Catch up on the latest political news from across Kent with Rob Bailey, joined by Jonathon Hawkes and Dr Sarah Lieberman, Senior Lecturer in Politics at Canterbury Christ Church University.
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00:00 Hello and welcome to the Kent Politics Show live on KMTV. I'm Sophia Reakin. Coming up
00:29 in tonight's show, housing as we reveal the most expensive places to live in Kent and
00:35 six courses axed at the University of Kent. And also how can local elections be impacting
00:41 you. But first we're going to be talking about Dartford's MP Gareth Johnson. He's failed
00:46 in his bid to reverse London's ultra low emission zones. It comes after Sadiq Khan extended the
00:51 zones to encompass all of London's boroughs bordering Kent at the end of last year. The
00:56 government indicated they would get behind Mr Johnson's private members bill but ran
01:00 out of time after Labour MPs kept the debate going. It's a bid aiming to lower emissions
01:05 and drive out high polluting vehicles. You can hear from Gareth Johnson now. If you live
01:12 in Dartford for example, you have a huge impact on your lives carried out by the Mayor of
01:17 London, yet you do not have the power to vote him in or vote him out. It is literally taxation
01:22 without representation or any kind of accountability whatsoever. It is frankly Madam Deputy Speaker,
01:29 devolution at its worst. And that's why it is absolutely right that central government
01:34 intervenes over this matter because it is taking the devolved powers way beyond that.
01:40 Well with us tonight is the leader of the opposition at Dartford Borough Council, Jonathan
01:43 Hawkes and Dr Sarah Liberman, Reader in Politics at Canterbury Christchurch University. Welcome
01:49 to you both, thank you very much for joining us today. So yeah, I wanted to start off by
01:54 talking a little bit about ULEZ. We saw at the end of last year the Mayor of London expanding
01:59 those zones to encompass Kent. So yeah, Jonathan I guess it makes sense to start with you.
02:04 In Dartford it's kind of right, you know, impacting those in Dartford. Gareth Johnson
02:09 described the ULEZ charge which is £12.50 for those who don't have a ULEZ compliant
02:16 car. He described it as a cruel tax on the poorest people. How would you respond to that?
02:24 Well, I don't agree with that and what we saw today was Gareth bringing forward a private
02:30 members bill to try and reverse the decision. It's not clear to me that the government actually
02:36 really supported that because if the government did support it, it had an opportunity to bring
02:41 forward legislation.
02:42 They've said they are supporting it though, just to be clear.
02:44 They haven't brought forward legislation and they have a majority in the Commons to pass
02:49 laws if they want to. They haven't done that and private members bills rarely become law.
02:55 I think we all know that. So it wasn't clear to me that the move today was ever going to
03:02 end anything else.
03:03 I believe the debate kind of kept going as to why they kind of couldn't end up passing
03:07 it in the end. We've covered ULEZ so much on KMTV and we've seen motorists saying that
03:13 they can't afford this charge. We've seen businesses saying they've been hit by it as
03:17 well. So yeah, I mean, it's a Labour policy, of course, Jonathan. So how do you kind of
03:22 feel to see that it is hitting Kent motorists and businesses as well?
03:27 Well, it was first introduced by a Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and it's been
03:32 carried on by the current incumbent mayor. So to be clear for that, it's not solely a
03:37 Labour policy.
03:38 They've kept it going, though.
03:40 What would really help people in Dartford rather than spending time in the Commons on
03:45 private members bills, which have very rarely become law, is actually a scrappage scheme.
03:51 So in London, there is a scrappage scheme so people can take advantage of that, trade
03:57 in their old vehicle, get some money to help buy a compliant vehicle.
04:02 That doesn't impact us here in Kent, though.
04:05 But the government could provide it if it chose to. The Mayor of London can't provide
04:10 it. The government can provide it. They're choosing not to do that. And so what they
04:15 are choosing to do is play politics.
04:18 That is because they think it's too expensive to be a taxpayer, I believe.
04:21 They're playing politics on private members bills rather than actually taking the measures
04:27 that would actually offer practical help to people in Dartford. And more often than that,
04:32 we hear a lot, I think, from the Conservatives and particularly the MP for Dartford about
04:36 what he's against.
04:38 What I never hear from him is about what measures he thinks are necessary to tackle our appalling
04:46 air quality in Dartford, because we have absolutely some of the worst air quality outside of London.
04:53 It has real impacts on our residents' health. And I don't hear any answers from the government
04:58 about how they plan to tackle that.
04:59 OK, well, I'd like to bring you in, Sarah. Yeah, Reader at Canterbury Christchurch University,
05:05 kind of based over in Canterbury, so perhaps not as impacted as for the ULES zones. But
05:10 you were saying to me before that you do have to drive through those zones. Is your car
05:14 compliant? Do you have to pay that fee?
05:17 I have to pay that fee. My car isn't compliant. And as Jonathan was saying, what we seem to
05:23 have at the moment in Kent is the disadvantages of ULES, so the charge to drive through it,
05:29 but not the advantages that people in London have with ULES, which of course is the scrappage
05:34 scheme, is the drop in pollution. There's other things that have gone along with the
05:40 ULES charge in London, other environmental schemes that would help alongside that. So
05:46 people of Dartford don't have that, but they have the charges. Obviously, I don't have
05:51 to drive through there particularly often, but it would become very expensive if you
05:56 did.
