Appendix 2

London Assembly Environment Committee - Wednesday 24 February 2021

Transcript of Agenda Item 5 – London’s Green Recovery from COVID-19 – Greater London Authority (GLA) and London Councils

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): [Mayor] Philip [Granville] is joining us on the next panel and I will also welcome Shirley Rodrigues, who is Deputy Mayor for Environment [and Energy] at the GLA; Elliot Treharne, who is Interim Assistant Director for Environment and Energy at the GLA; Peter Daw, who is Interim Assistant Director for Environment and Energy at the GLA; and once again Mayor Philip Glanville, who is Chair of the Transport and Environment Committee for London Councils.

I am now going to invite Shirley to give a brief opening statement and then we will move on to Nicky Gavron [AM], who will be asking the first lot of questions.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): First of all, I want to say thank you for the invitation and thanks to the Committee for your excellent work over this last term. At the risk of déjà vu, thanks to Assembly Members Nicky Gavron, Jennette Arnold and Tony Arbour, who are stepping down at this election after a rather unexpected and unwanted extension to their term.

In terms of what we are going to be talking about today, as you know, the Mayor’s ambition is for London to be the greenest of all cities and we have set some very tough targets to meet: zero waste, zero carbon, the best air quality of any major world city, and thriving and green and biodiverse spaces.

COVID-19 has not altered that ambition. What it has really highlighted is the critical role that environmental factors play in our environment and in our health and wellbeing. We know now that exposure to air pollution is linked to increased impacts from COVID-19.

As we come out of lockdown, the Mayor is clear that the environment is going to be sitting at the heart of London’s recovery. The London Recovery Board (LRB), which is co-chaired by the Mayor of London and London Councils, has representatives of all London’s stakeholders, businesses, the public sector and academia. They all agree that we have to deal with our social and economic inequalities at the same time as our environmental ones. They see that because the environment brings huge opportunities for investment. It provides good skilled local jobs and long-term economic growth. It also brings resilience to the impacts of climate change, better public health and strong community cohesion. The environment has been embedded as one of the cross-cutting principles through the work of the LRB and the nine missions, one of which is the Green New Deal and we will come on to talk about that in a bit.

We are already starting from a very good place. The Mayor has been showcasing what a green recovery could look like. We have very strong foundational policies and programmes through the work of the GLA and the various strategies from Planning, Transport and of course Environment. You will have seen many of our achievements. I am not going to go through all of them because they are too numerous to count, but I must mention that we have cleaned up our 9,000-strong core bus fleet to be compliant with the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). We have delivered 300 rapid charge points on target, which is going to support the greater electrification of our transport, which will help both air pollution and carbon emissions. Of course, we have introduced the world’s first ULEZ and we know that is being extended in October [2021]. It is already seeing nitrogen dioxide pollution reduced by 40% even before lockdown. We have our zero carbon homes standard,

which has achieved 40% more carbon savings than required by building regulations and is being extended to all new development. We are supporting energy efficiency measures like rollouts of solar panels. We have been confirmed as the world’s first National Park City. We have improved over 400 hectares of green space and have supported many community projects, over 200, often through our Growing Back Greener Fund. We have of course planted more than 250,000 trees.

I am not going to go through everything, but this is showcasing what a green recovery looks like. We want to use the LRB work to embed this in all of the nine missions and take that forward. Mayor Philip Glanville and I can talk about the work that we have been doing together on the Green New Deal, which is particularly embedded throughout all of the missions. The first of this is the £10 million of the Mayor’s Green New Deal Fund, which was announced last year, which is looking at targeting how we grow the low-carbon economy and double its size.

One of the key features of this work is collaboration. We are working very closely with local authorities through their shovel-ready lists and co-designing with them, but not just with the local authorities but with many stakeholders across London: community groups and the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that are working on a whole host of issues from the environment through to health because they all have a part to play. On the circular economy, we have been working with the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB), which is a partnership between us and London Councils. That gives you a little bit of a flavour of the collaborative approach we are taking.

I would just like to end - and Phil mentioned this as well - on the budget coming up. To meet the ambitions we have for London, not just the Mayor but all of us do need the powers and funding devolved to us to increase the pace of activity that we and Londoners are demanding. We do want to build back better. We are looking forward to the budget coming up and we hope the Government recognises the value in supporting London to the levelling-up agenda. Of course, we need to level up within London, too.

I am looking forward to working with the Assembly Members on accelerating the action we need in London. I am happy to take any questions.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Thank you. I will pass over to Nicky Gavron..

Nicky Gavron AM: Good afternoon, panel. My first question is for Shirley and for Philip. It is great to have you both here. First, how have the modifications been made to the Green New Deal? Have you been making any modifications? It was an ambition and an initiative before COVID. How in the course of the pandemic and COVID has it changed?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): You are right. The Mayor had already said that he wanted to support a Green New Deal for London, seeing how important it was, but the pandemic has highlighted probably even more than we realise the inequalities faced in London, whether it is access to green space, air pollution, the impact on the economy or the social cohesion of the city. We know that many people have come together to support each other through the pandemic and that has shown us a way that we can build on. People want to see our lives not going back to what they were, and that we build on the good things that have been highlighted during this terrible period.

Some of the things that we have had to do have been affected by funding. The funding levels that we wanted to spend on the Green New Deal have been affected by the fall in tax income. We are having to be much smarter and much more focused and targeted. We are targeting the work that we are doing. The projects that

have been funded out of the Green New Deal have been built on, because we wanted to make a fast start on the shovel-ready list that London Councils has prepared, to identify where we can work in boroughs and take advantage and make a fast start on supporting jobs, and addressing some of the issues around green space and looking to see where we can do multiple things through single projects. The point of our work and, of course, the nine missions is to integrate so that we get health outcomes, economic outcomes and social outcomes. That is the main focus, really.

Of course, the real focus is on jobs - as the Mayor says, “Jobs, jobs, jobs” - because we know the economic impact of the pandemic is hitting London very hard. The Green New Deal mission is about doubling the size of the low-carbon economy. The London Recovery Board (LRB) has its grand challenge of restoring confidence in London and supporting Londoners economically and socially.

Mayor Philip Glanville (Chair of Transport and Environment Committee, London Councils): Very briefly, to echo what I said a little bit earlier about strong foundations and as Shirley has said, the Mayor had set out this ambition before the COVID crisis. Twenty-eight London boroughs declared climate emergencies. We took that into London Councils - before I was Chair, admittedly - and we developed a joint cross-party declaration. We now have seven workstreams working alongside the Green New Deal and within it and at the key touchpoints to make sure that what we are doing at a London-wide level is reflected in practice on the ground. What it has given, by bringing it together in the recovery mission, is a sense that it is all of London signing up to this. It is not just the Mayor’s plan or an individual borough’s plan or London Councils’ plan. It is cross-party, it is for inner and outer London and it is across all of the authorities we represent. That has given it connectivity, collaboration and joint team working that we probably did not have coming into the crisis. We had close partnership working but not that sense of direct co-chairing that we now have.

