Labour will “incentivise going electric” says Bill Esterson MP in Next Gen Van 2023 keynote

Its keynote speech was delivered by Bill Esterson MP, Shadow Minister for Business and Industrial Strategy, who outlined Labour’s ambitions for the freight industry and shared his views on the transition to Electric Vehicles (EVs) and the challenges business are currently facing with costs and infrastructure accessibility.

“The Labour Party Industrial Strategy will ensure we work with employers and unions,” he said. “It’s essential that everyone benefits from cheaper energy and well-paid jobs as we transition to low carbon. For vans, it includes making charging infrastructure available, enabling connections from grid to depots, faster charging and financing arrangements that incentivise going electric.

“I look forward to working with the sector,” he continued, “so we can develop plans that are capable of hitting the challenging targets which have been set.”

Denise Beedell, Senior Policy Manager, at Logistics UK comments: “Van operators and businesses are keen to decarbonise and make a smooth transition to EVs but continue to face barriers with significant costs for increasing power supplies and installing the required charging infrastructure at their depots.

“They also need to have confidence that the public chargepoint network will be able to accommodate their electric vehicles,” Ms Beedell continues. “Bays at public electric vehicle charging points are often too small to accommodate commercial vehicles, or are unavailable because they are in use or are broken.

“The pace of the rollout of suitable public charging infrastructure must be accelerated and appropriate fiscal measures must be put in place to support our industry in meeting decarbonise deadlines to ensure our sector can continue to deliver all that the economy requires.” 

The logistics industry is key to the UK’s economic survival, employing 2.7m people and contributing £163 billion to the UK economy.

As Ms Beedell concludes, “It's vital that industry and government work together to ensure a greener transition to EVs, creating prosperity and lowers costs in the process, to enable logistics businesses to invest in EVs and infrastructure with confidence.” 

According to Esterson, if Labour wins the next general election it’s determined to create stability and rebuild trust between business and government. Its mission is to achieve the highest sustained growth in the G7 and, as part of that, to get the UK into the position of being a clean energy superpower.

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Published On: 13/07/2023 12:00:55

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