Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op) I beg to move, That
this House has considered COP26 and the impact of air pollution on
public health and wellbeing. Sir Gary, it is my pleasure, on this
day of all days, to have secured this Westminster Hall debate: a
day when the whole world’s attention is focused on COP26 in
Glasgow, and there are signs—some mixed, but some good—of what is
happening there. There has also been a petition, as you of course
know, signed...Request free trial
(Huddersfield)
(Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered COP26 and the impact of air
pollution on public health and wellbeing.
Sir Gary, it is my pleasure, on this day of all days, to have
secured this Westminster Hall debate: a day when the whole
world’s attention is focused on COP26 in Glasgow, and there are
signs—some mixed, but some good—of what is happening there. There
has also been a petition, as you of course know, signed by more
than 100,000 people, calling for an introduction of charges on
carbon emissions to tackle the climate crisis and air pollution.
Forgive me, Sir Gary, but I am currently suffering from a bad
cold and a booster jab, so if my voice fails at any time, you
will know the cause.
Air pollution kills 64,000 people in the UK every year, yet the
Government provide annual fossil fuel subsidies of £10.5 billion,
according to the European Commission. To meet UK climate targets,
they must end this practice and introduce charges on producers of
greenhouse gas emissions. Most Members of the House, and
especially the Yorkshire Members, know of the Drax power station,
which is currently producing energy from wood pellets, either
produced in this country or imported from South America. For that
purpose, it received a massive Government subsidy of £900 million
last year.
I want to start at the beginning; I have always believed in
borrowing from the United States declaration of independence,
because I love the language. I used to be the head of a
university’s American studies department —indeed, I taught the
Deputy Speaker at one stage. I believe that there is an
inalienable right for every person on this planet to be born, to
live and to breathe fresh air. At the moment, that is not the
case. How bad is it? Seven million people die prematurely across
the world due to air pollution-related conditions, with 36,000
premature deaths in the UK alone, costing an estimated £12
billion.
Of course, with COP26, there is a risk of a great missed
opportunity, as I believe there was last week in the Budget. If I
were marking it as a university teacher, I would grudgingly give
it a lower second. Why? Because I thought it was very technically
competent, but it missed any true originality. That is the mark
of a good essay: true originality. Originality is so important to
everything that is produced. I could see the technical competence
in last week’s Budget, but there was a lack of the imagination
needed to say, “This is the time—with COP26 about to start in
Glasgow, with all of us conscious that the planet is warming up
and with the future of this fragile planet in danger—to tell the
British people that we must act.”
In my experience as the longest-serving Member of Parliament on
this side of the House—I was elected in 1979—the British public
are intelligent and resilient, and have good common sense. We can
persuade them that something terrible will happen if we do not
act, and that we need extra money and taxation to so do. They are
persuadable, as they have been persuadable before. They were
persuadable after the ravages of the second world war. They
picked themselves up and went through a period of higher taxation
in order to get through. The economy grew, and so we grew out of
many of our problems.
What was missing in the Budget was a Chancellor who said, “The
situation is so precarious that I am introducing a number of
taxes that will raise money to give us more practical ways to
tackle global warming, here in our communities.” That is what was
missing. That is what I want to speak about today.
Too much of the talk at the moment is global. Two or three of us
here had the foresight to be the first people to invite young
Greta Thunberg to come to the UK and talk to an all-party
parliamentary group, and what a pleasure it was to hear her
speak. However, many people think, “I cannot be Greta Thunberg; I
cannot be an international statesperson; I am not the president
of any country. I am just me, in my community.” We are failing to
give people the ability to say, “I can help tackle this. I can
roll up my sleeves and make a difference in my community,” even
though it may not be something that is instantaneously registered
on the global index.
Today, I want to talk about clean air, because all of us can do
something about it in a practical way, and we can do it now. Let
us review how bad things are. I have mentioned the cost in
numbers of deaths, and I have mentioned that we need individual
campaigns, yet we are still giving subsidies to companies that
are polluting the atmosphere. Today, I am going to suggest some
quick wins.
I want real engagement across every town and city throughout the
country on a journey to sustainability based on the UN
sustainable development goals. Colleagues might ask what I am
doing about it as a Member of Parliament. Two years ago, we
brought a group of business people to Huddersfield who joined
with the university and local charities to form the Huddersfield
sustainable town initiative.
My constituents really dislike it if I say we are an average
British town, so I must say that we are a typical British town,
which we are across almost every criterion. We are a microcosm of
the United Kingdom: the percentage of people in manufacturing;
the percentage of people in services; the level of education; the
skills. We are a microcosm. My philosophy, which is shared by the
members of the Huddersfield sustainable town initiative, is that
if we can change Huddersfield into a sustainable town, there is
no reason that every community in our country could not become a
sustainable town. Why can we not spread from Huddersfield? We are
already working with 37 towns. Why can we not have 500 towns and
cities in this country work towards sustainability?
