Rupert Matthews (ECR). – Mr President, when this measure was first mooted, I was really unhappy with it. As is so often typical of this place, it was talking about more centralisation, more control, more rigid enforcement of rules from the centre. And in particular, in this case, it was placing massive emphasis on electrical vehicles as a way to reduce emissions. But if the green economy has taught us anything, it’s that we don’t know how the technology is going to develop, and for politicians to be sitting here to try and dictate how technology and how the industry should develop is absolutely nonsensical.
So, I’m very pleased that after a lot of hard work with the rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs, we’ve managed to get this to be a much more flexible arrangement, we are placing less emphasis on just electrical vehicles, and we are going to allow technology to develop – quite right too.