Artificial Light and Noise: Effects on Human Health (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Baroness Neuberger Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Neuberger (CB)]

My Lords, the whole idea behind the work of the committee that led to this report was that we might be able to point to valuable public health interventions to improve quality of life and reduce the pressures on the NHS in the UK. We urge the Government to reconsider their policy on light and noise pollution and to take these issues more seriously; every speaker so far has said precisely that. The noble Baroness, Lady Brown, has already made the case very powerfully. I pay tribute to her as a brilliant chair of the committee, to our clerk, Matthew Manning, to our policy adviser, Thomas Hornigold and, of course, to our special adviser, Professor Russell Foster.

I must declare my interest as chair of the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust because I had to send my apologies for a meeting this afternoon in order to attend this debate today. When I did, the chairman of that committee, who is a very distinguished doctor, wrote back and said, “Of course. It’s really important”. We all want less light at night and less unwelcome noise; he just made the point that it is really important. This matter concerns absolutely everybody.

It is for that reason that I find the Government’s response so very disappointing. There is real public interest here. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, said, we had a huge response to this report, much more than we normally do to a Select Committee report. People mind about this, and we should take it seriously. We know that noise pollution is detrimental to human health and well-being. We heard quite a lot of the data. We heard good evidence on annoyance and sleep disturbance relating to cardiovascular disease—that is, heart attacks in relation to road traffic noise—about which the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said something. There is also some evidence on metabolic impacts, in particular diabetes.

We have heard about the estimate from the World Health Organization and the European Environment Agency back in 2018 that more than 100 million people were exposed to harmful levels of environmental noise pollution. People are saying that there are an estimated 48,000 new cases of heart disease and 12,000 premature deaths every year in Europe, and so on. We know quite a lot about the data—although, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, we could probably know a great deal more.

I add to that; this is really important. Based on new research, the World Health Organization has concluded that the negative health effects caused by prolonged exposure to environmental noise are likely to occur at much lower noise level thresholds than previously thought. This implies that better management of noise generally would considerably benefit the UK population. It goes precisely to the point about the number of days off taken for ill health because of the stress caused by these noise problems. We know that people mind about it.

I could go on about this for a long time but I shall not because I have a specific question for the Minister. We were told that noise pollution issues span government departments. Better interdepartmental co-ordination is clearly warranted, therefore, but the Government did not accept our recommendation for an expert advisory group on noise pollution—as there is for air pollution—despite witnesses to the committee making it clear that there was no one place to go with new and emerging evidence of harms. In their response, the Government simply spelled out the good work led by Defra that is already going on with the collaboration of UKHSA and others, to which the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, referred. We commended that work but, if the effects of noise pollution are as great as the World Health Organization and the UK Health Security Agency suggest, what is going on now is simply inadequate. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some explanation as to why the eminently sensible recommendation for an expert advisory group was rejected. Given the evidence, that decision seems somewhat perverse.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, mentioned, the Government argued that we need flexibility. They said:

“Flexibility must be maintained to draw in the most appropriate expertise to individual areas of research, rather than relying on a group of individuals to embody all necessary knowledge across the board”.


Of course that is the case—it is obvious—but that might equally be true about air pollution. An expert advisory group does not have all the knowledge at its fingertips; it has people on it who know whom to go to in order to get the material they want. It was seriously perverse to turn down the recommendation on that basis. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some explanation.

I could go on but I shall not. I want simply to add two other things. We know that light pollution is much more difficult to measure at the moment. We cannot calculate a burden of disease in the same way as we can for noise pollution—probably because of a lack of data, which has been referred to on all sides of the Committee—but it is interesting that, in Japan, a series of longitudinal studies have measured the light in people’s environments. We lack that in the UK, so it seems absolutely essential for us to say now that we will start to undertake those sorts of studies. The UK Health Security Agency is doing great work in this area but it needs to go further.

If you talk to hospital patients and staff who work in hospitals at night, they will tell you all about exposure to light and how incredibly disturbing it is. People who have been in hospital for a long period—we have rather a lot of them at UCLH—will tell you that the worst thing once they come out is not the general convalescence but trying to get back their sleep patterns, which have been disturbed over a long period because of exposure to light. We need light in hospitals but we could do better there, too. The Government need to take the issue of light more seriously and say more about it. They need to give us a really good explanation for why they did not accept our recommendation for an expert advisory group.

Lastly, the Government already have in UKHSA a team of experts on circadian rhythms and the impacts of light on health, but we need to see this as a single point for evidence gathering and co-opting external expertise. I would argue that, as well as having an expert advisory group on noise, the Government should think about having an expert advisory group on light.

Religion in the United Kingdom

Baroness Neuberger Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neuberger]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Singh of Wimbledon for introducing the debate. I will set it against the context of the polarisation that we are seeing between people who have faith and those who do not. That is something on which we have not yet spent enough time in this debate. We also see a broad lack of public understanding of the roles that faith can play in wider society. That is something I urge the Minister and the Government to reassess, by looking at the contributions that faiths have made. I will give some quick examples.

The first of these is the hospice movement, in which the UK has been, without doubt, the world leader. The modern hospice movement was founded by a profoundly believing Anglican, who built on the work already done by the Sisters of Charity, a Catholic order from Dublin. Both Dame Cicely Saunders and the Sisters of Charity founded our modern hospice movement, which has changed the way that we view death and dying in this country. It has been a good thing for all of us; it is something brought to this society by people of faith, because of what their faith told them about how people should approach their death. This is something that we have now managed to do in a multifaith, as well as a single faith, way—indeed in a non-denominational and non-faith way—but it started with faith.

The second is work with people with enduring mental illness. More than 20 years ago I was struck by the report of the Health Advisory Service into how people who are homeless and had long-term mental illness were treated. Often the line from the healthcare professionals was: “Do not bring your smelly homeless people to us”. It was the churches, the synagogues, the mosques, the gurdwaras, the temples and whoever else who picked up the pieces and sometimes—though not always—showed kindness. It is clear that faith organisations can make a great contribution to the well-being of people with mental disorders. It is also an activity and task carried by many faith organisations, which largely goes unrecognised by government.

So too does the work of many faith organisations, including my own West London Synagogue—I declare an interest here—in working with destitute asylum seekers. They cannot return to their own country, but are caught in a mess not of their own making caused by the unbelievable length of time it takes for applications to be processed and appeals to be heard. They are not allowed to work, either. The Government may not relish what some faith organisations do to help these destitute people, but they have to recognise that these people are still human and still here. This needs to be acknowledged. The noble Lord, Lord Janner, talked about Mitzvah Day, and it was on Mitzvah Day last week when members of my synagogue and people of many other faiths helped asylum seekers around London.

It is not only about what religion can bring but about how people are and what they believe. It is about the fundamentals of what makes human beings tick. It is about the need to give as well as receive—the volunteering and gift relationship ideas so rooted in faith. Governments have not been very good at recognising the role that religion can play in wider society. So will the Minister say whether the Government will now consider drawing in people of faith to debates about education for everyone, volunteering for everyone and the need to learn to give and receive? Politicians are no use at teaching these things, but religion can and at its best does. It does that day by day, not always well, but often brilliantly, setting a tone—as the noble Lord, Lord Patten, has just said—for wider society which the Government could and should recognise.