Dr Rupa Huq

I beg to move, That this House has considered the matter of defeat devices in diesel vehicles. It is a true pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. It was over a decade ago that the automotive industry, and indeed the world, was rocked by dieselgate, the Volkswagen emissions scandal. The public were horrified to learn about how the trusted German car giant Volkswagen—the one that gave us the “Herbie” kids film franchise and those iconic circular badges that were so beloved of the Beastie Boys—had knowingly faked vehicle emissions tests via defeat devices. Those devices are software designed to alter a vehicle’s performance, falsify results and limit emissions during the regulatory testing period, only to switch to their true polluting selves when they are driven on open roads. VW’s range of diesel compact cars had been marketed as a green alternative to petrol, but it was found that it had been knowingly cooking the books to the point that the US Environmental Protection Agency found VW’s top people guilty of conspiracy to defraud customers. Confidence was shattered, share prices nosedived, reputational damage was done, vehicles were recalled, fines were paid, heads rolled at the managerial level, and the once-encouraged diesel became discredited—its fate in London was finally sealed by the ultra low emission zone. We were assured that lessons would be learned, yet despite the outlawing of defeat devices, the problem seems to be wider than originally thought. “Dieselgate 2: The Sequel” is proceeding very slowly through the courts. I think there are several cases. Multiple models and manufacturers are accused of the same thing: spewing out dangerous and excessive emissions due to cheat technology. Companies have been knowingly deceiving drivers. It feels a bit like match fixing to those of us of a certain age—Bruce Grobbelaar comes to mind. Consumers have been conned once again into believing that they were driving greener, cleaner diesel cars. Results have been rigged. It feels almost as if I cannot go on the internet now without some sort of pop-up advert rearing its head—“Have you driven a Mercedes, a Ford, a Nissan, a Renault, a Citroën or a Peugeot between X and Y years? If so, click here to see how much compensation you could get.” It is all a little bit like ambulance chasing, is it not?