MP LETTER: Royston Smith: 'I'll keep fight clean air charging'

He berates me for being against a vehicle charging scheme which could devastate jobs in the Port of Southampton. 

He implies I don’t care about premature deaths due to poor air quality. 
But the truth is that while he was leader of the council, Mr Letts could have acted much sooner. 

The ongoing consultation regarding a citywide charging zone was delayed until after this year’s local elections to give Labour the best chance of remaining in power. 

He didn’t seem to have any concerns about public health then.

In the event he was roundly defeated in May losing his Bitterne seat so even his reluctance to make his plans public didn’t save him at the polls.

He suggests I lack ideas. I have plenty, all currently dismissed by his Labour colleagues who are hell bent on disadvantaging the port, road hauliers, taxi and coach drivers and most likely all motorists in due course.

I recently took representatives from Associated British Ports (ABP) to meet the Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Gove, to discuss ship to shore power and ways of increasing rail freight. 

Initiatives such as these could quickly improve our air quality and avoid the need to introduce a charge.

The Labour city council and Mr Letts have repeatedly tried to blame government policy for their own plans to charge motorists to come into the city but that simply isn’t true. 

In a recent letter from the Department for Environment it stated: “Government has been clear that it would prefer local authorities to identify alternatives to charging schemes.” 

So, to avoid confusion, it is the city’s Labour council who are pushing a charging scheme, no one else.

I will continue to fight this plan as vigorously as possible because we all know, once the city is surrounded with a ring of cameras, the city council isn’t simply going to switch them all off when our air quality is within legal limits.

Royston Smith MP
MP for Southampton Itchen