After calling on the European Commission to carry out a pan-European investigation, the Government has said it will use the UK’s regulator, the Vehicle Certification Agency, to work with carmakers to rerun lab tests on suspect engines and carry out real-world emission tests.

Mr 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.

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