Nicky Gavron AM: Thank you for that. That was very comprehensive. To come back to you, Shirley, the green recovery mission is one of eight other missions. I am keen to know now how in fact it fits in with those other missions, and how you are getting the synergy between them.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): There is a very complicated governance structure and working groups galore that are looking at this across the GLA and London Councils and also working with many of the other stakeholders, as I have mentioned, on the LRB. There was a meeting of the task-and-finish group of anchor institutions from the education and health sectors to see what we can collectively do about some of the priorities that have been identified through the LRB.

The main way is through those working groups. We have set up a structure where we are developing a series of Action Plans under each mission, but across all of them is a series of cross-cutting principles. There are six in all, one of which is about environmental, economic and social sustainability. Also, as Mayor Glanville mentioned, there is a digital one, one about health and wellbeing, one about addressing structural inequalities. The teams have together devised a series of checklists and resources that our respective organisations working across the LRB will use to ensure that the Action Plans and the projects that come out of the work of the LRB are integrated and reflect those cross-cutting principles.

Peter [Daw, Interim Assistant Director for Environment and Energy, GLA] probably could jump in here, but we have been working, for example, very closely on a couple of the missions, the High Streets for All one and the Mental Health and Wellbeing one. On the High Streets for All one, we have been developing some work of our own on future neighbourhoods, which is part of that £10 million Green New Deal allocation, but for High Streets for All we want to make sure that they also tackle the climate emergency and support jobs. For the Mental Health and Wellbeing one, we know how important green space is for health and wellbeing, particularly

mental health, and we know that access to green space for many Londoners is not sufficient. As part of that mission, we are also looking at that.

It is not all being dealt with through the Green New Deal mission. We are making sure that the environmental sustainability objectives are being reflected in all the other eight but, similarly, for their missions and their objectives around inequalities, poverty, health and so on, we can look to see what we might be able to help deliver through our programmes on, for example, energy efficiency retrofits to help homes be warmer and therefore reduce health impacts. The work we are doing on green spaces or on decarbonising our transport network will help on air pollution and will also help the health impacts as well.

Nicky Gavron AM: It is really good to hear how integrated and interrelated these missions are. I just want to say that next Wednesday [3 March 2021] the Planning and Regeneration Committee is looking at High Streets for All. We should make sure that we are aware of the environmental work that is being done on those local high streets.

You mentioned that maybe Elliot or Peter wants to jump in. Do you want to jump in and give us some examples of practical projects that show how the green recovery mission is being embedded in other missions?

Peter Daw (Interim Assistant Director for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Two very good examples are around the Good Work for Londoners mission. We are working very closely on that mission with both London Councils officers and GLA officials, too. We see the Green New Deal mission really trying to catalyse activity in the sector and looking to grow projects and implementation, but of course we need to make sure that the capacity is there, as well, in London. The good skills mission is working on proposals around the Green Academy, looking at how and what types of skills we need and how we support that going forward. It is very hand-in-glove with those two and how we are working together. We meet every couple of weeks to make sure we are properly lined up and progressing towards the same outcome.

Shirley mentioned the high streets mission as well. One of the key themes in the high streets mission, for example, is around climate change and adapting high streets so that they are ready for climate change and also focusing on tackling zero carbon and the circular economy. That is a good example of where we have pushed and influenced other missions to put green very central to what we are doing.

Nicky Gavron AM: The last question is to ask you - and maybe Philip wants to elaborate a bit more on what he was saying earlier - about how you have managed to engage environmental stakeholders and Londoners in the development of the Green New Deal.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): When this came up - it feels so long ago - in developing the Green New Deal and the announcement, we carried out a series of engagements. The first one was bringing together a whole host of stakeholders, over 70, in a workshop where we looked at how the mission could be developed. We had the high-level mission, but what does that mean and what do people want us to prioritise? They are some of the questions the Chair has been asking. The Committee has been asking about whether we have the right priorities. These were informed by the engagement we have had with Londoners through Talk London and also through the work that London Councils has done through direct relationships with boroughs and communities and also through the engagement work and the polling that London Councils has done. Talk London is the GLA’s own platform. We have been talking to boroughs as well because they have been developing their own Action Plans around climate and the green recovery.

The second part as we started to refine this was really getting into some deep dives. Towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year we have been holding some deep dives into three areas. One was about zero emissions. One was about resilience and adaptation. One was about domestic energy efficiency and retrofitting. That was to try to pin down what exactly we in London need. The makeup of London’s building stock is very different, for example, from the rest of the country. What do we need in terms of the supply chain and support through the Green New Deal and through the work of all the actors on the LRB and others, of course? Those findings have been gathered and that will inform then the develop of the mission Action Plan and the projects we will then be trying to support out of the Green New Deal’s second phase and also the lobbying work we will be undertaking of the Government for the support that it should be providing.

In terms of getting advice, we have established a Green New Deal Expert Advisory Group. We have had a couple of informal meetings from last summer, bilateral meetings, and then the first co-chaired formal meeting earlier this year. Philip [Glanville] and I chaired that. We have a number of key stakeholders on that group who have tested, for example, the Action Plans. We are starting to go into deeper dives. The next one is going to be about skills and a just transition. We have had a lot of engagement and through the [London] Assembly and some of the Mayor’s questions that you have asked and so on.

I will probably stop there because that has given you a flavour of the breadth of the work we are doing. I do not know, Philip, if there is anything that you wanted to add.

Mayor Philip Glanville (Chair of Transport and Environment Committee, London Councils): Yes, just to recognise all of that collaborative work and the connectivity into what the individual boroughs have done around developing their own Climate Action Plans. There are 22 that have been published and I know that London Councils is prioritising a piece of work on supporting those Action Plans.

When I talk about some of the thematic work, each one is led by a different London borough. To take a couple of examples, retrofit is being led by Enfield and Waltham Forest. We are leading on low-carbon development alongside Tower Hamlets. Some of the discussions we have been having around the green economy and a just transition are being led by Hounslow. There is that work to make sure that it is not just us as London Councils collaborating, but there is depth and skills and capacity being build and it is being led by individual London boroughs.

We saw a coming together of London’s civic society around Climate Action Week last year. We were debating this across the whole of the week. There were sessions - I did three or four - talking about what Londoners think and talking about some of the professional networks that support the borough work, signing up to support A Blueprint for Accelerating Climate Action [and a Green Recovery at the Local Level, June 2020] as a supporter. All of that is coming together and making sure that we are collaborating and that we are involving Londoners.

The hardest bit is the final bit around behaviour change that we talked about in the first session. The knocking on doors, the discussions, the pop-ups and going to where Londoners are is a lot harder. When we come back out of lockdown, there will be a huge amount to talk to Londoners about face to face and in our communities and also about some of the work that is led by City Hall teams.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): I was just going to add that we have been funding and the Mayor has supported a Community-Led Recovery Programme. We are providing some small grants to help communities come together and share insights about what they want to see at the Green New Deal mission. The Environment team has been working with the

Communities team on a very small local community engagement project, which is looking at similar issues. We can talk about that and I can send you some details on that. It is just starting on its journey.

One last thing is that in the Talk London debate around the recovery programmes, the mission that received the most comments - about 30% of them - was the Green New Deal, which shows how important people feel the recovery has to be, as of rite, an environmental green recovery.

