25 January - Thinking about ULEZ, Part 2 - Soldier of Fortune
Below
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.
Bexley 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.
By
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?
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.
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.
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.