Chris Clarkson MP for Heywood & Middleton welcomes the news that the Government is forcing Mayor Andy Burnham to scrap his controversial Greater Manchester wide ‘CAZ congestion tax’ scheme.
The Government has instructed Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham to abandon his plans to institute a 500 square mile Clear Air Zone covering the whole of Greater Manchester.
Secretary of State for the Environment George Eustice has instructed Mayor Burnham to reduce the scope of any CAZ zone by '95% or more’ to cover ‘in practice, just Manchester city centre', and targeting the support schemes from the £132 million funding provided by the Government to help the much smaller number of businesses affected as a consequence.
Commenting, Chris Clarkson MP said:
“I am grateful to the Government for stepping in to stop Andy Burnham’s job-killing clean air tax. The Mayor ignored the strength of feeling locally as he tried to force through a 500 square mile charging zone, the largest in the world, against our will. Rochdale Labour still have serious questions to answer about why they volunteered to put our Borough into this disastrous scheme when they were under no obligation to participate.”
“It should not have taken the intervention of Grater Manchester’s Conservative MPs to fix this problem, but once again the Mayor was too busy trying to blame everyone else for his mistake rather than trying to work constructively to get the scheme right. We all want a cleaner, healthier environment, but squeezing commuters and businesses for thousands of pounds was never the right way to do it.”