05:57 I think there's another way perhaps that we could, because I'm sure nobody doesn't want
06:02 kind of clean air, but the £12.50 for some is very steep to have to pay, sometimes twice
06:08 a day to go in and out of the zone. Is there another way of perhaps kind of getting that
06:13 message across without hitting people and businesses in their pockets?
06:16 Well, as I said, within London, they've done a lot to improve the public transport routes
06:22 as well. A lot of people take buses, a lot of people take the Tube. There's alternatives
06:26 to taking your own car, and that's great within the centre of London. And they've got the
06:31 scrappage scheme on cars so that if you do want to buy a compliant car, if you need to
06:35 use your car more often, then that can be done. But when it comes out of London, then
06:40 we don't have the same transport links. Dartford doesn't have that connectability that people
06:45 in the centre of London do. And so as I said, they've kind of got the disadvantages of ULES
06:50 without having the advantages that you get from being in the centre of London. And that's
06:56 something that's going to have to be worked out because the people of Dartford can't vote
07:00 for the mayor either. And I think that's really what the debate today in Parliament is about.
07:04 It brings me on to my next question, really, because we know that those mayoral elections
07:07 are coming up. As we have seen, of course, there will be people supporting the scheme,
07:12 but we have seen a lot of criticism of it in Kent. Does it make you concerned, Jonathan,
07:16 approaching those mayoral elections? Could Sadiq Khan not get elected again?
07:21 Well, the mayoral elections aren't going to be about ULES. The mayoral elections are going
07:25 to be about housing, crime, the core issues that people in London care about and cast
07:30 their votes around. So I don't personally see that this issue is going to actually have
07:37 a huge impact on the result of the mayoral election.
07:39 A lot of what people are talking about, though, is that ULES impacts anyone who's got a car
07:43 that isn't compliant. It's got to be about that in the election.
07:47 If you look at polling, ULES across the whole of London is popular. So clearly there are
07:55 pockets where there are concerns about it in the outer boroughs. That's clear. But again,
08:03 the introduction of the scrappage scheme is one way that that can be addressed. But actually,
08:08 if you look at the whole of London across the ULES, it is a popular policy. So I don't
08:15 think that that particular policy is going to have a disproportionate impact on the result
08:19 of the election. I think those core issues around housing and about crime and about public
08:24 transport really remain the core issues that people vote on.
08:28 OK, I want to move on slightly just to mention, as we did mention, those mayoral elections
08:32 that you can find a full list of the candidates, 12 candidates online. But now with everyone
08:37 in Kent talking about the cost of living, what about the cost of where you're living?
08:41 New ONS data shows that there's a nearly more than £200,000 difference between the average
08:47 prices in the cheapest part of Kent for housing compared to the most expensive. With increased
08:51 mortgage rates and housing prices above the national average, landlords and those looking
08:55 for affordable housing in the county are increasingly concerned. We don't have as long to chat about
09:00 this topic, but what are you surprised to hear that the average house price in Kent
09:05 is £321,000? That's not going to be affordable for those first time buyers who are looking
09:10 to get on the property ladder.
09:12 Absolutely not, no. I'm not entirely sure exactly how many times the average wage that
09:19 actually is, but it's huge. The price of housing has gone up so much in the last decade, but
09:27 wages haven't, salaries haven't gone up to match that. So it's more and more difficult
09:31 to get a mortgage. Mortgages have become more expensive in the last few years. So there's
09:37 a generation of people now who are going to have real trouble to buy their own house.
09:41 I know my husband and I wouldn't be able to buy the house that we live in now because
09:46 the cost of housing has gone up so much and wages haven't. So it is a problem.
09:53 What's the other alternative? It's renting.
09:55 I don't know what the alternative is.
09:57 Renting is really expensive. The average renting price in Canterbury is £1,132. I wanted to
10:05 ask as a lecturer, does that make you kind of concerned for the students going on to
10:09 - sorry, as a reader - to go on to trying to rent for students? They can't afford that.
10:16 We see more and more students staying at home. A lot of students will commute into Canterbury
10:21 from all over Kent rather than rent property within Canterbury. And so we're making a really
10:27 big effort now to consolidate our lecturing on to maybe one day or two days as far as
10:33 possible so that students don't have to commute in so often. And so it really does change
10:38 the whole university experience, the traditional university experience of moving away from
10:43 home, living with your friends, living close to the university or on the university campus
10:47 has changed and that is to do with costs.
10:50 And Jonathan, just before we go to our break, Dartford was the second most expensive area
10:56 to buy a house in Kent. Does it make you concerned that people might be moving out of Dartford
11:02 and go somewhere cheaper, perhaps the north, and then all their skills, all that they've
11:06 learnt isn't going to be used in Dartford?
11:08 Absolutely. And it's outrageous and unacceptable actually that working people in Dartford - I'm
11:14 sure it's the same in Canterbury - are now - home ownership, that dream of home ownership
11:20 is not a dream that they can realise and that's unacceptable. We need to build more houses,
11:25 build more affordable homes, build more social homes so more people can actually get on the
11:30 housing ladder and realise that dream of home ownership. It should not be out of reach for
11:36 working people.
11:37 Believe it or not, house prices are actually going down. So hopefully kind of in years
11:41 to come, we will see them go down quite a bit more. But it's time for a break now. We've
11:46 got some more topics coming up after this break. Thank you both for joining us. I'll
11:50 see you after this break. We're going to be talking about local elections. I'll see you
11:54 very soon.
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