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Vehicle rental should be more widely considered as a solution to excessive and costly grey fleet usage, especially in the public sector, according to shadow transport minister John Woodcock, speaking in the wake of a new report by Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
Speaking exclusively to BusinessCar, the Labour MP for Barrow and Furness, said: "There could be genuine benefits from both more creative thinking in terms of marketing from the rental sector and in people choosing to go about their business in different ways.
"The areas of questioning that the report sets out are the right ones and I was particularly interested in what they're saying about looking at the public sector - that travel happens in quite traditional ways, and that people understand ways in which public sector organisations could potentially meet more challenging environmental goals in more imaginative ways.
"I think you really need to break down what is quite often traditional silo thinking and the way these decisions are taken often in large, relatively inflexible public sector organisations."
The Enterprise report, entitled Driving Futures, makes a case for rental as a cheaper, cleaner and safer alternative to employees using their own vehicles for business trips.
When asked if there is still a case for the use of grey fleet in light of the perceived cost and environmental benefits of rental to the business sector, Woodcock claimed it was up to rental firms to make hiring a car a more cost-effective and convenient option to coax businesses in: "Ultimately, the economics of this have got to stack up and that's a challenge for the rental sector to ensure that it can do.
"People are going to be driven by their bottom line, they're going to be driven by convenience and they're going to be driven by obligations to the environment.
"The Government can help to clear the latter in terms of driving those obligations, but I think it requires people to think about car journeys in a different way and I think frankly what [Enterprise] are doing today is an important part of it - just being able to challenge that thinking."
Woodcock's comments come after BusinessCar reported that transport minister Norman Baker backed the use of rental vehicles in the corporate sector in a statement at the BVRLA conference in December 2011.
Addressing the audience at the Enterprise parliamentary reception on 14 March, Woodcock also said that rental firms were integral in establishing electric vehicles in the used car market.
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