The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has called on vehicle manufacturers to contribute to his Air Quality Fund in recognition of the negative impacts their diesel vehicles have on air quality and public health in London.
The Mayor recently wrote to UK chiefs at BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen urging them to take serious action on diesel emissions.
These manufacturers have already contributed up to £223 million to the German Government’s ‘Sustainable Mobility Fund for Cities’ and the Mayor is now urging them to take action in London and the UK.?
The Mayor has also written to the Secretary of State for Transport, Chris Grayling, as part of his continued lobbying of government to do more to tackle the biggest environmental public health crisis in a generation.
He is calling on government to secure contributions from vehicle manufacturers on the same scale as the £24 billion received from Volkswagen (including fines, compensation and other settlements) in the US and £223 million from German car manufacturers in Germany. So far, the UK Government has only secured £1 million of funding.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “Londoners will be baffled by the double standards of these car manufacturers. On the one hand, they admit they’ve got to cut emissions from their vehicles, but they confine their funding to Germany alone. This is ridiculous, as their vehicles are driven all over Europe, including on London’s roads. They must apply the same approach across all the markets that they trade in.