People say, “Why all that nonsense? Just get on with it. Why
would you want the United Nations’ sustainable development
goals?” Sir Gary, you know of my great interest in road safety. I
have campaigned on it for many years: I organised for seatbelt
legislation as a young MP, and in my only successful private
Member’s Bill, I banned children from being carried without
restraint in cars. I am now chair of the Global Network for Road
Safety Legislators, a World Health Organisation committee, and
because of that, I know that if we take a particular subject—even
safety in a community—and put it in the context of the
sustainable development goals, we transform the potential of what
we are doing. The great thing about those goals is that they are
rigorous. I have been involved in environmental campaigns all my
life with other colleagues, and those campaigns have done really
good work across many areas, but too many of them are discrete
initiatives: recycling, reuse, cleaning up rivers and streams,
and that sort of thing. If we have the rigour provided by the
sustainable development goals, and we start off our whole
sustainable development programme by consulting local people with
a questionnaire asking which ones they want to prioritise, we
take a real step towards engaging the local community. That is
what we have done in my own community.
One of the things that we are targeting in Huddersfield is clean
air. How do we stop filthy fumes from going into the air, in our
case from an ancient energy from waste facility? I am not against
energy from waste if it is high quality, but we have an old
facility, and it does not create heat that is used to heat homes.
That heat is not used in the correct way: much of it goes into
the atmosphere, which is very damaging indeed, so we must first
make sure that every sustainable town, city and community
rigorously meets those sustainable development goals. The goals
give communities that rigour: they will say, “We’ve got to this
stage—yes!” but to get to the next stage and get the
accreditation, they have to go one step further.
We all know that transport is critical to those sustainable
development goals. Many believe that transport is responsible for
40% of the emissions we breathe in this country, polluting London
and cities across the country with noxious emissions. Some great
friends of mine who are Members of Parliament for Lewisham and
are active there know as well as I do—because of the work we have
done in the all-party parliamentary group on air pollution—about
Ella Kissi-Debrah, who passed away. Her mother, Rosamund
Kissi-Debrah, who I have met, had the insight and inspiration to
get in touch with Sir Stephen Holgate, one of the leading
professors and medical experts on clean air and its link to
health and wellbeing, who works at the University of Southampton.
He gave evidence at the inquest, and he got its verdict changed,
because that little girl’s death was related to asthma but it was
caused by the filthy pollution that she was breathing in, in a
community that is just a stone’s throw from here.
All over London, we have schools; we have children; we have
pregnant women; and we have elderly people. I particularly woke
up during the first lecture that Sir Stephen gave to our APPG,
when he said, “This is not just about NOx: it is the platelets on
the NOx that cause the real damage to human health. Those
platelets not only poison people and make them very ill indeed,
but accelerate the aging process.” At my age, I sat up in my
chair immediately thinking, “Yes!” However, that is only a
lighter aside. The fact of the matter is that the air we are
breathing in this country, in places where we might have thought
we were guaranteed clean air, is not clean.
We have brought together a group of people in the Westminster
Commission on Road Air Quality to try to do the research
properly. We have an air health working party, a working party on
air monitoring and a working party on education. Last week we
heard from the experts on inside air, who said that where they
have done audits inside schools—not just in the playground, not
right by the polluting road that passes the primary school but in
the classroom—the air is poisonous to breathe. If that is the
case, it is time to take action, and take action we must. It also
gives the opportunity for everyone to take action at the
grassroots and to do it quicker rather than slower.
Yes, we all believe that we should move as fast as possible to
electric vehicles, but all the research that I have been immersed
in in my role suggests to me that the more we look at what is
happening with electric cars, many of us believe that electric
will be overtaken by hydrogen power. There is more and more
evidence, in fact. Research is interesting because, with heavy
goods vehicles carrying big loads, batteries are hard to use. In
hilly areas, they do not have the ability to cope. Much of the
research has been with HGVs, and the research that I have been
privy to shows that already many HGVs are being produced to use
hydrogen power. If that is true for big vehicles, it will come to
small vehicles soon.
Of course, we must improve the vehicles on the road, but there
are quicker things to do, too. We know that there are ways of
adulterating—in the best way—the diesel that is put into
commercial vehicles with vegetable extracts that make it much
less polluting. Indeed, one of the people who has been educating
me about that is William Tebbit, son of Norman Tebbit, who many
of us remember very fondly. So this is not pie in the sky or wait
a long time; this is stuff that we can do now, changing the fuel
we are putting in heavy goods vehicles.
