Speeches by Mather.

“Committee rose.”

“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Merchant Shipping (Port State Control) Regulations 2026. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 2 March 2026. The United Kingdom was a founding signatory to the Paris memorandum of und…”

“I thank the shadow Minister both for his support for the measures and for his concern for my welfare over the last few weeks. To quote one of the five Prime Ministers who graced these halls during the 14 years of chaos and disarray under the Conservative party, he is right to say, in relation to the draft regulations, …”

“Thank you, and welcome to the Committee. That is an incredibly important point. On what the ECG facilitates, and how that allows lower and middle-income households to take part in the EV transition, around 100,000 vehicles have been sold through the ECG. You can have up to £3,750 off the cost of a new electric vehicle.…”

“Oh no, I certainly don’t want to give the impression that everything is fine, and we are just going to leave it to evolve as it wishes to. The Government are actively working in partnership with the charge point sector, for instance, to drive the transition, because that is necessary. We are trying to convince the publ…”

“Yes.”

“You do well to correct me, Chair—thank you.”

“I will let you answer that, Richard.”

“The challenge is that EVs are heavier vehicles across the board, by the nature of their design.”

“Absolutely.”

“Thank you very much for that question. The short answer— I will go into in more detail—is that we are confident that it is moving at the pace required. That does not mean that there is not an enormous amount of work to do. I am certainly under no illusion, as Minister, about the scale of the challenge. In 2025, the UK …”

“Yes. That is not to say that there are no challenges in meeting it. Debate is ongoing within the automotive sector. I was at SMMT Electrified a few weeks ago and got some robust questions on this exact point. I do not think people in the automotive sector doubt the principle of the 2030 phase-out date—in fact, it serve…”

“I don’t think so, because the Government made changes to ensure that the ZEV mandate does what it is supposed to, which is allowing us to meet our climate obligations while also making a good business case for the automotive sector. What has not changed is the timelines. That is the key difference between the previous …”

“No.”

“Good morning, Chair and Committee members. I am Keir Mather, the Minister for Aviation, Maritime and Decarbonisation at the Department for Transport.”

“That is a good question. The grant for motorcycles is not being continued for now. The Government have to be extremely conscious of ensuring that we put money into forms of transport decarbonisation that yield the greatest decarb benefits. In terms of uptake, we think that the market for zero emission motorcycles is he…”

“I’m not sure about your constituents, Baggy, but I think mine would argue that there is never a right time to introduce a new tax. Nevertheless, it is unfortunately necessary because the Government are determined to make the EV transition a reality. We want to get to a place where EVs are the dominant form of car trans…”

“The OBR said that it expects 320,000 of the 440,000 EV sales impacted by the introduction of eVED to be offset by the measures announced in the Budget in 2025. If you combine that with the suite of measures we are bringing forward to incentivise EV uptake, suddenly that picture looks quite different from some of the ca…”

“It is a totally fair question. Facilitating the transition is not just about one piece of the puzzle; you need to get the charging infrastructure right, and you also need the incentives on the overall price point of the electric vehicle. There is a much broader conversation, which I will not pre-empt because I presume …”

“I agree completely. That is why we are taking a diverse suite of policy measures in hand immediately to facilitate that.”