During a Lords Select Committee on Environment and Climate Change debate on EV, chair Baroness Parminter called the move to electric transport “an urgent priority”.

Parminter, a Liberal Democrat peer, said that: “While recognising that the transition to EVs is only one part of the necessary broader transport transition that this country has to make, it is an incredibly important part. Passenger cars account for over half of our surface transport emissions and contribute to the almost 30,000 deaths from air pollution annually in the UK.”

Although praising the work of the last government, its ban on ICE vehicles and roll out of charging infrastructure, she noted that the committee sought a fresh and ambitious new programme from the new one, which was not yet in evidence: “It has to be said that, since the new Labour government have come in, they have hardly put their foot to the floor in terms of delivering on the EV agenda,” she added.

She called on the Government to introduce a massive charging point programme and target two million points to build infrastructure capacity and ensure greater fiscal incentives to make the switch to electric. On the matter of taxation, she noted that the differing VAT rates on at home and at roadside charging points was an inequitable situation, and that the VAT rate should be equalised.

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