MANCHESTER CAZ: Conservative MP calls for political support to exempt taxi drivers from fee

A Conservative MP has called for political support to exempt taxi drivers from the incoming Manchester Clean Air Zone (CAZ).

Manchester's CAZ is set to launch in May 2022 and will charge motorists, and licensed taxi drivers, a fee if their vehicles do not meet the minimum requirements.

The CAZ will cover all 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester - an area of around 493 square miles - which would be the largest scheme of its kind in the country.

Taxis and private hire vehicles will be required to pay £7.50 from 2023 if they do not meet standards. Failure to pay the charge would also result in a £120 fine.

Greater Manchester’s (GM) CAZ is aided by more than £120million in government funding. A total of £21.4million of those funds will be made available to the taxi industry to help build a greener fleet of vehicles licensed within the Greater Manchester area. Applications for funding support opened at the tail end of last year.

James Daly, Conservative MP for Bury North, said at the House of Commons: “I want to consider this (taxation) policy in the context of the largest self-employed sector in my constituency - taxi drivers.

“Taxi drivers will be hit completely by the taxes proposed for Andy Burnham’s clean air charging zone - at 493 square miles, it will be the world’s largest such zone. That tax - £10 for small vans and £60 for lorries - will hit all those who rely on certain types of motor transport to earn their living. How can that be right?

“I stand up here on a regular basis and ask Opposition Members to support me in asking for that charge - a cost that hard-working taxi drivers and others in my constituency face - to be removed, but there is silence. We have to look at the whole of the country, and at the policies put in place by politicians at different levels.”