Nicky Gavron AM: What you have been telling us is crucial because, in fact, if we do not carry Londoners with us, it is going to be very difficult to achieve all that the Mayor and you want to achieve and we want to achieve. Thank you for that.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Thank you, Nicky. I am now going to bring in Shaun Bailey.

Shaun Bailey AM: Good afternoon, all. It is nice to see you again, Shirley and Elliot. My first questions really want to talk about when the Green New Deal was announced. It feels like you have re-announced it. Were the correct projects pitched? What changes were made in view of the fact that we are in a COVID period now? Did you select different projects? Do you feel like you have done enough work to select projects for the world we are now facing?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): When the Green New Deal was announced, it was just before the pandemic started. We had announced a series of approaches and the themes that the Green New Deal Fund would be looking at, which could be anything from decarbonising transport, supporting public realm improvements, tackling air quality, tackling climate change, retrofitting our homes and our buildings, looking at skills and looking at how we need to mobilise the finance we need in London. Just on climate change alone, we know that it is something in order of £61 billion worth of funding. That has to come largely from the private sector. How do we mobilise those flows? How do we support the upskilling and the new skills that we need for a low-carbon economy? Those things were already there.

The thing that changed was that we went into a pandemic and so that has affected everybody’s ability to focus on this because everybody switched to dealing with the immediate response to the pandemic. Soon after, probably three or four months later, the LRB was announced and met and the team - not just the Environment team, which has been absolutely brilliant, but across the GLA and across London Councils - has come together and sought in parallel to deal with the pandemic. We need to be thinking about when we come out of that and the recovery effort has to be different. They have been working very hard on identifying the projects.

We have had the slight luxury that the sorts of things we have been dealing with are the impacts of COVID on the environment, our parks, our waste services and so on. Once they were pretty much organised - and we worked very closely with London Councils and the boroughs and LWARB to come up with some responses to that and adjustments - the team was able to turn some of its attention to what might be some projects that could hit the ground running. We worked closely with London Councils to first of all collate that £1 billion list, which involved talking to local authorities about what we could do along those themes we identified in the Mayor’s Green New Deal. These are also projects that will be taken forward through the Green New Deal missions and so they are not going to all be funded by the Mayor. Then we worked out what we could take forward quickly so that we could start to see some results, build that momentum and tackle some of the issues we know we need to make a fast start on like financing, retrofit and decarbonising our heat, for example, with some of the work that is happening up in Enfield and Hackney and other places.

I am not sure that we have done anything differently. What we have done is to come out really fast. I pay tribute, as I said, to the teams at the GLA, the Environment team and the London Councils teams, in getting ahead of the game on that. We were able to announce in November [2020] that first £10 million. We have already opened, for example, our Community Energy Fund. That has just closed and we are finalising that and we hope to make an announcement shortly on who has been successful. Funding has gone into the North London Waste [Authority’s] decarbonising programme. Peter [Daw] can update you on that. Quite a few projects have already started and are underway. We are now starting to develop ideas through that engagement process I talked about earlier about what we might do for the future waves and the second and third rounds.

At the same time, we and the local authorities are making representations to the Government for more funding to come into London for a whole host of issues. We are making bids successfully; in the first round, for example, on energy efficiency to the Local Authority Delivery service. That has secured some funding. We are hopeful that the second round - they did a later round in the same year - will be successful, too.

Shaun Bailey AM: What was the criteria you used to select projects for inclusion in the announcement?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): There were quite a few criteria. First of all, did they fit with the mission priorities? These were things around carbon reduction. Would they bring all the other co-benefits around air pollution and access to green space? Critically - because the Green New Deal mission is about doubling the size of the green economy - would they support jobs? We could see jobs being lost. How could we keep those jobs going? Would they also help grow jobs and provide the basis for a growth in jobs in the future? Do they contribute to a just transition? Are they addressing the issues where people are moving out of sectors into new sectors? Then could we bring in additional money through leveraging either local authority funding, Government funding or private sector funding? Crucially, our money is not going to deliver the whole of London’s recovery with that £10 million. They are, essentially, projects that we want to test. Are they replicable? Can they be scaled up? That is critical. Of course, because we want to get them out of the stocks quickly, there was project readiness for this first round. For future rounds, we might take a slightly different approach.

Shaun Bailey AM: OK. Peter, if I can quickly draw you in, will there be a brochure published to set out the process for expressions of interest for those bidding on elements of the investment that might require subcontractors to be open to competitive tender?

Peter Daw (Interim Assistant Director for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): All of the investments we make would be subject to normal, standard funding agreements from the GLA and our partners typically are London boroughs or community groups or other public-sector organisations. Absolutely, we would expect them to follow the correct procedures.

In terms of processes where we are openly asking for bids, such as the Community Energy Fund or - as Shirley mentioned - the Future Neighbourhoods Programme, which we are hoping to launch soon, we will have a competitive process in place to assess fairly those bids as we go through. Absolutely, our expectation would be that they are fair and open opportunities.

Shaun Bailey AM: The nature of this - and correct me if I am wrong - means you may attract new people, who are not used to GLA bidding processes. Will there be some kind of clear pathway? Will they be able to find that information? Will you be giving it across very openly, very freely?

Peter Daw (Interim Assistant Director for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Yes, absolutely. As I mentioned, where those opportunities are open like the Community Energy Fund, we have produced expression of interest documentation and we will do the same with the Future Neighbourhoods Programme, too. Our expectations will be set out very clearly and the assessment process will be set out very clearly through those documents.

Shaun Bailey AM: OK. Just to come back to you, Shirley, how will outcomes and outputs from the investment be set? How will they be measured? How will they be communicated? I suppose the big question is how many green jobs are we looking at here? That is really the sort of things that people will want answered.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Are you talking about the Future Neighbourhoods Programme or generally about the Green New Deal?

Shaun Bailey AM: Generally about the Green New Deal, but the outputs are very important as well. I am not trying to be unkind, but there has often been a critique that we have not been given any sort of roadmap to any destination and there have not been proper metrics. What are we looking at here to underline the progress being made?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): That is what we will cover off. For Future Neighbourhoods, for example, that will be in the brochure about the sorts of things I have talked about before, the number of jobs supported or the number of jobs created, the carbon reductions that might be related to this, other co-benefits, whether it is access or improvements in green space or number of people who have skills. There is a whole range, depending on the project. We are very clear where each project has to show some outputs, but also contribute to the outcomes we want, which is the general outcome, the Green New Deal objective, but then the bigger challenge that the LRB has set around confidence and tackling economic and social issues.

We will be developing indicators and they will be reported in the usual way. The GLA elements will be reported through, I would imagine, through the quarterly performance reports that the Assembly gets. Then I am sure for the LRB and the [Recovery] Taskforce - because this does not apply just to the Green New Deal mission, but it applies to all of the missions - there will be a collation of indicators over time that they will want to monitor and make sure that progress is happening, and then if we need to course correct that we have that data and evidence to do that.

Shaun Bailey AM: You have a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that you will be judging progress against? Whilst they are scrutinised in one sense, we need some kind of framework. We need to understand have you exceeded, have you underperformed. Is there a set of KPIs for these things as they go along?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Not yet. For the £10 million that the Green New Deal fund has allocated, there is a series of outputs that we agreed for each project. For the Green New Deal mission, they are being developed. For all the other eight missions, they are also being developed and the Recovery Taskforce and LRB will be collating those and looking at that. I would have to write to you afterwards to say where we have got to in that process, but jobs and inequalities will be part of that, as will be tackling the climate emergency.

