Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said:

The government takes the unacceptable actions of VW extremely seriously.

My priority is to protect the public as we go through the process of investigating what went wrong and what we can do to stop it happening again in the future.

We have called on the EU to conduct a Europe wide investigation into whether there is evidence that cars here have been fitted with defeat devices.

In the meantime we are taking robust action. The Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA) , the UK regulator, is working with vehicle manufacturers to ensure that this issue is not industry wide.

As part of this work they will re-run laboratory tests where necessary and compare them against real world driving emissions.

Letter to the European Commission

• 
  Secretary of State for Transport’s letter to the EU Commission about non-compliance of new cars with emission standards
  (PDF, 341KB, 1 page)
  

Related links

• Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA)
• Transport emissions
• New rules for MOT to test for diesel particulate filter, press release 4 December 2013