Environmental Targets (Fine Particulate Matter) (England) Regulations 2022

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to this SI. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has spoken in detail about the lack of ambition and urgency in the Government’s regulations on fine particulates, and previous speakers have made powerful arguments for more ambitious targets.

I fear I feel like a single-track CD that is on continual replay, continuously playing the same track or, in my case, repeating the same arguments. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, of which I am currently a member, has drawn the attention of the House to the issue of reducing concentrations of PM2.5, the pollutant causing the most harm to human health. The extensive consultation carried out by Defra drew responses on this regulation from Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the Woodland Trust and Asthma + Lung UK, all of whom jail felt the annual mean concentration target—the AMCT—of 10 micrograms per cubic metre at the sites of the highest level of concentration by December 2040 was not adequate. The Royal College of Physicians has written to me saying:

“Air pollution and poor air quality are a significant and growing public health challenge. In 2016, the RCP alongside the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health published Every Breath We Take. This report examined the impact of exposure to air pollution across the life course.”


The report found that around 40,000 premature deaths every year in the UK were attributable to exposure to outdoor air pollution.

The Healthy Air Coalition stated that the EU Commission proposes that this same target, of 10 micrograms per cubic metre, be reached by 2030 —10 years earlier than Defra’s target of 2040. The Healthy Air Coalition also asked why the requirement for a minimum number of monitoring stations will not come into effect until January 2028. Without these stations it is extremely difficult to have confidence in our ability to monitor the particulates and meet the targets, even at their very unambitious levels. Defra’s response to the questions on this were that it expected the monitor network to be completed in the next three years, but it had allowed for unavoidable slippage in building, networking and testing. Therefore, the legal requirement was going to be 2028.

The consultation responses from all quarters were clear that the targets were unambitious and should be higher. Despite this, as with all the other five areas of environmental targets, no change was made to the final targets. As this is the last of the six target areas to be debated, I ask the Minister how much the consultation exercise has cost in total? How many hours of Defra staff time were spent analysing and collating the responses? Given the very large number of responses—over 181,000—were extra resources deployed and temporary staff employed in order to help deal with the level of responses?

Defra spends a lot of time consulting on various pieces of legislation. I therefore imagine that the consultation department is used to the processes involved and is efficient in collating the resulting responses. On this occasion, to totally ignore and override the submissions received, and stick to the original targets, gives a very strong impression that Defra’s mind was already made up long before the consultation started. Defra was only paying lip service to the process. Meanwhile, those who suffer from asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory tract conditions, long-term and short-term, are left with no hope of improved air quality in the immediate future. That really is unacceptable. Given the level of concern on the total lack of meaningful response to the consultation exercise, if the Minister is not able to answer my questions on costs and staff resources this evening I would be grateful if he could write to me with the necessary information and put a copy of his response in the Library.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, can I challenge the noble Baroness on what she said? While it was very interesting, she focused entirely on outdoor pollution from PM. There is a much greater problem of indoor pollution from PM, about which we know much less. There is much less monitoring of it but it comes from damp houses and from the chemicals we use; it comes from a whole range of issues. She referred specifically to the outdoors and then to people suffering from asthma. They are going to be suffering indoors as well, given the pollution inside our houses. This is why the whole of air pollution is so difficult. Theoretically, we know much more about outside pollution, which is much more heavily monitored. Even the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said how difficult it has been to reduce particulates in the City of London, despite how much the traffic has reduced. Yes, this is a hugely complex and very difficult and sensitive issue, but we need to look at it in the round. I have no doubt that by 2030 we will have a huge reduction, but it is going to be totally impossible to get to the required level for every single area in England.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to everyone for their valuable contributions to this debate. To answer directly the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, I say that this is not about a lack of ambition. I have had many opportunities to speak in the House on this issue and I share entirely noble Lords’ ambition to achieve it, but we have to comply with the law. That is why the regret amendment, praying in aid 5 micrograms per cubic metre, is not achievable.

The World Health Organization is entirely right to push countries to be ever more ambitious, but we have to comply with Section 4 of the Environment Act. To do that, anybody who is in government or aspires to government cannot just stand up and say, “We want to achieve more”, in the full knowledge that it is impossible. We would therefore be breaking the law and I am not prepared to do that. However, I entirely accept that there are real and genuine concerns and I want our Environment Act, which is world-leading, to deliver ever greener and more environmentally friendly measures.

The EU is also mentioned in the regret amendment and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, is absolutely right: it seeks to achieve 5 micrograms per cubic metre, but we have to achieve the target that we set. We cannot just pluck one out that sounds good and makes the Government look as if they are listening to every single campaigner who wants a reduction, quite understandably. We want to produce a target that we can achieve, and we can set out clearly how we are going to do it.

To say that Ministers have somehow fiddled with the evidence to be less ambitious, for whatever reason, is absolute nonsense. The suite of targets that we consulted on was the result of significant scientific evidence, collected and developed over preceding years, and included input from evidence partners and independent experts, supported by over 800 pages of published evidence. We have full confidence in the final suite of targets, which represents a robust analysis of that. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said that this was a pessimistic view, but in government you can set a target and seek to achieve it before the date. We think we can get to the low-hanging fruit and show a trajectory much earlier than the date of 2040.