On small businesses Boris is right and the Lib Dems are wrong

At last week's budget meeting in City Hall Mike Tuffrey (leader of the Lib Dem group) said that although no evidence had been presented to the Assembly on the effectiveness of the Low Emissions Zone in improving air quality, Boris should proceed with plans to introduce the third phase of the scheme.

He just doesn't get it does he? Had the third phase of the LEZ been imposed on small vans, the firms that use them would have been faced with bills running into the thousands either to modify their vehicles or replace them with new ones. For many of them it would have been enough to put them out of business.

I find Mike Tuffrey’s blasé stance on the impact of the LEZ on small businesses staggering. He knows there is, as yet, no evidence proving that the LEZ has had any impact on improvements in air quality. And yet, for some doctrinaire reasons best known to himself, he insists that Boris should have pressed ahead with its introduction regardless – regardless of the impact the costs of compliance on the businesses affected by the measure.

Boris has taken the right decision to hold off with LEZ phase three. Its effectiveness is not known and the costs to small businesses would have sent many of them to the wall.