Anushka Asthana Political editor and Matthew Taylor
Tuesday 25 July 2017 22.38 BST
Last modified on Tuesday 25 July 2017 22.44 BST
As part of a government strategy to improve air quality, Britain is to ban all new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040 amid fears that rising levels of nitrogen oxide pose a major risk to public health.
The commitment, which follows a similar pledge in France, is part of the governments much-anticipated clean air plan, which has been at the heart of a protracted high court legal battle.
The government warned that the move was needed because of the unnecessary and avoidable impact that poor air quality was having on peoples health. Ministers believe it poses the largest environment risk to public health in the UK, costing up to £2.7bn in lost productivity in one recent year.
Ministers have been urged to introduce charges for vehicles to enter a series of clean air zones. However, the government only wants taxes to be considered as a final resort amid a backlash against any move that punishes motorist.
Poor air quality is the biggest environmental risk to public health in the UK and this government is determined to take strong action in the shortest time possible, a government spokesman said.
That is why we are providing councils with new funding to accelerate development of local plans, as part of an ambitious £3bn programme to clean up dirty air around our roads.
The final plan, which was due by the end of July, comes after a draft report that environmental lawyers described as much weaker than hoped for.
The environment secretary, Michael Gove, will be hoping for a better reception when he publishes the final document on Wednesday following months of legal wrangling.
A briefing on parts of the plan, seen by the Guardian, repeats the heavy focus on the steps that can be taken to help councils improve air quality in specific areas where emissions have breached EU thresholds.
Measures to be urgently brought in by local authorities that have repeatedly breached EU rules include retrofitting buses and other public transport, changing road layouts and altering features such as roundabouts and speed humps.
Reprogramming traffic lights will also be included in local plans, with councils being given £255m to help accelerate their efforts. Local emissions hotspots will be required to layout their plans by March 2018 and finalise them by the end of the year.
A targeted scrappage scheme is also expected to be included.
Some want the country-wide initiative to follow in the footsteps of London, which is introducing a £10 toxic T-charge that will be levied on up to 10,000 of the oldest, most polluting vehicles every weekday.
Sources insisted that while the idea of charges were on the table, there was no plan to force councils to introduce them, and that other measures would be exhausted first.
They hope the centrepiece of Wednesdays strategy to be put forward by Gove, will be the plan to ban diesel and petrol sales completely by 2040 in line with Emmanuel Macrons efforts across the Channel.
The French president took the steps to help his country meet its targets under the Paris climate accord, in an announcement that came a day after Volvo said it would only make fully electric or hybrid cars from 2019 onwards.
That decision was hailed as the beginning of the end for the internal combustion engines dominance of motor transport after more than a century.
Nicolas Hulot, Frances ecology minister, called the move towards a ban a veritable revolution, describing it as a tough objective for carmakers but insisted the industry was well equipped to make the switch.
Our [car]makers have enough ideas in the drawer to nurture and bring about this promise ... which is also a public health issue.
Prof David Bailey, an automotive industry expert at Aston University, said: The timescale involved here is sufficiently long term to be taken seriously. If enacted it would send a very clear signal to manufacturers and consumers of the direction of travel and may accelerate a transition to electric cars.
Britains air quality package also includes £1bn in ultra-low emissions vehicles including investing nearly £100m in the UKs charging infrastructure and funding the Plug in Car and Plug in Grant schemes.
There will also be £290m for the national productivity investment fund, which will go towards the retrofitting, and money towards low emission taxis.
The report will also include an air quality grant for councils, a green bus fund for low carbon vehicles, £1.2bn for cycling and walking and £100m to help air quality on the roads.
The strategy comes amid warnings that the UKs high level of air pollution could be be responsible for 40,000 premature deaths a year.
A judge had said the governments original plans on tackling the issue, which included five clean air zones, were so poor as to be unlawful. The government had been asked to present a new draft policy to tackle air pollution from diesel traffic before the election.
The government was then called to court to explain why it had made a last-minute application late last Friday to delay publication of a draft policy to tackle air pollution until after the election.
James Eadie QC, representing the government, said the policy was ready to be published but it would be controversial and should therefore be withheld until after the election.
If you publish a draft plan, it drops all the issues of controversy into the election
like dropping a controversial bomb, he said, adding that it could risk breaching rules about civil service neutrality and lead to the policy being labelled a Tory plan.
However, judges said the government did have to publish a draft plan with the final version needed by the end of July.
Mays draft contained few concrete proposals and did not specify the cities and towns where polluting vehicles might face charges, the level of any charges or the scope or value of any scrappage scheme.
Instead, the plan puts the onus for action on local authorities: Local authorities are already responsible for improving air quality in their area, but will now be expected to develop new and creative solutions to reduce emissions as quickly as possible, while avoiding undue impact on the motorist.
Analysis in the documents showed increasing the number of clean air zones (CAZ) from the current six planned to 27 would make by far the greatest impact in cutting pollution and provide cost benefits of over £1bn. The CAZ policy would cut more than 1,000 times more NO2 than a scrappage scheme, even if that scheme required old diesels to be replaced by electric cars.
But it required local authorities to exhaust all other options before introducing CAZ charging for diesel vehicles such as removing speed bumps and retrofitting buses.
At the time Thornton said: The plan looks much weaker than we had hoped for. The court ordered the government to take this public health issue seriously and while the government says that pollution is the largest environmental risk to public health, we will still be faced with illegal air quality for years to come under these proposals.
ClientEarth, the campaign group that has successfully pursued the government through the courts over the UKs air pollution crisis, gave a cautious welcome to the announcement but said ministers must take action now to tackle the UKs air pollution crisis.
The government has trumpeted some promising measures with its air quality plans, but we need to see the detail, said CEO James Thornton. A clear policy to move people towards cleaner vehicles by banning the sale of petrol and diesel cars and vans after 2040 is welcome, as is more funding for local authorities.
However, the law says ministers must bring down illegal levels of air pollution as soon as possible, so any measures announced in this plan must be focused on doing that.
London mayor Sadiq Khan has been calling for tougher measures to tackle air pollution which kills 9,000 people a year in the capital.
A City Hall source was sceptical about the governments announcement.We need to look at the full details but what Londoners suffering from the terrible health impacts of air pollution desperately need is a fully-funded diesel scrappage fund and they need it right now.
Areeba Hamid, clean air campaigner at Greenpeace, said: The high court was clear that the government must bring down toxic air pollution in the UK in the shortest possible time. This plan is still miles away from that.
The government cannot shy away any longer from the issue of diesel cars clogging up and polluting our cities, and must now provide real solutions, not just gimmicks. That means proper clean air zones and funding to support local authorities to tackle illegal and unsafe pollution.