(in the Chair)
Barry, to give others a chance, perhaps you would take just a
couple more minutes.
Mr Sheerman
I am just coming to the end.
Another practical issue is, how many people realise that, at the
moment, nothing in the MOT test tests how polluting someone’s
vehicle is? There is nothing in the test about what comes out of
the back end of a car. If the recommendations that have been
brought forward could be acted on now, we could transform the
quality of the vehicles on our roads. Someone gave me this
information recently: if we take out the particulate emissions
filter in a vehicle, or it does not work properly, that one
vehicle produces the equivalent of a traffic jam between
Westminster and Huddersfield. That is frightening, is it not?
We have many practical ways to change the air in our country and
move towards a clean air environment. I believe that this is the
secret to opening people to getting involved in the environment,
to accepting—perhaps—higher taxes in order to stimulate that
move, and all round, to moving towards more sustainable and
greater health and wellbeing for our country. I recommend this
big change in our country; let us do it now.
(in the Chair)
Colleagues, there are five who wish to speak in this 60-minute
debate, with about four minutes each. Wind-up speeches will begin
at 5.10 pm.
16:50:00
(Basingstoke) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Gary. I
commend the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) for
securing this particularly timely debate on air pollution and its
effect on public health. It is good to see the Public Health
Minister in her place—sorry, it is not the Public Health
Minister. She cannot reply because she has a mask on. She will
update me on her role later. Swiftly moving on…
There can be little more important than the air that we breathe.
We come into this world, we take those first gulps of air, and
throughout our lives, it is the fresh air that we breathe that
can make the difference between feeling good and not feeling
good. We look for fresh air every day of the week. We want to go
out into the countryside. The hon. Member for Huddersfield is
right that in our country we think it is a fundamental right to
be able to breathe clean air. It is important that the Government
are already making great progress in sending strong messages to
us, as a society and country, that clean air really matters,
whether it is the commitment to ending the sale of petrol and
diesel cars by 2030, or the package of measures in the recent
Environment Bill.
The hon. Member for Huddersfield touched on the cost of pollution
to our country—the £20 billion a year it is estimated to cost the
UK economy and the many thousands of deaths caused by air
pollution. One issue I want to touch on specifically is asthma
and chronic respiratory conditions, which are a significant
concern in my constituency, as I am sure they are for others. I
have two children who have asthma—
(Stafford) (Con)
I absolutely agree that it is a fundamental right to breathe
clean air. Stafford Borough Council has installed the first
eco-post in the country to monitor air quality. Does my right
hon. Friend agree, following COP26, with the journey to net zero,
that it is important to invest in air monitoring in our
constituencies?
Mrs Miller
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and she brings me to the
importance of practical initiatives that the hon. Member for
Huddersfield touched on in his contribution. It is important that
the Government are committing money and making laws and that the
strategic framework is there, but unless the initiative is taken
on the ground by local authorities and others, those good
intentions will be for nothing.
I want to touch briefly on three initiatives in my constituency
that bring that to life. Hampshire County Council, working with
local schools on “My Journey” travel planning, helps children
raise the awareness of their parents of the importance of travel
planning, so as to reduce the number of cars on the roads. St
Mark’s school in Hatch Warren has done a huge amount of work on
that.
The “clear the air” Clean Air campaign, run by our local
Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, encourages people to stop
idling engines outside schools, train stations or wherever it
might be, and promotes awareness of how important that can be in
reducing particulate pollution. Breathe Easy, a charity in my
constituency that works with the British Lung Foundation,
supports people with chronic lung conditions and has an important
role to play. Last, but by no means least, is the work done by
the county council to ensure that we help reduce road congestion
by improving public transport provision.
Those are practical things that I hope the Minister might respond
to, and I hope that the Government can support other local
authorities, and indeed my local authority in Hampshire, to
continue such important initiatives.
16:54:00
(Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I
thank the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) for securing
this important debate.
There can be no more important time to be holding this debate.
The battle to tackle the scourge of air pollution is inextricably
tied up in all the other challenges that make up the climate and
ecological crisis that should be front and centre in public
discussion over the next couple of weeks. If the Government truly
acknowledged the scale of the problem that is faced, particularly
in urban areas such as my constituency, they would commit to far
more radical action.
I would like to ask the Minister in summing up to consider the
following three points. First, introduce legally binding targets
for the UK to abide by the World Health Organisation’s stricter
clean air standards. The Government have to be as ambitious as
possible. Without aiming to reach the gold standard as soon as
feasible, they are simply letting the health of the public
down.
