The Secretary of State for Transport Patrick McLoughlin has outlined action being taken by the UK government following the scandal in the US where Volkswagen had admitted using so called defeat devices to cheat in emission tests.

In a statement he 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.”