansion of the ULEZ scheme to the entirety of the city were covered.

Commenting on the accusations of Khan’s office misleading the public, Howard Cox, the head of the campaign group FairFuelUK and mayoral candidate for Reform UK, said on Monday that Khan was “the most dishonest Mayor there has ever been”.

A TfL spokesman said of the report: “The science is absolutely clear about the significant harm of air pollution on people’s health and that estimated premature deaths from air pollution are higher in outer London than in inner London. We are confident that the advertisement is accurate.”

However, according to the Office for National Statistics, between 2001 and 2021, there was only one registered death in London attributed to air pollution. Yet even for this case, the ONS admitted that it was “unable to determine whether this involved car emissions.”

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