Air Quality (Diesel Emissions in Urban Centres)
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a bill to make provision about urban air quality targets; to require vehicle emissions targets and testing to reflect on-road driving conditions; to provide powers for local authorities to establish low diesel emissions zones and pedestrian-only areas; to restrict the use of roads in urban centres by diesel vehicles; to make provision about the promotion of the development of electric tram systems and buses and taxis powered by liquefied petroleum gas in urban centres; and for connected purposes.
The invisible hand of diesel fumes is prematurely killing some 1,000 people per week in the UK. The Bill is designed to put the death-by-diesel epidemic into reverse, saving thousands of lives and billions of pounds. Today, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have published a joint report that shows that there is now killing by diesel on an industrial scale, with some 40,000 premature deaths each year. The Bill is supported by those organisations, the British Lung Foundation and the British Heart Foundation because, as is becoming increasingly apparent to all of us, air pollution is killing people through lung cancer, through lung diseases such as bronchitis and asthma, and through strokes, heart attacks and heart disease. It is also linked to diabetes, obesity and dementia. It is a public health disaster. In the UK, it is causing the loss of some 6 million working days a year and costing our economy £20 billion a year. In Europe, it is costing the economy €240 billion a year and killing 380,000 people.
Diesel particulates that are absorbed by pregnant women can harm and hurt the foetus, causing low birth weight, organ damage, premature birth and stillbirth. Children who live in urban and highly polluted areas suffer from reduced lung capacity of about 10% on average and lower lung function in later life. Diesel particulates cause, rather than just exacerbate, asthma because they cause an allergic reaction and cell mutation in the lungs. In children, they cause coughs, wheezes, asthma attacks, worse concentration, worse memory and worse physical and mental development. Children are nearer the ground, so they suffer more. The first duty of mothers and fathers is to protect their children, but they are unable to protect them from this awful, poisonous belching.
In 1952, 12,000 people died in the London smog. Today, similar numbers are dying every year owing to the invisible fumes that are being emitted on an industrial scale by diesel-powered vehicles. Instead of coal fires, the new killer is diesel. The volume of traffic has grown tenfold in the last 60 years. Much has been done to stop the emission of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, sulphur and lead, despite the protestations of the motor manufacturers that it was impossible. Nitrogen dioxide and particulates now offer a new catastrophic threat to human life and life expectancy, and that threat has grown exponentially. In the 1980s, diesel cars made up only 10% of new cars, but by 2000 it was 14%. Between 2000 and now, that figure has grown from 14% to 50% of new cars that are pumping out diesel particulates and nitrogen dioxide.
The Government want to reduce carbon dioxide, and motor manufacturers took that as a pretext to encourage diesel instead of trams, hydrogen or green transport. In a similar way, after world war two, motoring manufacturers pulled all the trams out of our city centres for their own commercial interests. Now, the contribution of diesel to climate change is no better—indeed, it is arguably worse—than that of petrol, and we are passively smoking diesel emissions that are costing £20 billion and 40,000 lives.
Taxation levels on diesel and petrol are on a par and do not reflect the cost to the environment and to health. Laboratory testing across the EU systematically understates the amount of emissions in the air that we breathe, and road emissions contain levels of carbon dioxide that are two thirds higher than in lab tests. For nitrogen dioxide they are four or five times higher.
Things are made a lot worse by the revelation that Volkswagen was caught black-handed cheating emissions testing, and the difference between using a defeat device in a laboratory test and out in the field is twentyfold— 20 times the emissions are belching into children’s lungs from Volkswagen cars that are out on the road compared with those in the laboratory. Clearly, we need to sort that out. We have had the malignant growth of diesel pollution, and the mushrooming cost to public health. We have had the disaster of the industry saying that it will self-regulate but doing the opposite, and the first duty of a Government and a Parliament is to protect our children, the nation and the people of Britain.
The Bill will ensure that vehicle emissions testing in 2017 reflects on-road driving conditions such as accelerating, decelerating and standing still, and it will detect cheating devices such as those used by Volkswagen. The Bill extends low diesel emissions zones and pedestrianisation, and it restricts diesel vehicles that fail the Euro 5 emissions standards from polluted urban areas—those are the oldest and most polluting diesel cars, some of which have a worse pollution impact than lorries. It encourages the development of green public transport, including tram systems such as the one I pioneered in Croydon when I was leader of the council. It encourages liquefied petroleum gas, hydrogen-powered or electric-powered buses and taxis, and that in turn encourages walking and cycling because there will be cleaner air and less congestion.
We also need pollution warnings as we do with flood warnings—perhaps the Environment Agency should be given that responsibility because the Met Office has been told to shut up since the last time it gave a pollution warning in April 2014. The public have a right to know when they are at risk so that they can stay indoors, or roads can be closed because of excessive pollution. I hope that the House will support the Bill, and that the Chancellor will take the opportunity of the Budget on 16 March to support green transport and ensure that the polluter pays principle is carried through to taxation. We must signal to consumers who have bought diesel cars in good faith for the future, and ensure that measures are transmitted into behaviour, as with previous signals. We need the right signals so that we satisfy our fundamental ambition and duty to protect the lives of our citizens, and ensure that the air that we breathe in our cities is clean and that the lives we lead are sustainable.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Geraint Davies, Peter Aldous, Dr Sarah Wollaston, Andrew Gwynne, Stewart McDonald, John Mc Nally, Jonathan Edwards, Alison Thewliss, Chris Stephens, Rob Marris, Ann Clwyd, and Ms Margaret Ritchie.
Geraint Davies accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 March, and to be printed (Bill 138).