Labour on the London Assembly have welcomed the Mayor’s desire to make London the cleanest and greenest city on earth, but warn to look at his actions – not just listen to his warm words.

Speaking after the Mayor’s speech at the C40 conference in Seoul, Labour’s environment spokesman, Murad Qureshi, said:

"We want London to become the cleanest and greenest city on earth and if Boris’ actions matched up to his words we might even have a chance of succeeding. He says he wants to end our obsession with cars, but when you examine what the Mayor is doing, rather than what he’s saying, you can see he’s rolling back on charging polluting vehicles to come into London; he’s committed to making just 4 per cent of the bus fleet cleaner by 2012 and his actions on the environment have led the government to consider countermanding him. Of course we support the Mayor’s aims but we want him to realise that to make London a world leader takes more than just warm words."

Mayor’s actions

• Boris Johnson’s TfL business plan commits to introducing 360 hybrid buses by 2012 – out of a fleet of 8,300
• In February he suspended rolling out the third phase of the Low Emission Zone, which tackles the most polluting vans and minibuses
• He has commissioned work on building a brand new airport in the Thames, despite claiming to oppose a new runway at Heathrow on environmental grounds
• He has announced plans to scrap the western extension of the Congestion Charge, which will lead to 30,000 extra vehicles a day entering the zone and will lose TfL an estimated £70m of revenue
• Scrapped plans for a Brixton to Camden cross-river tram, a DLR extension to Barking & Dagenham, the Greenwich Waterfront Transit and an extension to the Croydon Tramlink
• He has begun rephasing traffic lights to give pedestrians’ time to vehicles