The Times applauds election pledge to ban new diesel vehicles and get old ones off roads

The Times in a leader's column has backed proposals in the Lib Dem manifesto to ban the sale of new diesel vehicles from 2025.

The newspaper says that the manifesto is "clever, coherent and costed," and highlights action on diesel pollution as one of four policies that "stand out". It argues that these proposals are "the most attractive" in the 96-page document, saying that the "scourge of diesel pollution is choking voters and their children, sometimes to death, throughout urban Britain". 

"Unlike Labour, the Lib Dems would ban the sale of new diesel cars and small vans from 2025 and introduce a national scrappage scheme to help to get old ones off the roads. Mr Farron's party would also create low-emission zones in ten of the country's most polluted conurbations. On a new list of countries ranked by deaths attributable to air pollution, Britain fares worse than Mexico... no one welcomes such a funding but it drives home the need for drastic action and the other parties' blindness in failing to promise it".

The Green Party today, meanwhile, also pledges to increase incentives to take diesel vehicles off the roads, and also proposes a "mandatory clean air zone network," and a "one-off fine on car manufacturers who cheated the emissions testing regime".