‘No clarity’ on EV charging points rollout

The government has been accused of failing to provide clarity on its plans to roll-out of electric vehicle charging points by the chair of the House of Commons science and technology committee.

Speaking during a parliamentary debate yesterday on his committee’s recently published report on the clean growth strategy, Norman Lamb MP said that sufficient charging points are required together with stronger financial incentives to buy.

After outlining his committee’s recommendation that EV charging points should be much more widely available and interoperable, he said: “There is not yet clarity on the roll-out of charging points. Other countries, such as Norway, are well ahead of us in achieving that. In order to encourage people to buy electric, we have to assure them that they will be able to recharge without difficulty.”

The Liberal Democrat, who announced last week that he is retiring as an MP at the next election, said there must also be a national discussion about moving to a transport system that does not rely on mass car ownership.

He made his comments on the same day as the publication of new SMMT figures showing that 3,147 purely battery powered EVs were sold in August, up 659 on the same month last year.

Battery powered EVs accounted for 3.4% of the total new car sales, which dropped 1.6% overall to 92,573 in the run up to September’s number plate change. The relatively strong performance by battery powered vehicles has been explained by the 2,082 sales of the Tesla Model 3.

Lamb also said during the debate that there had been “snail’s pace progress” on developing alternative ways of domestic heating.

And he told MPs that there need not be a trade-off between affordability and green measures when building new housing.

“We can achieve the essential decarbonisation of our economy by confronting the problem of how we heat our buildings, particularly our homes, but we can also achieve affordable housing. We often talk about affordable housing and the vital need to increase access to it, but housing is not affordable unless energy is cheap. We have the potential to minimise and, indeed, to eradicate the cost of energy in our homes.”

Lamb also described as “sad and rather depressing” that few MPs had turned in the Commons chamber to attend the debate.

He said: “The Brexit quagmire that we are in is distracting the attention that this Parliament should be giving to how we confront this enormous existential threat.

“At some point soon, this parliament needs to get back to focusing on such issues, which are critical to the futures of our planet and our society.”