The Department for Transport has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (174163):

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps he is taking to promote the uptake of electric cars by Government departments.. (174163)

Tabled on: 27 March 2023

Answer:
Jesse Norman:

Decarbonising road transport is critical to delivering the UK’s net zero ambitions and the Government has an important leadership role to play in driving this transition.

As of September 2022, over 25% of the cars and vans in the central government fleet were ultra-low emission vehicles, delivering this target well ahead of the Government’s December 2022 deadline. The Government is now going even further and has committed to its car and van fleet being fully zero emission at the tailpipe by 31 December 2027. Departmental officials are working with colleagues from the Crown Commercial Service and Energy Saving Trust to provide other government departments with advice and guidance to support them to deliver this commitment.

The answer was submitted on 31 Mar 2023 at 10:36.

In the last year Brexit Britain’s exports soared by 24%

Rejoiners who want to put our country down may wail, but the facts are the facts.

CIBUK Article : https://cibuk.org/in-the-last-year-brexit-britains-exports-soared-by-24-percent/

CIBUK Twitter : https://twitter.com/CibukOrg/status/1642073673216532483

CIBUK Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/CIBUKOrg/posts/165405233078578

Facts4EU Article:: https://facts4eu.org/news/2023_apr_big_brexit_win_3

Facts4EU Twitter: https://twitter.com/Facts4euOrg/status/1642050714326257665?s=20

Facts4EU Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Facts4EU/posts/pfbid0241CwdiioGoteXX6Z7tJBjJgCUZGk965zKymJ5YVx3AFuYLbpiXzX82oikGmyi3gTl

Great news that last year UK trade surged and inward investment reached a new record. The BBC and the Remain campaigners push out errant forecasts and strange models to suggest post Brexit the UK will do badly, ignoring the reality of trade and overseas investment rising. Why do they always want to run the UK down? Why do they play down the significance of so much investment coming from outside the EU despite their dogma that our trade and prosperity depend on the EU? The USA is by far and away our biggest export market and we are doing well there. Services are particularly strong. Now we are out of the EU we are negotiating trade deals like the TPP one which include services, something the EU did not include in most of their deals.

Governments and all the UK parties in Parliament want to cut UK CO 2 output. I have been arguing against some the damaging self defeating policies they propose to do this. Stopping UK gas and oil extraction in order to import oil and gas increases world CO 2 as well as cutting our jobs and tax revenues. So does stopping food growing here so we import more. Blocking roads and deliberately creating traffic congestion boosts CO 2 from delayed vehicles. Today I will give my top picks on popular policies Ministers could follow to cut UK CO 2.

1. Reduce legal and illegal migration. Every extra person has a carbon footprint, and needs a  home and public service provision that also generate CO 2

2. Tell the public sector to substitute on line meetings for foreign travel to international meetings in most cases.

3. Install solar panels on most public sector roofs

4. Replace public sector gas central heating systems with heat pumps to create a market for them, which should then drive down prices and improve effectiveness of these unpopular products.

5. Step up bypass and better junction construction on roads to improve average fuel economy on journeys and remove more traffic from congested urban areas

6 Cancel work beyond current firm commitments on  HS2. It is very carbon intensive.

7.

Windfall taxes make the things taxed dearer. They reduce investment and output in the items taxed, cutting supply.

We were told that the very high prices of gas and oil that resulted from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and from the West’s decision to stop buying Russian energy were generating windfall profits, both by the fossil fuel companies and by the renewable generators whose prices of electricity reflected the gas price. Gas remains the largest fuel source used in UK generation.

It is true there were such windfall profits as the gas price soared. Today the wholesale gas price is 85% lower than the peak it reached at the worst point after the outbreak of war. The oil price is also down by a third from Ukraine highs. If you impose a windfall tax based on a one off shift in prices that gives companies a bonus, shouldn’t you remove the tax when that price change disappears? It was a weakness of the windfall tax that it did not describe the  nature of the windfall or seek to fairly reflect its size and duration going forward.

Few will be sympathetic to large energy companies who have recently been making large profits. However, if the UK perseveres with a level of taxation that is materially higher than elsewhere for energy, and demonstrates an unwillingness to remove windfall taxes after the windfall has gone, we will find it more difficult to attract the investment and jobs we need to produce more domestic energy. Customers end up paying the higher taxes and business will migrate to lower taxed countries.

The government is pressing ahead with carbon capture and storage projects. When I asked on Thursday who was paying I think the answer was taxpayers, though the Minister delphically said they will “socialise” the costs.

Normally when a business makes an investment customers pay for the output from the facility being installed. In this case the output is storing a lot of CO2, where the customer seems to be the state. It raises the question whose CO2 is it storing? Is that a cost of whatever caused the extra CO 2 in the first place? Some of it will indeed be CO 2 generated by the state itself, with all those heating systems in public sector offices and all that travel of public officials.

Overall the UK government needs to review just how much extra cost it is imposing through windfall taxes, carbon taxes and now these carbon capture schemes. It needs to get off the import best model. Current carbon accounting based on national boundaries still seems to encourage Ministers and officials to close down or drive out carbon dioxide generating activities in the UK, only to import the goods needed from abroad who can then account for the CO 2 in their national figures. This makes  no sense for controlling world CO 2 and is damaging to the UK economy and business.

The present international carbon accounting could have been designed for April 1st.