Ed Solves The EV Regulation Problem

It’s interesting being in a Labour government after many years spent in a Tory government because so many of these Labour guys are swept up by principles which don’t make much sense, Ed confides to his diary.

For instance what we do here in the UK on climate change has little effect on the planet, but my new colleagues believe that our example is important.

Therefore they are determined to bring forward the date for phasing out petrol cars to 2030 and increase the proportion of electric cars which have to be sold to 28% with a penalty of £15,000 for every petrol car sold above that figure.

Now a couple of car companies which manufacture here have said they’re going to sack people because of the over-restrictive regulations.

The eco-wallahs in the government won’t budge on the targets, the working-class warriors are appalled that a Labour government is causing joblessness and the business-minded  ministers are in a quandary about how to resolve it.

Into this quagmire – steeped in the dark arts of meeting industrial compliance and regulatory targets – steps my goodself with the age-old answer: ‘Fudge It’.

Working with the car companies we have devolved a fiendishly complex ratcheting formula by which an under-performance in selling EVs in one year can avoid penalty by an over-performance in later years and an over-performance in one year can be used to retrospectively negate liability for underperformance in previous years.

The counting procedure has been kept deliberately vague with shipments to dealers, holding parks and foreign subsidiaries obfuscated by reams of regulatory gumpf and even the definition of a vehicle unclear with part-assembled and even battery-less vehicles apparently meeting some aspects of the definition and some not – all designed to to make monitoring the regulations too tedious for the eco-wallahs to want to bother.

My business-minded and class-warrior-minded colleagues are grateful for my solution, as are the car companies, while the eco-wallahs are suspicious they’ve been had, but don’t know how.

After a hint or three to colleagues and a warmly welcomed suggestion to the car companies, it has been recommended that I chair a committee to be set up to oversee the administration of the regulations including the counting procedures.

Those car companies can be awfully grateful to those who find ways round the regulatory burden.