Richard Holden: Why we are putting common sense Conservatism at the heart of our transport plan

Richard Holden is Shadow Secretary of State for Transport and MP for Basildon and Billericay.

Earlier this year, Kemi Badenoch announced that Conservative Party policy would no longer be net zero by 2050. She said that to leave ourselves shackled to such an ambition – especially when other major economies aren’t signed up to it – is simply impossible without a huge drop in our living standards or bankrupting the country or both. She is right.

That decision, and the arguments behind it, were calmly considered and thought through. The energy price shocks around Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. The fundamental choices made by others in the Far East and on the other side of the Atlantic. A multitude of factors at home and abroad have shifted the dial.

It is a decision that reflects one of the Conservative Party’s greatest strengths: pragmatism. When the evidence, the facts, and the fundamentals change, we respond to that change rather than dig our heels in and ignore the reality before us.

It is because of this approach that my colleague Claire Coutinho, the Shadow Energy Secretary, has gone toe to toe with Ed Miliband, confronting his ideological obsessions and calling out the damage he is doing to British industry.

At the core of a lot of the issues we face is our energy costs. Energy prices are multiples that of our major competitors and many times that of coal-guzzling China. It is beyond time for the United Kingdom to get serious about competitiveness and we cannot do that without cheaper energy. We need common-sense energy policies that strike a balance, not a unilateral assault on our own businesses.

To those who say this marks a shift in Conservative policy from where we were; they’re right. We are under new leadership; we have changed and have a clear direction that we are pursuing at pace. Other parties might want to take comfort in trying to re-fight the last war; we’re preparing for the next one.

We Conservatives took an absolute thumping at the last General Election because we’d lost sight of what we stood for, who we stood for, and had almost lost touch with ourselves.

To win again, we must evolve to face the issues of today but with core Conservative principles guiding us at every step.

Just like we did ahead of 1951 1979, 2010. These totemic elections ushered in years of Conservatives in Government. All were preceded by points where it looked like the Conservative Party may no longer be able to recover. Think of the Labour victories of 1945 and 1997 and Mrs Thatcher’s unsteady start as Leader of the Opposition and early Labour dominance of the late 70s, before the Winter of Discontent.

And as we adapt to today’s challenges on energy policy, that inevitably requires a new approach to transport.

Britain produces some fantastic electric, hybrid, petrol and diesel vehicles. We produce parts for too. Around two thirds of what we produce is exported and that’s split between Europe and the rest of the world. Even more vitally important and crucial design and creative work for vehicles is done here too.

We Conservatives doesn’t have a downer on Britain. We back Britain and, unlike Labour, we listen to business. That is why I have spent the last few months speaking to vehicle manufacturers large and small, in the UK, on the continent, and from around the world. I wanted to know that I can take industry with me whatever policy we went for. When jobs and investment are on the line, anything less would be a dereliction of duty.

Some want an ideological approach at one or the other extreme; I’m just interested in common sense Conservatism.

What manufacturers have told me is stark. The Zero Emission Vehicle mandate brought forward to 2030, inexplicably brought forward by the Labour Government from 2035, and the ban on petrol and diesel cars, is making their business model completely unsustainable.

One senior industry said that they’d told Labour ministers they wanted certainly but had ended up with a policy so ideological that ‘the only certainly was that of a terminal diagnosis for their manufacturing business in the UK.’

When the ZEV mandate was introduced, there was a genuine belief from business that demand would rise quickly enough to meet its increasingly strict targets. As electric vehicles became more familiar, prices were expected to fall, consumer confidence to grow, and the market to adjust.

That was the theory.

That has not happened.

Consumers are not buying electric vehicles at anything close to the volumes required for prices to fall or for manufacturers to meet the mandate’s thresholds. As a result, carmakers face heavy penalties of up to £15,000 per vehicle or are forced to buy regulatory credits from all-electric competitors such as Tesla or Chinese-owned BYD.

Even as the European Union prepares to review its own mandate and ban, this Government appears oblivious to the warnings. Instead of creating the conditions for British manufacturing to compete, it is throwing public money at foreign car production to hit self-imposed electric car targets and pretending the problem will go away. It will not.

For those uninitiated with the crazy of ideology in this area, I should explain here that under Labour’s electric car grant, 90 per cent of the models are not made in the UK yet British taxpayers are paying for a subsidy for foreign workers in foreign factories to produce them to be sold in the UK.

At the Budget as we saw taxes soar even higher, Labour nevertheless found another £1.2 billion for an expanded Electric Car Grants – almost all of which will go to foreign manufacturers of foreign cars.

But it gets worse still. Their approach is inherently contradictory. On the one hand, billions are being spent to encourage people to buy electric vehicles. On the other hand, ministers are bringing in a pay-per-mile charging scheme that would tax those very same drivers and has collapsed demand. It’s akin to Stalin demanding an increase in tractor production but simultaneously threatening anyone seen driving a tractor with the gulag.

It is little wonder consumers lack confidence in a policy that gives with one hand and threatens to take with the other.

That is why Conservatives are setting out a different course.

We would end the ZEV mandate and scrap electric vehicle subsidies, saving taxpayers £3.8 billion while giving British manufacturers the breathing space they need.

We will continue to back the £2 billion committed to research and development but pivot it even harder towards technologies such as hydrogen, solid-state batteries, and low-carbon fuels, ensuring Britain can capitalise on the next generation of automotive innovation not try and compete where others already have a massive advantage. We will be guided by innovation, affordability, and consumer choice, not by fines and rigid quotas.

Yes, we must be mindful of emissions, pollution, and the environment. But we must do so in a way that reflects how people live, protects industry, and restores trust and doesn’t just offshore those emissions. And we’ve got to think of the whole vehicle – the energy that goes into making it, how the raw materials are extracted and at what cost, not just obsess about the tailpipe emissions alone.

So, in the years ahead, whether you want to buy an electric, hybrid, petrol, or a diesel, under our plans the choice will be yours. It’s another step forwards for our party as we seek to address the challenges of today and tomorrow and it’s an important one.