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News and Comment January 2023

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25 January - Thinking about ULEZ, Part 2 - Soldier of Fortune

Green and pleasant landBelow is the long awaited Part 2 of @tonyofsidcup’s continued defence of the imposition of the ULEZ Tax on our green and pleasant outer London boroughs.


Two things have happened in the ULEZ Universe since the previous post.

First, the Tory-controlled Harrow council and the LibDem Sutton announced that they formally declined TfL’s request to facilitate installation of ULEZ cameras on borough-managed roads.
Leader's comment Evening StandardBexley promptly joined the group. “We have withheld permission for the Mayor to put his ULEZ cameras on our street furniture or work on our roads”, Teresa O’Neill wrote on January 23.

On the same day, however, an Evening Standard article suggested that TfL did not need councils’ permission to install cameras alongside existing TfL equipment, the case for two thirds of all planned sites, according to TfL.

Meanwhile, TfL reminded the boroughs that it was their legal responsibility to comply with the mayor’s Transport Strategy, now including the expanded ULEZ. (Ever polite, TfL did not say that it was “local implementation” of that Strategy by London boroughs that got them TfL funding). The independents of Havering, though unhappy with ULEZ, accepted the point and promised their co-operation; the Conservatives of Hillingdon, Croydon and Bromley stayed put, muttering about blocking cameras and suing the City Hall, but not doing anything visible.

In a second ULEZ-related development, that unique group of people who make Bexley Conservatives look competent and honest, the Conservatives of the London Assembly, had a second go at inflating #UlezScandal. Recall that in September 2022, The Torygraph reported allegations of anti-ULEZ responses being excluded from the results of the Mayor’s consultation.


Daily TelegraphBy January 2023, the GLA Tories, led by “our own” Peter Fortune, the Assembly Member for Bexley and Bromley, used FOI to obtain a 200-page trove of City Hall emails related to the consultation. They used it to construct a story of Sadiq Khan anxiously watching the percentage of anti-ULEZ consultation responses (all the while feigning ignorance of it), seeing the public opinion go against him, trying to turn the tide by boosting participation of pro-ULEZ groups, and in the end manipulating the percentage by removing a chunk of anti-ULEZ responses on a flimsy pretext. This is essentially the description provided by Peter Fortune himself at the end of his 32 minute questioning of Sadiq Khan at Mayor’s Question Time, available on YouTube. I don’t buy it.

It helps to remember that the consultation was run by TfL, but the responses were analysed by an outside consultancy, AECOM. When Fortune insinuates that Sadiq Khan threw away anti-ULEZ responses, one can simply counter that neither the City Hall nor TfL handled the process, and no “smoking gun” email from a Khan henchperson to AECOM, directing them to take a particular approach, has ever been produced. AECOM made their own decisions - as they were supposed to, since avoiding perceptions of bias was the reason for TfL not doing the work in-house in the first place.

It also helps to remember the consultation’s timeline. The public was consulted for ten weeks, from May 20 until July 29. When Fortune alleges that Khan was aware of intermediate results in August or September - but refused to admit it - one answers “So what? The consultation was closed by then, and Khan could not have influenced it”.

What about the July publicity push for youth participation, Khan’s alleged manipulation? I accept the Mayor’s explanation that the youth outreach was appropriate, and see no evidence of it being either special - an AECOM report referenced later gives a long list of ULEZ-consultation publicity campaigns - or a panicked response to the public’s rejection of ULEZ, as insinuated by Fortune. (Fortune’s implicit admission that young people support ULEZ might sound awkward for him, but hey, we already knew the Conservatives favour a different demographic).

Khan’s explanation for why he did not disclose seeing the intermediate analysis results was that only the final report, presented to him on November 18, was “results”. A sensible answer or evasive word games? I would cry foul if “intermediate results” were explicitly queried, but if Fortune et al. had just asked for “results”, I am ready to give Khan a pass. Fortune may be right, he just does not lay out enough evidence to prove his claim - and lacks the credibility to be trusted without it.

What about those discarded anti-ULEZ responses, the stuff of the original #UlezScandal? Let’s understand what it’s about. Imagine that you run an online survey. You build an online form with, say, twenty questions, including questions about respondents’ backgrounds, and ask people to fill it out. You also allow people to email you - and end up with a bunch of emails that skip all the questions, including the demographic ones, and answer just one. Now, you need to summarize the responses to your survey. The “proper” survey responses are “nice and clean” - but how do you handle those emails?
Consultation
A reasonable approach is to use the information in them where possible: count the emails with regard to the question they answered, and ignore them on the questions they themselves ignored. Now, you need to tell people how many responses you received for each question, and what the split was. Easy for all but that one question, but what do you do there? To be safe, just give the reader the full information: tell them how many survey responses and emails you received, and what the split is if you exclude or include the emails.

… and this is exactly what AECOM did. You can see the details in Section 4.13 of the clunkily-named but extremely interesting “Report to Mayor on ULEZ expansion and future Road User Charging proposal”. Note that the percentage of responses choosing “ULEZ should not be implemented” is *higher* (68% vs. 59%) when those “organised responses” are excluded. That’s some “manipulation”! In my opinion, only people devoid of any integrity could look at this and allege wrongdoing. Have I mentioned that GLA Conservatives make Bexley Conservatives look good?

“Well, 59% or 68%, no matter - clearly, majority of Londoners oppose ULEZ, and that’s why Khan ought to cancel ULEZ!” No, and no. This is actually the key point in the whole ULEZ consultation business, and one that Fortune and Friends try hardest to avoid. Let’s hit it on the head in the next post.
Consultation

AECOM Report.

P.S. One more thing. Section 4.3 of AECOMs report mentions five petitions (not to be confused with organised email campaigns) submitted to TfL. Not one, but two of them come from Bexley! The first one, with 245 signatures, appears to be by Bexley Tories. However, there is a second petition, with just 36 names, saying simply: “Objection to the Mayor of London’s proposal to extend the Ultra Low Emission Zone London-wide. We support Bexley Council!” Good for you, folks.
Petition
Links
Councils refuse camera installation
https://www.mylondon.news/news/east-london-news/ulez-full-list-london-councils-26018487
Evening Standard: no council permission needed
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/ulez-expansion-council-challenge-cctv-cameras-sadiq-khan-tfl-powers-b1054878.html
Statement by Bexley
https://twitter.com/LBofBexley/status/1617482534530564097
Peter Fortune’s GLA profile
https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-does/london-assembly-members/peter-fortune
GLA Conservatives’ YouTube video 1
https://twitter.com/GLAConservative/status/1615319861088980993?s=20&t=Yl6xDA5WskOLnKB61uwgYQ
(Note the email shown at 1:17)
GLA Conservatives’ YouTube video 2 (Fortune vs Khan)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSkSuukO6SU
#UlezScandal 1.0
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/09/30/leak-reveals-two-thirds-londoners-oppose-expansion-ultra-low/
AECOM “Report to Mayor on ULEZ expansion and future Road User Charging proposal”
https://haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk/15619/widgets/58629/documents/34558


More to come.

 

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