Click here to view the low emission zone

Ken Livingstone has been accused of exaggerating the benefits of the new London low emission zone after it emerged that most of the improvement in air quality that he is claiming would have happened anyway, without the £130 million scheme.

The Mayor of London yesterday introduced the scheme, under which operators of lorries and vans more than six years old will have to pay £200 a day to enter Greater London or face a fine of £1,000.

The zone applies initially to lorries over 12 tonnes but, from July 7, will apply to all diesel-engined vehicles over 3.5 tonnes, including motorhomes and larger delivery vans. From 2010, all vans and minibuses over 1.2 tonnes will be covered by the scheme. Other cities, including Oxford, are watching closely and may follow suit.

Although it will raise an estimated £3-4 million a year in fees and fines, the scheme will make a huge overall loss. Mr Livingstone has spent £49 million establishing the scheme and it will cost £10 million a year to operate for the next eight years. The mayor claims that the costs are justified by the health benefits and yesterday issued a press release saying that 900,000 Londoners would benefit from reduced air pollution by 2012. The release implied that the zone would help to save the lives of many of the 1,000 people who die prematurely in London each year because of poor air quality.

But Transport for London, the mayor’s transport authority, admitted yesterday that very few lives would be saved. It said that existing European regulations on reducing engine emissions would contribute 65 per cent of the health benefits listed by Mr Livingstone. Another 15 per cent would be the product of existing plans to introduce cleaner buses and taxis. Only a fifth of the improvement in air pollution by 2012 will be attributable to the low emission zone. Air pollution in general will reduce only by about 5 per cent, meaning the zone will improve overall air quality by only 1 per cent.

Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrat candidate in May’s mayoral election, said the scheme would put many small operators out of business because they could not afford either to pay the charge or spend £3,000 making their vehicles exempt by fitting particulate traps.

He said: “To suggest the LEZ will do something about the 1,000 deaths a year caused by pollution is grossly misleading. The most effective way to deal with pollution in London is to get the traffic moving again and reduce the number of lorries on our roads through retail consolidation schemes. This is about improving the mayor’s image, not improving air quality.”

The Freight Transport Association said the scheme would impose £100 million of extra costs on operators, who would have to retire vehicles early or adapt them. Gordon Telling, the association’s head of policy for London, said: “This scheme achieves very little that would not have been achieved anyway. This means that Londoners, and lorry operators, are having to pay an enormous price for a trivial improvement in air quality.”

Nick Fairholme, TfL’s head of the low emission zone, said it would bring forward the benefits of European clean engine regulations by four or five years. He said publicity about the introduction of the zone had already resulted in a big reduction in the number of older lorries, which emit up to 40 times more air pollutants per mile than new ones, entering Greater London.

Last July 5,000 noncompliant lorries a day were detected by cameras inside the zone. By last week the daily number had dropped to 2,500 and yesterday it was 1,500.

Asked how many lives would be saved by the zone, Mr Fairholme said: “Very few is the honest answer. The benefits are not so much in terms of lives saved. It’s about reduced use of inhalers and reduced hospital admissions.”

Asthma UK welcomed the zone as a “significant step forward” for London’s 600,000 asthma sufferers.

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