Secondly, we need serious action to meet those standards, and
that will require considerable Government finance. Traffic is the
largest source of urban air pollution, and changes in the way we
move around, particularly in cities, are vital. However, we
cannot allow the cost of that to fall on ordinary people. The
purchase of electric cars to replace polluting vehicles should be
supported by the Government through grants and interest-free
loans, and every citizen should be able to apply for those. It
will be essential to continue investing heavily in public
transport while keeping prices down, and to support the
flourishing of active travel schemes since the covid pandemic,
supporting the making of journeys by walking and cycling wherever
possible.
Thirdly, the plans for a massive new incinerator in my
constituency of Edmonton, which will emit 700,000 tonnes of
carbon dioxide a year, are simply outrageous. I refuse to believe
that the project would be allowed to go ahead if the incinerator
were to be in a leafier, more affluent suburb. I ask the Minister
to urgently meet me and campaigners to push for the Government to
pause and review the project.
16:57:00
(Loughborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak before you today, Sir Gary. I
congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on
this interesting and informative debate.
Clean air is essential for life, health, our environment and the
economy. Air pollution has reduced significantly in the last
decade, but there is still more to do. We have a clean air
strategy, which details how the UK will go further and faster
than the EU in reducing exposure to particulate matter pollution.
It sets out a goal to halve the number of people living in
locations with concentrations of particulate matter above the WHO
guidelines. The Environment Bill will build on that strategy,
setting two air quality targets by October 2022, a target to
reduce the annual average level of fine particulate matter— or
PM2.5—and a further target to improve air quality. This action to
improve air quality is backed up by £3.8 billion.
However, the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants
advises that a focus on long-term average concentrations of PM2.5
is the most appropriate to deliver public health benefits. That
brings me to a point that fits in somewhat with what the hon.
Member for Edmonton () said. I alert Members to the
number of incinerators that are currently being planned or in the
process of being built. I believe there are 18usb along the M1 in
one section alone. One such incinerator is in a leafier
constituency than Edmonton —at Shepshed in my Loughborough
constituency. It is near to Shepshed town centre, but it is also
close to Loughborough University, my biggest employer and home to
élite athletes from around the world, who obviously run about and
do all sorts of things in the open air. Also 3,000 houses are
expected to be built just across the roundabout from the
incinerator. When I mention the incinerator with local and
national organisations, they often say to me, “Yes, but the M1
creates quite a lot of pollutants already and therefore it is
very difficult to monitor and understand the impact of that
particular incinerator.” However, as the hon. Member for
Huddersfield said, we are bringing in electric and hydrogen
vehicles, which I would like to see myself, and we would like to
reap the benefits of those vehicles in Loughborough to lessen the
impact of PM2.5.
(Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a very good speech and I congratulate
the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on bringing this
debate. My hon. Friend makes a good point about incinerators.
Would she agree that incinerators have often been built to deal
with the undesirability of landfill, but that has created a
perverse incentive in the system? If we are going to look at
issues such air pollution and clean air, we need to do that in a
holistic way with other decarbonisation targets and priorities.
That is what has created this problem in her constituency, and in
others.
I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend could not have put it more
precisely. That is the difficulty. Will the Minister consider the
impact of the waste strategy at the same time as air quality? Air
quality impacts on the future of our country and our
constituents.
17:01:00
(Hayes and Harlington)
(Lab)
At the moment, the Prime Minister is still at COP. There will be
a major discussion around air pollution and what can be done
globally, but we need to ensure we are acting locally as
well, so I want to raise the issue of air pollution in London
overall, particularly in relation to Heathrow airport.
In the 1970s, when we agreed to the expansion of Heathrow airport
through a fourth terminal, it was about jobs. At that point, we
had our first inkling of what air pollution could do to the
overall environment, as well as to individual health. Since then,
we know so much more, which is why the inspector in the fifth
terminal inquiry recommended that there should be no further
expansion at Heathrow on environmental grounds. Yet the
Government still have the potential for a third runway at
Heathrow on their policy cards.
The latest information is that Heathrow and the area around it is
the second major hotspot for nitrogen dioxide pollution in
London. It breaches the legal limits, and has done for many
years. To be frank, the roads around Heathrow are above the legal
limits, including for PM2.5 and nitrogen dioxide, and have been
for at least the last decade. We now know much more about the
impact of that on the health of people in the west London area,
with links to respiratory and heart conditions, and, thanks to
work in the United States, we know that this is linked to cancer
as well. We cannot go to COP and argue with other countries about
the need to tackle air pollution while we allow such polluting
expansions as the third runway. It is a stark example of the
impact on people’s health.
I have raised in this Chamber before the fact that children in my
local schools have to hand their puffers into a special box and
our teachers in Hillingdon have to be specially trained to deal
with respiratory conditions in those children. If we are talking
seriously about COP and the impact we are having on our
environment, there has to be a time when we draw a line under
Heathrow expansion. I believe that this is it.