Shaun Bailey AM: I am going to bundle these two questions together really. Will we get a further breakdown of the £10 million investment shared in due course, and will the Mayor’s Implementation Plan be updated?

Will that Environment Strategy be updated to reflect some of the milestones that you are now developing because of the Green New Deal?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): There already is a breakdown, as I understand it, of the £10 million, so we know where the projects are and what funding has gone on against all of those. If you are looking for the outputs and the KPIs, we probably have those for those projects and we can send those to you.

In terms of updating the Implementation Plan to the Environment Strategy, that implementation related to the broad Strategy objectives and 95% of those actions are already done and we had reported just before the pandemic hit. We have not updated that. What our focus is on now is then incorporating the projects that we are funding through the Green New Deal plus all the other actions that are relevant to us that we should report on at the GLA, but collectively, include those in a new, updated action plan. That is as we finalise the missions and action plans, which will be over the next few months. I would imagine that we will pull together something and report on that later this year.

Shaun Bailey AM: OK, thank you. Chair, back to you.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): I am now going to bring in Nicky again for the final question on this section on the Green New Deal.

Nicky Gavron AM: Shirley, this question is for you and it is something that has been raised from work from the London Sustainable Development Commission (LSDC). Now I just ought to quickly flag up that I am a proud Assembly representative on it and it has done some outstanding work in the last few years, working closely with the GLA.

Last summer, in July, the LSDC produced an insights paper called A Green and Fair Recovery, in which there were a couple of recommendations for the Mayor and one was about the Mayor leveraging private finance for a finance facility. I wonder if you could just tell the Assembly Members a little bit more about the progress that the GLA is making on that.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Yes, thank you and I should say thank you to the LSDC for its work on this. I attended the launch where many people in the room were saying this is absolutely what we need to go ahead with and that was before really the pandemic hit and we understand the economic consequences that the city is facing.

On the back of that, the Mayor looked at those recommendations and has agreed to take them forward. What we have done is commissioned the Green Finance Institute, which is this new institute out in the City of London, really prestigious, which is working with us to develop some recommendations on how we take forward a couple of things. One is: how do we mobilise the finance that we need in London? I have mentioned already the £61 billion that we estimate for just the climate needs in terms of retrofitting and decarbonisation of our transport system and so on. We know there is much more investment needed. Phil [Glanville] has already talked about the £1 billion probably per local authority just on housing, or some of the green space improvements that we need. How do we finance the adaptation and resilience demands of London? You may have seen the Environment Agency Thames Estuary 2100 update yesterday, which is talking about how sea level rises are accelerating faster than they thought. We are still very well defended and the Mayor has protected land for a second barrier if needed, but these all are things that need to be paid for. How do we mobilise that finance? That is one part of the work that they are looking at. The other part is about

how do you support the pipeline so that the investors are really up for investing? One of the problems about investment has been the investments that we bring forward, even though they are huge in our terms, are not big enough for them to really warrant good investment. How do we agglomerate those investments? What are the things that will really attract the private investors?

That is what they are doing and they should be reporting shortly, an interim report, and then we will be working with them to finalise those recommendations and then see how we might take that forward. We know there is lots of stuff happening the background. The Government is talking about a new replacement green investment bank. One of the discussions we are having with them is about is the stuff that we are trying to do in London something that we do in parallel or is it wrapped in together, things like that. This is not something that is unique to London. Some of the work that we will be doing through the C40, for example, on divestment and investment, that is really looking at new financial mechanisms and models that all cities are grappling with as well.

Peter [Daw] or Philip, I do not know if there is anything, yes, that you may be doing in Hackney or at London Councils that you can add.

Mayor Philip Glanville (Chair of Transport and Environment Committee, London Councils): Yes, thank you. Just a bit of a bridging point to Shaun’s [Bailey AM] question, just to say that both the London Councils’ executive cross-party and London Councils’ Leaders’ Meeting are monitoring the missions work as well. They are public documents and meetings in public, so there is a good set of governance at that end.

I know certainly City of London, which is also represented within London Councils, is very keen on green finance and working to support probably an eighth theme within the work that London Councils is doing. As I said, Hounslow is leading the green economy work. We are also trying to collaborate with other core cities around green finance and investment and thinking also about pockets of funding that we have within local government, so carbon offset funding, how that can be used to match and work with projects at the GLA. The Environment Bill is going through Parliament and we have quite a lot around producer pays principles in the work there. Around waste, there is also nature recovery and biodiversity credits. They need to come to London and come to the boroughs and make sure. That is some of that adaptation and mitigation work and that is a new source of funding. It is coming in through development and, Nicky, as somebody who knows more about planning than I could ever possibly learn, you will know the Section 106 [of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990] regime and all of that, making sure that we are maximising the developer game, that you invest in green infrastructure at a very local level as well. We recognise the role of the Mayor and that ability to convene and show that leadership that Deputy Mayor Rodrigues said, but also there is that work happening around new systems of finance, both involving private finance but also other sources at a local level.

Nicky Gavron AM: That is very encouraging, indeed. The recommendations put forward a year ago that you mentioned at the launch for a future financing facility will be a great addition to everything you are saying if we can pull it off, and I think we can.

If I could just ask one final question, in that same paper, the insights paper of last summer, it was about the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals and there was a recommendation about the way decision-makers could utilise those. I did wonder, Shirley, and we wonder how much you are able to progress those both in processes in the GLA and through our leadership role in making the case for using the sustainable development goals, which more and more businesses and stakeholders are now embracing.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Yes, and it is fundamental to the GLA. The GLA has a sustainable development duty, we support the Commission and it is a key principle across all of the work that we have been doing. The sustainable development goals were agreed, I cannot remember, a couple of years ago now, but they have been incorporated into the cross-cutting principles that I mentioned earlier. They are essentially our framework for addressing the sustainable development goals. Obviously, the goals are national targets and goals, but they have to be met by everyone, by the contribution of everyone. It is not just the mayors and not just the boroughs, but what individuals do, what communities do, what businesses do and so on. Collectively, how do they all contribute? That is really why it is such a powerful framework, those cross-cutting principles being embedded across the work of the LRB and the nine missions. That is really how it captures the work of all those stakeholders in the LRB, whether it is businesses or academia, those anchor institutions, local authorities or the Mayor all coming together to contribute or collate it into a sort of, “Well, this is what London is doing and this is London’s contribution to the country’s efforts on sustainable development”.

Nicky Gavron AM: Just finally, Shirley, in terms of more generally how we are going to get finance into the green investments that we really need. You have £20 million next year and you have £20 million the year after, guaranteed from the GLA. Correct?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Yes.

