LONDON Mayor Sadiq Khan has rubbished claims made by Tory Transport Minister Mark Harper about the extension of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez).

As the expansion of the zone to cover all London boroughs came into force today, Labour mayor told BBC Breakfast that Mr Harper had made factual errors in his criticisms of it.

“If it was a cash grab, as the government is saying, just to raise money, I’d have acceded to their demand to expand the Ulez without proper consultation and a proper scrappage scheme.”

In a surprise result, the Tories held former prime minister Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge constituency in a by-election last month after making the Ulez extension a key plank of their campaign.

Since then, Mr Khan has been under pressure from his own party’s leader, Sir Keir Starmer, on the issue.

Mr Khan said: “In a couple of years’ time, TfL has predicted there will be no additional money made because the number of non-compliant vehicles will decrease.

“But every penny net made is used to reinvest in public transport, improving buses in outer London, improving public transport in our city.”

The mayor also said that there had been more than 15,000 applications to the Ulez scrappage scheme in the past week.

Five Tory-led councils lost a High Court bid to stop the extension of the zone last month, but now back-bench Tory peer Lord Moylan is to propose that future road-user charging schemes must have the agreement of London’s borough councils.

Mr Harper confirmed that the government would back Lord Moylan’s amendment to the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bill.