We have never had a full health impact assessment of the third
runway expansion. We have had some health impact analyses, all of
which have said that there will be an increase in mortality and
morbidity linked to respiratory and other conditions.
Dr Poulter
I agree with much of the sentiment of what the right hon.
Gentleman says. He and I may disagree about some of the issues
and merits or demerits of the recent Budget, but I am sure we
will agree that the cut in air passenger duty for short haul
flights was a slight disappointment. Does he agree with me that
that is something that the Chancellor might want to
reconsider?
I made that point in the debate on the Budget, and I do not want
to be repetitious. The issue for me is that any tax relief or tax
reduction that either promotes further emissions or supports
those polluting our environment is clearly contrary to Government
policy, as far as I can see. On that basis, I hope that, as a
result of COP, in the next few weeks or perhaps months the
Government will firmly come down as opposed to further Heathrow
expansion.
(in the Chair)
I call , who has until 5.10 pm.
17:05:00
(Bootle) (Lab)
Thank you, Sir Gary. It is a real pleasure to serve under your
chairship.
On COP, air quality and the impact on health and wellbeing, we
have to drill down to the specifics. We can talk at a national,
international or regional level, but it always comes down, in
effect, to what is happening in local communities, with the
cumulative effect in them. My local community, like those of my
right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington () and other hon. Friends, is
no different.
My area has a huge dock in it. The Liverpool docks are based in
my constituency, and we have thousands of lorries coming down the
road, the A5036, all the time—daily, of a night, at weekends.
They are great pollutants, as are local cars and local transport.
The council has had five monitoring stations in the area, and a
sixth up and running, and since covid those levels have been
dramatically down. That should teach us a lesson, which is that
we have to get vehicles, whether they be lorries or cars, off the
road.
I am really disappointed, notwithstanding COP and notwithstanding
covid, that National Highways—it used to be Highways England,
which used to be the Highways Agency, and I think it changes its
name so we can never keep up with what it is at and hold it to
account—persists with this old-fashioned view, which must be 20
years out of date, that if there is a problem with a road, the
solution is to build another one. That is exactly what it is
proposing in my constituency. It is proposing to build a £250
million road through Rimrose valley. Rimrose Valley Friends has
done a great job opposing it, but there will be a £250 million
road through the only green part of my constituency. It is
possible to walk from one end of the constituency to the other in
about 35 or 40 minutes, and the same in the other direction, so
it is incredibly tight. Within it there is this lung, Rimrose
valley, and what does the Highways Agency or Highways England or
whatever it is called nowadays—National Highways—do? It is going
to put a road through it, and that is not acceptable.
I ask the Minister to go back and speak to her colleagues and get
that process halted—put a stop to it—pending the lessons learned
from covid and pending COP. Departments and agencies pushing on
with the same old hackneyed solutions will not be a resolution
for any of us. The local authority is trying to do what it can,
but it can only do so much. We have money for an air quality
grant, which is helping us to educate, and we are working
collaboratively as much as the local authority can, but it is not
much. We need national action, and we need the Department to get
a grip of National Highways and to call a halt to this programme.
It should discuss it with local people, discuss it with the port
and discuss it with all interested parties, and just stop this
madness continuing, because it is not acceptable.
I will make a final point, if I may. We have that going on, but
we have the docks—a major, massive dock—and they are only going
to expand because there will be more containers coming in through
the north, as another alternative, because of covid. What I want
to do is to work collaboratively with everybody to stop the road
being built. Let us rethink the issue. Because we are in a port
area, we have scrapyards, but for the third or fourth time in the
last few years we have had massive fires that are adding to the
problem. It is not just about cars and lorries, but about all the
other associated things. Let us get a grip of this, let us do
better enforcement and let us stop the cheating on
emissions. Let us get to grips with this issue, stop that road
going through and work with our communities to sort out the
problem.
(in the Chair)
Thank you, colleagues, for your co-operation. We now come to the
Front-Bench speeches.
17:09:00
(Angus) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I
also thank the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) for
securing the debate.
COP26, of course, is about our climate. Air pollution is a
different, although not entirely unconnected, matter. COP is
about cleaning up our act, and we certainly need to clean up our
act when it comes to air quality. To that point, the hon. Member
for Huddersfield mentioned Drax, and I say to the Minister that
Drax is anathema to anybody with a passing concern for air
quality. It is an almost dystopian process, which scars the
landscape of the United States on an industrial scale, poisons
the people who live near the mills with particulates in the air
to make the pellets, and ships them half way around the world to
England to be burnt. It would be bad enough without a Government
subsidy, but with one it is absurd. I would like to know if the
Minister agrees with that analysis.
