LONDON—Britain said Thursday that new checks would be carried out across the automobile industry to ensure that a pollution test cheating scandal at German manufacturer Volkswagen was not repeated.
"The Vehicle Certification Agency, the UK regulator, is working with vehicle manufacturers to ensure that this issue is not industry-wide," said Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin in a statement.
"As part of this work, they will re-run laboratory tests where necessary and compare them against real-world driving emissions."
McLoughlin added that Britain's government "takes the unacceptable actions at VW extremely seriously" and was backing a Europe-wide investigation.
After initially plunging 9.7% on the report, BMW shares were showing a loss of 6.8% by mid-afternoon.
The scandal broke last week after it emerged that VW fitted up to 11 million of its diesel cars with devices capable of fooling emissions tests.
Authorities in the U.S., France and South Korea have announced investigations and the company's chief executive Martin Winterkorn resigned Wednesday.
On Thursday, shares in fellow German carmaker BMW fell nearly 10% at one point after the weekly Auto Bild reported that emissions from one of its diesel models were 11 times higher than EU norms.
BMW denies cheating in pollution tests.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2015