Nicky Gavron AM: How far can you use that as leverage? I am just trying to think. You have said quite a lot about leverage, both you and Philip [Glanville] have in terms of how you can use other funding and bundle it together. I just wondered. Do you have any more thoughts on that?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): I would not want to over-claim and I am not even going to over-claim. That £20 million is not going to get us the leverage of £61 billion that we need, let alone all we need in London. But what it can do is help us with the research and the convening and the development of, for example, the green financing facility or provide match funding to some of the programmes that the Government is providing, which we have to show match funding for. That is where the leverage comes in, but the bigger attraction of private investment is really through the work of the financing facility and then, yes, we collectively, across London, have to look at how we seed from that. For example, the Mayor’s Energy Efficiency Fund, £500 million, is probably the biggest energy efficiency fund in the country and so it is pretty unique. That was seed funded by some money from the GLA and partly from Europe pre-Brexit, and that then brought in the hundreds of millions, a financing facility from a range of banks. That is sort of the approach that we are going to have to take. Our money is really seed money. Even that £20 million that we are talking about, which is collectively the Green New Deal money and the Environment Team Project, is not going to be sufficient to do that. We are working with the Green Finance Institute to help us understand how we might do that and then using the convening power of the Mayor and London Councils to really bring those financial institutions to the table to get them to support London.

Nicky Gavron AM: Good. Thank you, Shirley.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Shirley, you specifically said that you would write to us with a breakdown. We would particularly like a breakdown of the £10 million that was announced last November, just to show exactly how that breaks down against the relevant outputs.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Yes.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): That would be really helpful, thank you.

I am now going to release Philip Glanville. We have come to the end of our Green New Deal section. Philip, thank you very much for your contributions, both in this panel and in the previous one. It is hugely appreciated, you giving us your time, so thank you very much. I see a thumbs up from Léonie [Cooper AM] in the corner of my screen.

We are now going to move on to our final panel, which is looking at the delivery of the Environment Strategy and future plans, but it is focusing on the Environment Strategy itself rather than on the Green New Deal. I am going to bring in Léonie for the first question in this section.

Léonie Cooper AM (Deputy Chair): Yes, I want to ask about the implications of the Green Recovery Agenda for the delivery of the Mayor’s Environment Strategy. We signed off as an Assembly the Mayor’s Environment Strategy after a lot of work had gone into producing it, and we finally signed it off in May 2018. That was two years, unbelievably, before the pandemic started and almost three years ago now.

How would you say that the Environment Strategy might need to adapt to respond to the emerging priorities of the Green Recovery Agenda? I am going to start with Shirley and then if you want to bring in Elliot or Peter, feel free.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Yes. It stands the test of time. It has really strong foundational policies, as I have said, and programmes around air pollution, climate change, the sector economy and that integration piece that I was talking to Nicky [Gavron AM] about in terms of the cross-cutting principles. If you go back to the Environment Strategy, we were really clear that we wanted to tackle the economy, really driving how we can support the local economy, skills, leadership on climate change, but also how do we support people, the people of London, and communities.

In broad terms, the policies are right. What has changed - and we had already started to see that with the climate emergency, was the pace of change and also similarly the toxic air in London. The pace of change needed to be stepped up, and that is what we are really focusing on now. Through the missions - and I guess the clue is in the word “mission” - it is about getting on with it now, not spending, as you said, two years it took us. I have to say that was a contracted timeline, given that we had to essentially rewrite, I think it was, about seven or nine statutory strategies and non-statutory strategies and then fold them into one Environment Strategy and make sure they were integrated, etc, and do the consultation with you and the public. I do not want to go through that process again, because it would take the eye off the ball of London’s recovery, both the economic and social recovery, but as I said, understanding that it has to be a green and just recovery as well and that is the focus.

For example, the work that we have been doing on the Green New Deal, the focus on getting that first £10 million of the fund out of the door on projects that can be delivering now was really important. It is partly to signal this is the approach that we want to see London’s recovery to be, all the rubric of building back better, but also to really get people thinking about the future. As I mentioned, with the Talk London comments, the polling that we have done, the polling that London Councils have done are saying people see this as a possibility of a new start. More than anything, they are saying to us, “Why are you talking to us about a green recovery? This should just be at the heart of everything we do. It should not be something special. It should just be core to what we are doing”. That is what we are doing, really focusing on projects now.

Léonie Cooper AM (Deputy Chair): OK. We understood why it took that period of time to produce the Strategy in the first place because you were bringing together all those different strands. That was one of the things that we, as a Committee, really liked, is the fact that it was all brought together in one place. One of the things that we did ask a few times after the Assembly did declare the Climate Emergency in December 2018, very early amongst London authorities to do that, although during 2019 then obviously the others then did the same. We did ask then if the Environment Strategy needs some reviews given the speed of the climate crisis and where we are, is not going in the right direction, shall we say.

I suppose the issue for us really is that whole piece about whether it actually needs to have any kind of revision? We are not suggesting that we want you to go away and redo the entire piece of work because that was a very major piece of work, otherwise it would not have taken two years to produce it from May 2016 to May 2018, including all of the necessary consultations as well. I cannot believe that you are really going to say that there is nothing that is not worth having another look at. It might be something that you are going to be looking at after the completion of this Mayoral term and at the very early stages of the next. I don’t know, but there must be something that needs to be updated.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Obviously, we keep things under review and make sure that if there is new data or new evidence, we adjust the policies that we had, either to speed them up or to nuance them slightly. That always happens anyway. For example, both on the emissions inventories for air pollution and energy, we are always looking at new data and updating it, to understand whether the scenarios and pathways that we have modelled are still relevant or whether they need to change. We will be doing that, as we do every year, and we have a new London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (LAEI) air inventory coming out later this year. For the emissions greenhouse gas one, we are just about to publish some latest data, but then we will be starting that process again.

We do keep things under review. The data, for example, from yesterday the Thames Estuary 2100, is a case in point. Of course, we will look at the accelerated rate of sea level rise to see whether that impacts on, for example, the Plan, but I guess the way that they would approach that is through the sort of adaptive pathways approach. It is precisely the sort of approach that we have taken with our scenarios to see that if something is not quite right, there is a slightly different route that will get us to somewhere quicker. That is what we will be monitoring. Yes, you are right. We are not saying we will never monitor and review and keep these things up to date. Of course we do, but we are not doing a full-scale update.

Climate, obviously, is one and air pollution is another. As I have said, resiliency is another. Picking up some of the new data that we have had on green infrastructure, we have just some mapping, overlaying, working with Bloomberg Associates, the sort of inequalities in access to green space, the air pollution data so we know where the hotspots of air pollution are, where there are hotspots of susceptibility to the impacts of climate change (flooding or overheating), all overlaid so that we can use that to really target the work we have been doing. We use that to target the work of that first £10 million Green New Deal money and we asked people who were bidding for some of our Grow Back Greener funding to prioritise those areas. These are all examples of where new data comes in and we slightly alter our approach or plans.

Léonie Cooper AM (Deputy Chair): I am going to direct this towards Elliot, if I may - sorry to pick on you here - but given your lengthy background now in dealing with air quality issues. That is not to say that Shirley does not as well. We also had, for example, the judgment on the death of Ella Kissi-Debrah and she was living either on or very close to the South Circular Road.

One of the things that we have been talking about is the expansion of the ULEZ to the North and South Circular Roads and, for example, they would not be within the ULEZ, which might then lead to an increase in traffic along the North and South Circular Road. I am wondering whether, with that additional data or perhaps some of the information that has come out from the highly contested Streetspace LTN installations in some parts of London, there has been any data. Certainly, a lot of people are very much in favour of them, but there has been a backlash from a number of drivers, who then said, “Huge jams have then appeared on some of the TfL-controlled roads because side roads have been closed”.

