Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch has said that she will scrap the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel car sales and get rid of the government’s ZEV mandate, which means that an increasing proportion of the UK’s new car sales each year have to be zero emission.
Writing in the Telegraph, Badenoch said that she had been inspired by the “commonsense approach” of Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, and her principle that emission reduction should not happen at the expense of economic growth.
“The Conservatives will ensure that we protect the environment,” wrote Badenoch. “But we will do so without forcing families to bear the brunt of the costs, and forcing carmakers to meet deadlines that don’t reflect consumer demand.
The 2030 deadline on sales of new petrol and diesel cars was first introduced by Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson in 2020, pushed by to 2035 by Rishi Sunak in 2023 and reinstated by Keir Starmer’s Labour administration in 2024. The next general election in the UK has to be held by August 2029, though the prime minister can ask the king to dissolve parliament and call an election at any point then.
The Conservatives currently sit in third place according to pollster Ipsos with 16% of the projected vote share, though obviously the landscape will change over the next three years. Were the party to win the next election it would be a matter of months until the new rules came into effect as currently proposed.
The policy announcement comes as the European Union is getting ready to announce a delay in its own combustion ban from 2035 to 2040. The EU and UK decisions were slightly different – the UK’s ban sees purely combustion driven new cars taken off sale in 2030, but hybrids with a significant electric range allowed until 2030.
Under the ZEV rules, 80% of new cars in 2030 would have to be zero emission. The EU’s 2035 deadline is for all combustion cars, but the announcement expected this week could see a similar ramp to 2040.
Then business secretary Kemi Badenoch meets BMW's production head in 2023 – he was announced as CEO last week 