Air pollution is known to kill many thousands of people around
the world every year, while rendering many others subject to
chronic illness as a result of PM10 and increasingly—as our
knowledge expands— PM2.5 and NOx. Air pollution has been likened
to cancer, asthma, diabetes and dementia. Children subjected to
air pollution are much more likely to die in their first two
years, or to attend A&E with chest infections.
It is good to hear from Members about what is happening in their
localities around these islands. Two studies in Scotland have
shown that on days of illegal levels of pollution there are
significant increases in hospital admissions with new-onset heart
and lung disease and blood clots in the arteries of the legs,
when compared with days when the air pollution is within legal
limits. It is estimated that air pollution costs the United
Kingdom £20 billion per annum in health and social care. We know
that those who are already disadvantaged are disproportionately
affected. Often living in city centres or beside main roads, they
have less access to green spaces that can absorb the noxious
pollutants. They are also less able to afford a car, thus
suffering the ill-effects without contributing to them—it is a
social injustice.
In 2014, Health Protection Scotland estimated that air pollution
caused about 1,700 deaths every year in Scotland alone. The
number of vehicles on UK roads between 2010 and 2019 increased
from 34 million to almost 39 million. On this point, I must make
a very important clarification; not all vehicles are made
equally. I know from my experience as a local authority
councillor that although traffic volumes are relevant in terms of
congestion, concentrations of pollutants and airflows through the
streetscape and built environment, new vehicles are exponentially
cleaner than those produced more than 10 years ago. This is
especially true of commercial vehicles such as buses. The
Department for Transport should take a very serious look at being
able to stop, test and seize vehicles. They can do it for vehicle
excise duty, so why can they not do it for vehicles that are
clearly belching out poisonous gas beyond the limits set at
MOTs?
It is worth noting that outside our major cities, and certainly
unlike in London where electric-hybrid buses and vehicles whirr
by regularly, many bus services’ profitability is so marginal
that old vehicles are kept in service that, in air quality terms,
are absolutely filthy and a patent threat to public health. We
need to be able to take a whole-system view, so that the failure
demand that our NHS has to meet is offset by seizing the
opportunity cost of investing in infrastructure and
equipment.
To this end, the Scottish Government aim to reduce car use by 20%
by 2030, taking it back to levels last seen in the 1990s.
Moreover, sustainable public transport is essential for the
ambition to reach net zero. That is why the Scottish Government
will have phased out the majority of fossil fuel buses by 2023,
and will invest £120 million in zero-emission buses. The UK
Government could learn a lot from Scotland in our shared pursuits
of net zero and viable green recovery plans. For example, the UK
Government must stop cutting electric vehicle access schemes,
such as England’s electric vehicle grants system. This has been
further downgraded from £5,000 in 2011 to £4,500 in 2016; to
£3,500 in 2018; to £3,000 in 2020; and now to £2,500 in 2021.
This is the worst sort of swimming against the tide. Figures from
electric vehicle charging website Zap-Map show that of the 21,000
public charging points in the UK, only 20% are free to use; that
is 4,928 points, and 26% of these are in Scotland where around
60% are free to use. Electric vehicle drivers in Scotland benefit
from almost 40 public charge points per 100,000, compared to
fewer than 30 per 100,000 in England. Promoting and investing in
active travel access is essential to drive down car usage.
Scotland currently spends over £18 per head of population,
compared with just £7 in England––more than 150% higher.
was mentioned earlier in the
debate. To be very generous to the noble Lord, perhaps even to
revise things, he did at one stage advise the nation to get on
their bikes. I cannot remember exactly what he meant, but in
public health terms he does at least have a contemporary
point.
17:15:00
(Newport West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Sir Gary, in what has
been a collegiate and consensual debate. While the world’s eyes
are rightly looking to Glasgow, I am grateful to my hon. Friend
the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) for securing this
important and timely debate. He has been a Member since 3 May
1979, which translates into 15,524 days, and he still has his
finger on the pulse.
The House has heard me say before that air quality is one of the
most important policy areas and issues facing all our
constituents the nation over. The facts are there for us all to
see. They all show just how damaging toxic air is to our
communities and its disproportionate impact on the health and
wellbeing of our people. Coronavirus has highlighted the
inequalities and disproportionately impacted on those living in
the areas with the worst air.
Air pollution is bad for everyone––we know that––but for the 12
million people in the UK who live with a lung condition such as
asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, it poses a real
and immediate threat to their health. A spike in air pollution
can lead to symptoms getting worse, flare-ups and even
hospitalisation. We know from the coroner who investigated the
death of Ella Kissi-Debrah that it can lead to death, too. There
is robust evidence of a clear link between high levels of air
pollution and increased numbers of patients with breathing
problems presenting at hospitals and GPs’ surgeries.
