Burnham slams ‘dishonest’ Johnson as Greater Manchester CAZ is put on hold

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham launched a furious attack on Boris Johnson after the Prime Minister criticised the controversial Manchester Clean Air Zone in the House of Commons.

The controversial CAZ has been put on temporary hold following complaints from vehicle fleet operators, including strikes and protests by taxi and private hire drivers in towns throughout the region.

During PMQs, Johnson attacked the plan, saying he believes Burnham had “done the wrong thing”. But in a furious response, Burnham accused the beleaguered PM of being “dishonest”.

Burnham said: “The Prime Minister has got to stop playing dishonest politics with the Greater Manchester Clean Air Zone. Only three weeks ago, his Government imposed a new legal direction on our councils mandating action. Yet today he pretends in Parliament that those letters were never sent.”

He continued: “We will not put up with this any longer. We can’t have Ministers saying things to us in private which are then flatly contradicted by the Prime Minister at the Despatch Box. Are the Government requiring Greater Manchester to have a Clean Air Zone or not? They must give a straight answer to that question and they must do it today.”

Johnson was responding to a question from Conservative Bury North MP James Daly about the CAZ. Referring to the London congestion charge western extension, which Johnson scrapped when he was London mayor, he said: “As somebody who once had to deal with a badly thought-out emission zone, it is totally wrong to impose measures thoughtlessly that damage business and don’t do very much to protect clean air. I think the Mayor of Manchester has done the wrong thing and I’m glad that we’re delaying.”

The CAZ was due to launch on May 30, 2022, but now the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and the UK Government have agreed a “short time-limited pause” in order to rethink the scheme.

Burnham said the changes to the plan would be “substantial” after he warned of concerns over the impact to residents, as the CAZ would hit those driving older vehicles that do not comply with Euro 6 standards for diesel vehicles or Euro 4 for petrol with charges of up to £60 a day.

In a joint statement, DEFRA, GMCA and Burnham said they would now look to deliver a new clean air plan by the middle of 2022 that would be “fair to the businesses and residents of the city region”. This will meet the Greater Manchester and Government requirements on clean air, as soon as possible, and no later than 2026.

The statement said: “We will deliver improved air quality as soon as possible, not losing ambition but ensuring we take into account the pandemic, global supply chain challenges, improvements already baked into retrofits and the scope as previously laid out.”

The Greater Manchester Class C CAZ scheme included taxis and private hire vehicles as well as buses, coaches, trucks, vans and minibuses – but not private cars. It covered the whole Greater Manchester area, excluding the strategic road network.

But the taxi and private hire sector had expressed severe concerns about future developments, which included a cap on vehicle age and limits on how old a car could be when first registered, which many operators and drivers believed would force them out of the sector as they could not afford to upgrade vehicles in the wake of the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Andy Burnham commented on Twitter, saying the council had tried “in good faith to make the Government’s legal direction work. However, changes in the vehicle market mean it is impossible to proceed on the current basis without causing real hardship to some of our residents”. He added that a rethink would help make the scheme fair for everyone.

The Federation of Small Businesses welcomed the decision. Development manager Robert Downes said: “This is an 11th-hour decision but, that notwithstanding, it is a welcome one. We all want cleaner air but this scheme, as it stood, wasn’t right, wasn’t going to work and wasn’t practical. It was going to ruin people.”

He added: “The government and Greater Manchester now need to go back to the drawing board and come back with proposals – and a time frame – that will give businesses time to better prepare to drive the change.”