In a sit-down interview, Neil Garratt, the London Assembly Tories’ new group chief, said he would continue championing his party’s opposition to the Ulez expansion.
The Labour Mayor plans to expand the zone to cover the whole of Greater London on August 29 – saying it will allow five million Londoners to breathe cleaner air, and save lives.
The Conservatives argue that the £12.50 daily charge for driving non-compliant vehicles – which tend to be older and more polluting – will “punish Londoners during a cost of living crisis”.
Mr Garratt, who represents Croydon and Sutton on the Assembly, said that “in outer London, it almost is bewildering to people that the Mayor is doing it”.
He said residents objected to “the idea that people will abandon their cars for the fantastic new public transport, when there is really nothing”.
While he welcomed the recently-announced Superloop bus service as “a good idea”, he said “it doesn’t transform the transport landscape”.
He stressed however that he wanted his party to also focus on issues other than Ulez, such as concerns around the range and vibrancy of London’s nightlife.
“During the pandemic, it obviously all closed down, but there’s not a sense of it opening up and returning to where it was,” said Mr Garratt.
On housing, the group leader said he was concerned not only by its high cost in London, but also by Mr Khan’s requests that the Government give him the power to impose rent controls.
“It’s just cheap populism,” he said.
“Nobody thinks that rent controls work. In places where they’ve tried them, it actually makes it worse.”
Mr Garratt said he would instead favour efforts to boost the supply of homes – though he stopped short of criticising the group of 100 Tory MPs who pressured Prime Minister Rishi Sunak into making national housing targets advisory, rather than mandatory.
“Fundamentally, housing in London is the responsibility partly of the Mayor, and partly of the boroughs – and most of the boroughs are not Conservative. So I think that’s a difficult problem to pin on the Government,” he said.
He added that there were now several very tall buildings in outer London, including “a whole forest” of skyscrapers in Croydon, and that he would prefer “a more attractive, gentle density”, similar to Paris.
“As far as I can see, that is the only compromise option… I think this…
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