I was delighted earlier this year to co-host Labour’s clean air
summit with the shadow Secretary of State. In the first summit of
its kind to be hosted by a major party, we set out our demands
for a clean air Act. Labour’s clean air Act, which we will
deliver when we form a Government, will establish a legal right
to breathe clean air by ensuring the law on air quality is at
least as strict as the World Health Organisation guidelines, with
tough new duties on Ministers to enforce them and grant new
powers to local authorities to take urgent action on air quality.
That stands in stark contrast to the Conservative party and would
deliver improved air quality across England.
Conservative inaction has allowed catastrophic levels of air
pollution to build up across the country, especially in the most
deprived areas of our big cities. Indeed, this Government’s
refusal to take even the smallest steps to tackle illegal levels
of air pollution leaves local government on the frontline in the
fight for better air quality.
It is not just me expressing concern at the inaction of this
Government: it is felt by Members of the Minister’s party, too. I
note the speeches of the hon. Members for Tiverton and Honiton
() and for Bromley and
Chislehurst ( ) and indeed that of the hon.
Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme () on the Environment Bill just
two weeks ago. I just wish that they had resisted the pressure of
the Whips and voted for Labour’s amendment to write the WHO
guidelines into the Bill.
Last week, I met Rosamund, the mother of Ella Kissi-Debrah, who
died in 2013. We spoke about the need for urgent action to clean
our air and the fact that COP26 could set an example––a
British-made example––to generations to come. In December 2020,
the coroner ruled that Ella had died as a direct result of air
pollution, as we have heard already today. The coroner said that
he believed that air pollution made a material contribution to
Ella’s death. Like so many, she was exposed to illegal levels of
nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter in excess of WHO
guidelines. I would like the Minister to explain why the
Government voted against Labour’s attempts to clean our air by
writing the guidelines into the Environment Bill.
I pay tribute to the many parents, young people, experts,
campaigners and elected representatives here today who are
working to clean our air and save our lives. I look forward to
working with my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield and
others to deliver Labour’s clean air Act, and the Minister is of
course very welcome to join us, because the future of the planet
and the lives of our people depend on it.
(in the Chair)
I call the Minister, , to respond. Could she kindly leave one minute for
Mr Sheerman to wind up at the end?
17:19:00
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs ()
Indeed I will, Sir Gary, and thank you very much for calling me
to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
I thank the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) for
raising this issue; as he said, this debate is timely and the
issue is important to each and every one of us. Securing it while
world leaders are coming together for the planet in Glasgow shows
just what a consummate professional he is, dovetailing the debate
such a timely way. I wish him well with his own health.
We are all concerned about the impact of air pollution on public
health and we are hosting the COP26 summit at a turning point for
both the planet and health. We have been making progress.
However, over the course of the UK presidency of COP26, we need
to see further progress on commitments to secure global net zero
carbon emissions by the mid-century. It will be a challenge; we
need to see countries coming forward with ambition. Success at
the summit and beyond will rely on all countries rallying behind
the common goal of rapidly reducing carbon emissions and
protecting the planet. Although COP26 is arguably focusing on
greenhouse gases and not air pollutants, we should seize the
opportunity to reduce the emissions of other pollutants from the
same sources, because, as everybody has said, there is a lot of
crossover here.
Air pollution in the UK has reduced significantly over the last
decade, but there is definitely more to do. For example,
emissions of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, have fallen by
11% and nitrogen oxide emissions are at their lowest level since
records began. None the less, air quality is still the top
environmental risk to human health in the UK and there is
absolutely no room for complacency.
We heard from many Members about the challenges to health that
air pollution brings. There is lots to do and I agree that the
use of new technology—whether that is the use of fats in lorries,
or hydrogen technology, which the Government have been investing
in even in the last week, through the hydrogen transport
programme—means that we need to harness the best of British, to
ensure we make the right progress.
That is why the UK is continuing to take urgent action to curb
the impact of air pollution on citizens and communities through
the Environment Bill and the clean air strategy. The action that
we set out in the clean air strategy will reduce the cost of air
pollution to society by £1.7 billion every year from 2020, rising
to £5.3 billion every year from 2030.
My Department cannot achieve the transformation alone; there is
no single, one-size-fits-all silver bullet that will solve the
problem of air pollution. That is why the clean air strategy
outlines a comprehensive programme of action across all parts of
Government. We have heard about the health challenges, the
transport challenges, challenges about where people live—local
authority challenges—and the idling of cars, which local
authorities obviously have a power over. Indeed, we have heard
about the beneficial work being done in both Basingstoke and
Stafford on these issues, to help to empower communities to have
better air quality. However, this process is about us all working
together, because transformational change can only be achieved
through close collaboration with other parts of Government.