Is that sort of information, as well as the latest on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) data or sea level rise data, the kind of thing that you are also taking on board in terms of chewing the pencil a bit before we implement the expanded ULEZ? It would be really good to get your thoughts on that.

Elliot Treharne (Interim Assistant Director for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Absolutely. Just starting off on the point about ULEZ, if you look at what happened in central London and with the introduction of the ULEZ there, what we saw was a very positive impact, a 44% reduction in nitrogen dioxide roadside concentrations of pollution. Crucially, what we saw was a reduction in traffic of between around 3 and 9% with no worsening of air pollution on the boundary road. Vehicles do not just operate within a single zone. They travel through multiple areas of London and therefore, by cleaning up vehicles in one part of London, you have knock-on benefits. The way that we have structured not just the ULEZ but the London- wide Low Emission Zones (LEZs) means that we are going to be having significant air quality improvements across the entire city. That is a very important bit of context about the way that we have designed our interventions around air pollution.

Of course, you are right. The outcome of the Ella Kissi-Debrah inquest, which is incredibly sad and it is very important that we learn the lessons from it, is something that we are committed to do. When that comes to the Strategy, having been at City Hall for a little while now - the London Environment Strategy was not my first strategy - we deliberately designed it in a way to be flexible, to be an enabler, to empower us to take the action that we need. As Shirley [Rodrigues] was setting out, it sets the right priority areas.

To give you one example from the inquest, it rightly highlighted the important role of information. Since 2016, we have a London-wide alert system, but we do keep that under review. One of the lessons from the inquest is about how we improve that, enhance that, and how we work with the health sector to make sure that we provide targeted information to the most vulnerable, who really, really need that information. That is one of the things that we will be doing after the inquest. We are just waiting for the Prevention of Future Deaths report, but there is a whole range of things that we know that we will want to be doing.

To Shirley’s [Rodrigues] point, we have actually the framework in the London Environment Strategy that lets us do that and the crucial thing we need to do is to take that action as quickly as possible. The London Environment Strategy is a powerful tool and it remains hugely relevant. To give you another example about that flexibly that it gives us, we know we want to achieve World Health Organization (WHO) recommended guidelines. That is a commitment set out in the London Environment Strategy, but we have kept the flexibility to actually go further as we respond to the evidence that Shirley [Rodrigues] set out that we continue to collect. Crucially - this is where the Green New Deal comes in - we are setting out an ambition as part of the Green New Deal to go beyond WHO standards. We want to continue improving air quality, we want to protect human health and the London Environment Strategy enable us to do that.

Léonie Cooper AM (Deputy Chair): This is at the risk of being in a transport issue, but I certainly know that the focus on things like the low-emission bus zones has also had that sort of targeted impacts because I have

raised that as an issue with both yourself and Shirley [Rodrigues] on many occasions. I am very glad to hear that there is some flexibility within the Strategy to enable you to focus, should you need to, on potential hotspots.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): I have one further question for Shirley on this section. We were expecting a two-year report to be published, setting out the progress against the Environment Strategy Implementation Plan actions in the period from November 2019 to November 2020. Do you know when that is going to be published?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): I thought I had answered that when Assembly Member Bailey asked. We know from that first year that many of the actions have been implemented. What we are trying to do now because we are developing actions under the Green New Deal mission is try to wrap all of those together and then report on the outstanding ones in that last Implementation Plan. The pandemic has affected the capacity of the team to do that work, but we will try to get it out as soon as we can do, probably in the next few months.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): That would be really helpful. Just in terms of our scrutiny of progress against the Environment Strategy, that is really helpful to have that report done.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): If there is anything that you particularly want an update on, we will be very happy to follow up with you.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Thank you. That is really helpful. I am now going to bring in Tony Arbour for his questions.

Tony Arbour AM: Hello, Shirley. I shall miss our banter. By way of a start, you listed how brilliant the Mayor had been in introducing his green strategies, but one of the things you listed was that he had planted 250,000 trees. I simply contrast that with his promise to plant 2 million trees and so that was not much of a success.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Would you like me to answer that?

Tony Arbour AM: Well, no. It was a rhetorical point. He promised 2 million and he has delivered 250,000.

Anyway, I would like to talk about London Power. We know we will have crossed swords on that many times. You will recall right at the very beginning of the meeting I asked whether or not any Member had an interest to declare on this by being a subscriber to London Power. I thought it was very telling that no Member had, in fact, signed up to London Power, which suggests that probably it is not terribly competitive. I have before me an acknowledgement from London Power to someone who switched to London Power, but that came out under the heading of “Welcome to Octopus Energy”. All subsequent bills have said “Welcome to Octopus Energy”. I endeavoured to sign up yesterday and I looked at their website - perhaps you are doing it now - to find out about signing up to London Energy. There was no mention of a link to the GLA or anything like that. I have not had a response and I do not know whether or not the response will come back in the name of Octopus Energy, but I would say that this is an absolute public relations failure as far as the link between the Mayor and London Power is concerned.

Now given that I have raised, that not just with you, and I have raised this at Mayor’s Question Time - for example, on Transport for London (TfL) bus stops Octopus Energy is advertised, and no mention of the link

with London Power - can I ask you initially whether or not you have any observations on that failure to make this linkage?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): I answered the question when you raised it last time. They are two separate companies. Octopus Energy does not have any obligation to promote London Power when it is talking about its own products. It is a white label. London Power has entered into a white label arrangement with Octopus Energy, so they are the deliverer, the energy company. I would be happy to check with you afterwards about the case that you have raised, but all of our marketing material has London Power on it. It may mention that it is being delivered by Octopus Energy on the website or somewhere on a bill, but it is very clear that London Power is a separate company.

Tony Arbour AM: No, Shirley. I am sorry. You are not answering the point. You go to the London Power website, you believe you are signing up for London Power, but in fact you are signing up for Octopus and when you have signed up, there is no mention of London Power ever again. This really arises to my next question. Given that we are spending about £2 million on this and we have only 4,000 subscribers, why are we providing £500 per head for each subscriber to Octopus Power, not to London?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): As I was trying to explain, we have not set up a separate, new energy company, buying energy, supply, trading and so on. What we have done is partnered with an organisation, in this case Octopus Energy, who then provides the energy for London Power, a company. That is the distinction. The relationship is quite clear. I believe it is. The marketing of London Power is also very clear. It is the Mayor’s energy company, delivered by Octopus Energy, and it has its own set of tariffs, a number of tariffs, targeting a fair and competitive offer. It deals with, for example, the lowest prepayment meter tariffs amongst all tariffs, providing at the moment 10% below the cap, which is excellent. It provides now a tree-planting tariff and it provides a carbon-neutral tariff. These are very different to Octopus’ products.

