\n<\/p>\n
Ed Miliband has been accused by MPs of subsidising dangerous and polluting \u201csupersized status symbols\u201d as his department hands grants to people who buy electric SUVs.<\/p>\n
The Labour government is giving discounts of up to \u00a33,750 on new electric cars, but Guardian analysis reveals 12 of the 37 eligible models are SUVs.<\/p>\n
Numbers of these giant cars have increased tenfold on the streets of England\u2019s cities in the past two decades, now comprising 30% of urban vehicles. Larger cars are more likely to cause deaths in crashes than smaller ones, as they weigh more and have tall front ends that can trap victims beneath them. Analysis has found drivers in the tallest cars could not see children as old as nine when they were directly in front of the vehicle.<\/p>\n
SUVs were defined in the analysis as cars at least 155cm tall and with a ground clearance of 16cm or more. The vehicles, including electric versions, produce more toxic particles from tyres due to their heavier weight, and cause more potholes.<\/p>\n
The Labour MP Clive Lewis said: \u201cIt\u2019s absurd that public money is being used to subsidise SUV-sized electric cars. They may be cleaner than petrol, but they\u2019re still oversized, wasteful and dangerous. Heavier SUVs mean more potholes, more tyre pollution, and more energy consumption, hardly a green transition. Cities like Paris are moving to penalise SUVs with higher parking charges. Here in Britain, we\u2019re doing the opposite: handing them subsidies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lewis added that the issue was indicative of a wider inconsistency in Labour\u2019s climate policy: \u201cOne day it\u2019s warm homes investment, the next it\u2019s Heathrow expansion; talk of climate leadership, while bankrolling more roads and bigger cars. If Labour is serious about climate action and public health, it should back smaller, lighter EVs and invest in universal, public transport \u2013 not pour taxpayers\u2019 cash into supersized status symbols.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, Parisians voted to triple parking costs for SUVs in order to tackle air pollution and climate breakdown by targeting generally richer drivers in heavy, large and polluting cars. Reports suggest this is already beginning to have an impact in Paris. Le Parisien said the new parking rate for large vehicles in Paris had reduced the number of SUVs using surface parking by two-thirds.<\/p>\n
The Green MP Si\u00e2n Berry said:\u201cElectric or not, SUVs make our streets more hostile and dangerous. These beasts of vehicles are leaving a trail of costly potholes in their wake and their gargantuan tires are clogging our air with particle pollution. The government should be moving to rid our cities of these unnecessary road risks, not enable them, and invest instead in far greener public transport, walking, wheeling, and cycling infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of Labour\u2019s ministers have spoken in the past against SUVs. Before taking her post as environment minister, Mary Creagh, the MP for Coventry East, said: \u201cNo one needs a 2\u2011tonne machine to do the weekly shop but Britain\u2019s streets are being ruined by heavy, dirty, dangerous SUVs. They are intimidating to pedestrians and up to twice as likely to kill people on foot in a collision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Climate campaigners have said the government should bring in weight-related taxes for vehicles to encourage smaller models on UK roads.<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Paul Morozzo, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: \u201cElectric SUVs are an improvement on petrol and diesel SUVs, but big cars of any type are a wasteful, damaging and unnecessary use of energy and resources, so subsidising them is not a good use of public money. We\u2019d urge the government to bring in weight-related taxes to encourage a focus on smaller, more efficient vehicles.\u201d<\/p>\n A government spokesperson said: \u201cThe \u00a3650m electric car grant is targeted at the most affordable electric vehicles with the strongest environmental credentials, helping families make the switch to cleaner cars. We are committed to decarbonising transport and are backing that ambition with over \u00a34bn of investment to support both industry and households in moving to electric.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ed Miliband has been accused by MPs of subsidising dangerous and polluting \u201csupersized status symbols\u201d as his department hands grants to people who buy electric SUVs. The Labour government is giving discounts of up to \u00a33,750 on new electric cars, but Guardian analysis reveals 12 of the 37 eligible models are SUVs. Numbers of these<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[2124,1903,719,1669,362,12326,12327,3456],"class_list":{"0":"post-20060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-accused","9":"tag-dangerous","10":"tag-electric","11":"tag-miliband","12":"tag-pollution","13":"tag-subsidising","14":"tag-suvs","15":"tag-wasteful"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}