Laila Cunningham and Paul Dimoldenberg

THE city council’s Labour administration was challenged over the “strange message” it was sending by introducing a massive increase in parking charges for electric vehicle owners.

“Calling in” the proposals on Wednesday the Conservatives in opposition on Westminster City Council said the changes, amounting to increases of up to 1,800 per cent in some cases, went against a general principle that the “polluter should pay more”.

The cabinet member for city management and air quality, Cllr Paul Dimoldenberg, said bringing charges in line with petrol cars was fair and that would not disincentivise people from going electric.

But Conservative councillor Laila Cunningham told him: “I had an electric car.

“When you don’t own a home, or have a driveway, there is very little incentive to have an electric car.

“It is hard to find a bay. It is expensive to charge. One of the main incentives is that you can go into central London and pay hardly any parking charges.

“That was a huge, massive, incentive. People to me would be like ‘let’s ride in your EV and go into central London’.

“Those are the cars that we want driving into central London. You can shake your head as much as you want, the low parking charges are a massive incentive.”

She added: “It’s a strange message you are sending when your main core message is an environmental one.

“You are increasing charges on people, whether it is the white working van man, whether it is families. The Labour administration is increasing charges of working people yet again.”

The row over increased parking charges reached the House of Commons last week with the prime minister Rishi Sunak suggesting Westminster’s Labour administration did not care about the environment and was “yet again penalising hard-working people”.

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Mr Sunak had responded to one from the Conservative Cities of London and Westminster MP, Nickie Aiken, who said Labour was letting down “white van drivers”.

Cllr Dimoldenberg told the committee that saving on fuel was the main reason people switched to electric vehicles.

He said: “I want to make it clear, the proposals will not reduce the incentive to drive an electric vehicle.

“The charges are currently extremely low, virtually non-existent. And that is unsustainable going forward.”

He said current rates amounted to around eight pence an hour for parking in the centre of Westminster, and added: “There is a call to act. The question is how high should these charges be? If we increased to 16p an hour that would be 100 per cent increase. Shock horror!”

And he added that the new charges were “significantly less” than neighbouring boroughs.

“I repeat… for those who can’t read or can’t hear, Westminster’s evening parking charges will remain the lowest in inner London,” he said.