Tony Arbour AM: Yes, hang on, Shirley. Let us go back to this tree planting thing. If you go on to the London Power website, there is, indeed, a mention of tree planting, but that is not provided by Octopus and that is not provided by London Power. The prospective switcher has to sign up to pay an additional bill for the planting of trees. Really, the bottom line of all of this is: what do Londoners actually get out of London Power? No Member has thought it worthwhile signing up. We cut out the middleman. The Mayor is the middleman in this context. Why do people not go straight to Octopus?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): I do not know how many times I have to say this. They are two separate companies. One is Octopus Energy that delivers Octopus Energy tariffs and a different offer. The Mayor’s company, London Power, offers certain tariffs that we just talked about, delivered by an organisation, Octopus Energy, who provide the energy supply. If you go on to the website, London Power’s website, it is very clear it is the Mayor’s energy company and if there is any reference to Octopus Energy, it is because it is a deliverer of our energy supply through London Power. I am at a loss really, but if you want to write to me I am very happy --

Tony Arbour AM: No, Shirley. You and the Mayor need to be held to account on this. This was a PR job when he became Mayor that he was going to introduce this kind of set-up. The fact of the matter is he has been taken for a ride, and London’s council taxpayers have been taken for a ride. By and large, the tariffs are not any better and the service is not any better. Octopus, as I have already indicated, has failed to acknowledge when they send out bills to people who think they have signed up to London Power find out, in fact, that they have signed up to Octopus. There is no acknowledgement at all. It is costing Londoners a great

deal of money and, as I have indicated, the subsidy appears to be very substantial. I have asked you questions about this. I asked you what the breakeven point was, and how many people are going to need to sign up before you think that London Power is a success. Let me ask you directly. Has London Power been a success over the past 18 months?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Alongside all of the energy companies - and in fact many businesses in London - we are all suffering from the pandemic. The economic situation has really impacted on everybody’s ability to trade. We have seen the lowest levels of switching since 2014. This is not just London Power. This is all energy companies, which is showing how hard it is to trade this last year. The work that the team has done at London Power and the team here has been excellent. We have, as we have said, over 4,500 customers signed up to a very fair and competitive price. We have a tariff that locks in a price differential, which always means that it is competitive. We have an offer that allows people who are in fuel poverty to take advantage of a prepayment meter tariff that is currently one of the cheapest available to Londoners on the market, running at 10% below the cap, which is extraordinary. It linked, unlike many energy companies, to the Mayor’s energy efficiency offers, so linking it to our Warmer Homes Advice Service, which gives them advice on how to reduce their bills and on taking advantage of retrofits to their homes so that they get more up-to-date boilers or other improvements to their homes that then lowers their bills. These are things that, taken collectively, are really making a difference to Londoners. Of course we want more Londoners to sign up, and we would hope that they will do as the economic situation improves alongside, just as many other energy companies are saying about switching as well.

Tony Arbour AM: You are using COVID as an excuse there. What I would say is that because Octopus has access to London Power, it has actually just widened its share of the market at the expense of other competitors. It has not done anything better for Londoners. Can I ask you, how many subscribers does London Power need before it breaks even?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): I answered this last time. We have calculated a number of scenarios that London Power would possibly undertake, depending on certain conditions. If we release those numbers, you would be able to back calculate the commission payments and that would affect our ability to procure in the future. It is protected under commercial confidentiality.

Tony Arbour AM: Again, that is a copout, just as you use your colleague as a copout.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Chair, I would just remind Assembly Member Arbour that we report quarterly on the figures for London Power. We have an annual report that will be published after a first full year of trading. I have answered numerous oral Mayor’s questions on this topic. I have answered the same questions the Assembly Member asked the last time I was here and probably the previous time and I can repeat my answers again.

Tony Arbour AM: I repeat to you that you have not answered any questions. I repeat my challenge to you and the Mayor that what you have done is that you have enabled a commercial company to extend its market at the expense of London council taxpayers and the subsidy that is being paid out to the pitiful number. You talk about 4,000 as being a very large number of subscribers. Given the number of people who use electricity in London and given the churn - and I accept that the churn is probably a bit lower this year - this is an absolutely pathetic performance and is not something that Londoners ought to be doing. The whole thing needs to be scrapped before we throw even more good money after bad.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Those people who are taking advantage of London Power’s tariffs will recognise that we have always said that we would not offer the cheapest tariff. It is precisely those companies that offer the cheapest tariffs that are no longer in business because they offered the ‘tease and squeeze’ tariffs, which lured you in, and then as soon as the rate changed they would roll you over onto the highest tariffs possible. We have been really clear that that is not going to happen at London Power. We have been really clear that the offer that we provide is always competitive within a certain percentage level so that people can really look at the whole package and be sure that they will get that competitive tariff throughout their stay with London Power, and linked to all the other programmes that were talked about, the Mayor’s programmes on energy efficiency, which are making a huge difference to people’s lives. People are saving in the order of £300 compared to the cap and others.

These are big differences that are being made to people’s lives, and I am not using COVID as an excuse. This is absolutely an issue that is facing the whole of London’s economy, so it is rather disingenuous to say that we are hiding behind that. I have just pointed out that every utility company is facing the same issue; that they are not seeing the levels of switching that they also rely on. That is an astounding fact, since 2014, and is about 7% on last year’s numbers. You ought to look again at the offer that London Power is offering, and I would be very happy to answer your questions, Assembly Member Arbour, on the particular case in point you have made but I am very confident that the website of London Power is absolutely clear that it is the company of the Mayor of London and is not Octopus Energy.

Tony Arbour AM: I am not challenging the website. I am challenging what happens when you then subscribe. When you subscribe to London Power, there is no mention of London Power at all. It is only Octopus Energy and I repeat that you have boasted that £300 is a very considerable saving for a consumer. I challenge that because no Member has thought it worthwhile to sign up to London Power to get that and compare that to the £500 subsidy which all the 4,000 subscribers have had from London council tax payers. I repeat, this is a failure with London Power to subscribe.

Léonie Cooper AM (Deputy Chair): The Assembly Member keeps talking about what individual Assembly Members have or have not signed up to. Just as another Assembly Member asked me about this, I happened to switch just before London Power was launched.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM: I just want to raise a point so that it can be noted. This is such a very important subject for London as a whole and especially for those Londoners who have signed up to this company. The survey of Members of this Committee by Assembly Member Arbour bears no reflection to the population of London. Therefore, it is incorrect for my good friend to suggest that evidence from his personal survey, which he did five minutes before starting these questions, has any relevance to the value, function or effectiveness of London Power.

He has good questions that he has put, and I am just sad that it has become a little bit confrontational because this is a Londoner’s pound that is being spent, therefore, questions have to be asked about that. The use of, can I just say, Tony, a silly survey of Members is not helpful.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): If I can just bring in Shaun very briefly, Shaun, did you have your hand up?

Shaun Bailey AM: I did. Chair, notwithstanding the conversation you have just had, as a Londoner, as I am, of course, I am sitting here listening. There is still the fact that you say, at best, someone saves £300 on London Power and we are subsiding people to the tune of £500 per annum. In your opinion, is it good value for money?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): For a start, I do not recognise that £500 subsidy figure that Assembly Member Arbour is talking about. I believe it is good value for money. The £300 saving I talked about against the cap that the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) has brought in and compared to others is significant to people which is why people switch. It is not the cheapest on the market because we deliberately did not want to lure people into, as I said, ‘tease and squeeze’. We have looked at this as a package. It is not just a tariff. It is the fact that it is linked to and giving advice to people on their energy proficiency but also linking it into the homes, the warm homes service; the energy efficiency retrofit.

