Air Quality: London

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, given that the mayor is now worried about air pollution in London, has the Minister had any conversations with him about whether his decision not to proceed with introducing congestion charging in west London has helped to improve the health of people in London or make it worse?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I have not had a conversation with the mayor. That answers the first of the noble Lord’s questions. Congestion charging has had some effect, but not a great deal, on air pollution. We use a combination of factors such as encouraging people to use bicycles, to walk or to drive vehicles which do not use the worst kinds of fuels—all play a part. We need to use a combination of factors.