The ultra-low emissions zone will fuel class divisions between London’s poorest while wealthy families sit pretty

It’s official – the world’s first ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) has launched in central London.

The hope is that older, more polluting vehicles, which are subject to the £12.50 daily charge, will become a thing of the past as a result. And, by the time the Ulez reaches London’s suburbs in October 2021, so will the capital’s air quality crisis.

Air pollution claims up to 36,000 lives every year across the UK, according to research from King’s College London. The capital’s most vulnerable communities are among the most severely affected. Any step to right this wrong must be celebrated; however, a thought must be spared for the people whose cars will be scrapped to do so.

City Hall estimates that up to 60,000 road users a day will be hit by the Ulez fee in its first stage, and that number will rise to 138,000 when the zone is extended to the North and South Circular ring roads. All diesel cars built before 2015 are subject to the charge, along with pre-2005 petrol cars.

Many of those vehicles will be owned by Londoners in jobs paying less than the London living wage, of which there are almost 700,000, who were encouraged to switch to diesel by tax breaks introduced by the Labour government in 2001.

Cleaners and care workers, who often rely on driving to reach their clients, will face an impossible choice of either shelling out £12.50 extra a day, despite earning less than £10.55 an hour, or trying to sell their now valueless car and buying new ones.

In the process of addressing the air pollution that blights London’s most deprived areas, the Ulez has exposed a more all-encompassing inequality in the city – one which puts the burden of helping London’s poorest at the doorstep of people who are only slightly better off.

London mayor Sadiq Khan announced in February that £25m will be set aside to help low-paid Londoners switch to cleaner vehicles come 2021. It is unclear, however, how far this money will go when shared among potentially tens of thousands of Londoners.

Almost 80,000 people have now signed a petition on Change.org to block the Ulez extension. The comments drive home the unfairness of the Ulez. “Another unfair tax on people that can least afford it,” writes one commenter. “How are people who are on low incomes meant to pay this ridiculous charge?” asks another.

Research suggests that the average gap in exposure to harmful nitrogen dioxide pollution between London’s most deprived and least deprived areas, which currently stands at more than a quarter, will be reduced by 72 per cent by 2030 thanks to the Ulez. Perversely, this improvement will come on the back of the poorest rather than the richest. Supercars will not be affected when diesel family hatchbacks will be. Wealthy Londoners, who can easily afford to replace their car, will be unencumbered by the change when less well-off Londoners may be left indebted by it.

A chat over coffee last week with my Dad laid this inequality bare for me. He used to work as a respiratory physician at the now-closed London Chest Hospital in Tower Hamlets, one of London’s most deprived boroughs. As he drove me to the station afterwards, in the same diesel Skoda he’s owned since my childhood, he spoke about how he witnessed firsthand the effect of poor air quality on asthma patients.

According to the latest research, four asthmatics a day, including one child, are hospitalised in London due to air pollution. In the same sentence, he spoke of his own excitement about replacing his Ulez-applicable car before 2021.

It’s a strange state of affairs, I thought, when patients will be burdened more by the measure aimed at helping them than the doctor who treated them.

As the fog clears, Ulez exposes one thing: London remains an unequal and unforgiving place which lets the wealthiest get off scot-free, while pitting its poorest residents against one another.