As we build this up, we will be looking at other things in due course. In those terms, it is delivering exactly what we wanted to do, to provide a disruptor to the energy market, especially the Big Six, and to offer that sort of competitive and fair offer which is what we have been doing.

Things have changed. I talked about the switching, but the energy market has changed over the last few years. We have seen a few energy companies exiting the market. We have seen a few energy companies going bust. Some of the local authority ones who created their own energy supply company. The approach we have taken, in partnering with somebody who receives high trust ratings, and others, and has that innovation bent of mind, has been excellent. The point is that this is a company of the Mayor of London and that brings out that sort of endorsement and sort of combination of activities and that is linked to other programmes is key.

Shaun Bailey AM: Perhaps, Chair, Deputy Mayor Rodrigues could provide us with the level of subsidy per customer. If she does not recognise the figure of Assembly Member Arbour, maybe she could provide the Committee with a figure she does recognise.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Perhaps that would be helpful. I was going to suggest also that it would be helpful if you could write to us and let us know what you are doing to grow uptake and to increase uptake, but I am not going to take up more time at this meeting now because we have been on this issue for too long.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): I am happy to do what I can within the confines of commercial confidentiality.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Thank you. Finally, we have a couple of questions on air pollution and then one question on green spaces.

Shirley, the issue of air pollution was raised a bit earlier by Léonie [Cooper AM]. We had lower concentrations of air pollution earlier in the pandemic. I am just wondering, just top lines, on how you are going to try to retain those benefits of lower air pollution which have been seen during the lockdowns.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): Top line, the biggest initiative that we can do is expand the ULEZ, and that is what the Mayor is committed to do, and that is what we are preparing to do in October. At the same time, we have the tightening of the low emission zone standards, therefore, that is coming shortly, and also the tightening of the non-road mobile machinery standards as well, to do with construction machinery.

At the same time, we are still pushing hard on many areas. While we have cleaned up the bus fleet, we are not happy. We want them to go further. We want the bus fleet to be electric, fully electric for our air pollution ambitions but also for our climate ambitions. The Mayor has made that very clear and I know that in TfL, as part of its financial statement, a settlement made that a centrepiece because the electrification of the bus fleet

will not only help Londoners in terms of reducing air pollution and tackling climate change, but it will create jobs.

They will not be jobs in London. There will be jobs across the country which will help the levelling up agenda of the Government. This year COP 26 is such a big signal about the ambitions of this Government to meeting their 2050 target. This is how London and the rest of the country could contribute; the biggest single thing they could help with in supporting us on that.

The long side is all the other things we will be doing around other air pollution policies, but in the interests of time, I am happy for you to jump in or if you have a specific question you wanted to ask.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): I had a specific question for Elliot [Treharne] which I will bring in right now. I realise that much of the particulate matter under 2.5 microns in diameter (PM 2.5) that we are exposed to in London comes from outside the capital, but in terms of the London-derived PM 2.5, Shirley [Rodrigues] just mentioned about the non-mobile road machinery changes, but what else are you doing to tackle the PM 2.5 pollution that is derived from London?

Elliot Treharne (Interim Assistant Director for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): The first thing to say is that we have seen some very positive reductions since 2016, around 15% reduction in PM 2.5. Obviously, we have set the bold target that by 2030, we want to achieve WHO-recommended guidelines for PM 2.5. We set out a model of what we need in terms of additional powers and how the 2030 target can be achieved. Of course, that has significant economic benefits in terms of London but crucially also has significant health benefits given the weight of evidence we have around the impact that PM 2.5 has in terms of mortality in London.

You will have seen recently that we published an updated report which shows around 4,000 Londoners a year die from long-term exposure to air pollution, including PM 2.5. It is a huge priority. We want those additional powers from Government, but we are not going to wait for Government because, unfortunately, the progress we are hoping to see in terms of the Environment Bill is not happening.

Shirley [Rodrigues] pointed to one example about we try to think creatively so that we can take action now. The non-road mobile machinery Low Emission Zone has had a positive impact and we funded local authorities in order to be able to do effective enforcement of the new emission standards we have and the guidance that we have in place around reducing emissions from construction sites.

We also, of course, know there is a significant contribution to PM 2.5 from tyre and brake wear. That is why interventions which encourage people to walk, cycle and use public transport are so important. The heart of the Mayor’s transport strategy with healthy streets is that target to achieve 80% of trips to be walked, cycled, or be done on public transport for 2041. That is absolutely integral to reducing PM 2.5.

For the remaining vehicles, we can take steps, like Shirley [Rodrigues] talked about bus electrification but with the wider electrification of the fleet, if we get the standards right for things like regenerative braking, that will also tackle PM 2.5 in tyre and brake wear.

We provide information crucially around things like woodburning and, obviously, on the construction side as I was saying, we have done a lot of work through the non-road mobile machinery low emission zone. If we are going to achieve WHO, the key message to take away is that we are going to need additional powers to tackle

other sources of emissions, particularly things like commercial cooking, woodburning and emissions from the river as well. We are hoping the Government will work with us so that we can achieve that 2030 WHO goal.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Finally, our greenspaces have held us, supported us and done so much for us over this last year. The parks have all been incredibly heavily used and it has been the main way that Londoners have accessed greenspace through this pandemic.

Following the Prime Minister’s [the Rt Hon. Boris Johnson] recent announcement of a roadmap to ease the lockdowns, Londoners are likely to be able to meet each other a bit more, begin to socialise a bit more and that is going to happen in our greenspaces and parks because many Londoners do not have a garden. The Government seems to think everyone has a garden, but many do not, and many will be using our greenspaces.

We have heard about problems of lack of access to toilets, overcrowding, grass being worn out by the weight of numbers of people running, jogging, walking, playing. I am just wondering if the Mayor is collecting data on these issues to help with planning and management of these precious greenspaces.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): We are working through Parks for London, which is a representative organisation of, for example, The Royal Parks, Lee Valley Park Authority, and the local authorities. They have been helpful, really instrumental in making sure that we try to take a more coordinated approach. For example, after the first lockdown where some boroughs closed the parks and others did not, and what the policy was around toilets and God knows what else. That is what they have been doing. One of their roles is going to be to look at and discuss usage and what best practice there is and share that between those various authorities and boroughs on, for example, the heavy use that we are going to see over the next few months.

I heard Philip [Glanville] talk about this; the impact just on one park is immense. That comes down to funding for the maintenance and that does come back down to the local government financial settlement, which I know they have been making a case for more funding in that area. Parks are a statutory service and so it is difficult. We are very supportive of the case that the boroughs are making.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Thank you. Just in terms of the data question, is there any specific data you can point the Committee towards that is being collected?

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): On park usage?

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Yes.

Shirley Rodrigues (Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority): I would have to follow up with Parks for London. I know we have general greenspace information data because we support the Greenspace Information for Greater London (GIGL) database. More generally on usage, that is something they do. We can follow up with them and ask them if they have that information and put you in touch with that.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Thank you very much. That draws us to the end of our questions. I would like to thank all the guests for their contributions. I would also like to thank all the Members for playing their parts in this, our last meeting of this Assembly term.