Air Quality: London

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, air quality has improved significantly in recent years. Average roadside concentrations of NO₂ levels have fallen by 15% since 2010. However, I entirely agree with the noble Lord that more needs to be done, and a great deal is being done. For example, we are using the tax system on vehicles and cars to encourage the purchase of cars with low CO₂ emissions regardless of whether they are petrol, diesel or other fuel types. A great deal is going on with buses and other forms of public transport to ensure that their emissions are as low as we can make them.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, I live in the most polluted part of the UK—central London—and I am still, fortunately, surviving. However, is the Minister aware that when traffic calming measures were introduced—I received this answer in your Lordships’ House—they resulted in greater air pollution? They slowed down the traffic so much in places such as the road through Hyde Park that it created a conflict: how do you deal with both of these issues so that you can slow traffic but not increase pollution?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My noble friend is right: there is work to be done on road design, road junctions, local planning and the design of buildings, all of which can have an impact on air pollution. Certainly traffic calming measures sometimes cause pollution to rise, but that is part of the constant review to find different ways of cleaning the air.