Furthermore, there is a vital role for broader leadership from
the health and environmental sectors because much of what has
been spoken about today also relates to how we recycle, how we
use our waste and how we might reuse things. The hon. Member for
Edmonton () and my hon. Friend the Member
for Loughborough () both mentioned that point,
referring to the use of incinerators; if I have time, I hope to
come on to incinerators.
This issue is about the business sector, service providers and
local authorities helping to build acceptance for the bolder
actions that must be taken to tackle the health impacts of air
pollution as a major public health imperative. The hon. Member
for Bootle () spoke about not having a
particular road. However, during the covid crisis we actually had
low-traffic neighbourhoods, but we found that traffic diverted to
other parts of the town or area. There is not an ideal
off-the-peg solution.
We also looked at the fact that, although nitrogen oxide levels
diminished, as has been said, the reduction in PM 2.5 particulate
matter did not change. It is actually much more complex than it
is often presented to be.
The landmark Environment Bill will improve air quality by
establishing a duty to set two new legally binding targets to
reduce that fine particulate matter. We are developing two
targets: a concentration target and a population exposure
reduction target. That is what the clear air zones are about.
Arguably, Huddersfield does not face the same air quality
challenges that we might have in London, Manchester or Bath, or
any city that is looking at putting in place a CAZ. That unique
dual approach is strongly supported by our expert committees—the
air quality expert group and the committee on the medical effects
of air pollutants—and it will be an important part of our
commitment to drive forward tangible and long-lasting
improvements to the air breathe. We will consult on how to bring
forward those groundbreaking targets next year.
As part of the information we take from experts, waste
incineration companies must comply with strict emission limits
under the environmental permitting regulations. They cannot
operate without a permit. Emissions from energy from waste are
monitored. We consult with Public Health England on every
application, and its position on incineration is that a modern,
well-run and regulated incinerator is not a significant risk to
public health. We have to get rid of the challenge of
rubbish.
The Environment Bill will completely revise the local air quality
management framework to create a more strategic structure that
will enable local authorities to take more effective action. It
will also deliver significant improvements to public health by
ensuring that local authorities have more effective powers to
tackle emissions from domestic burning, which is a key source of
harmful fine particulate pollution, as well as the idling that
was mentioned.
Will the Minister give way?
No. I am really sorry, but I have only one minute left. The Bill
introduces new powers to compel vehicle manufacturers to recall
vehicles and non-road mobile machinery if they are found not to
meet the environmental standards that they were approved to
meet—I think that answers a question that was raised earlier. It
will enable the Government to compel manufacturers to recall
vehicles and non-road mobile machinery for failures in their
emission control.
New legislation came into force across England earlier this year
to reduce PM 2.5 pollution by phasing out the burning of small
volumes of wet wood and the sale of all house coal. However, some
residents still rely on coal fires, so we have to work our way
through those challenges.
The Government allocated £880 million to tackle nitrogen dioxide
exceedances under the 2017 air quality plan for nitrogen dioxide.
This year, the first clean air zones were introduced in Bath and
Birmingham, which deliver targeted action to improve air quality
and health and to support economic growth.
We are working hard to provide citizens with the information they
need to protect themselves. I also have a Breathe Easy group.
Those groups do great work, but we have to make sure that we work
with experts so that we can get really timely information to
people such as, “If air pollution is low, carry on as usual. If
it is high, and you have asthma, avoid vigorous activity”. To do
that, we need to do the monitoring that we are now scaling up, so
that we have a good alert system to help protect people. That
system was revamped in 2019.
There is just about a minute left. There is plenty more that we
are doing and that we will carry on doing. We have different
biomass anaerobic digestion issues and, as my neighbour and hon.
Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr
Poulter) said, we have to make sure that policies do not fall
against each other.
In conclusion, taken together, this is a comprehensive package.
However, we have to do more by seizing opportunities and
addressing risks. We need to take action to tackle climate change
and air pollution. We are committed to cleaning up our air and
carrying on our work.
(in the Chair)
Mr Sheerman has the final word.
17:29:00
Mr Sheerman
It has been a very good debate, as it always is with you in the
Chair, Sir Gary. The fact of the matter is that we do not want
too little, too late. We want it now. Children are being
poisoned; 3 million children in our own country are being
poisoned by fumes mainly coming from air pollution from roads. We
have some short-term things. Yes, we need international and
global leadership at COP26, but we need local empowerment and we
need it now.
(in the Chair)
Order.
|
