Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Cameron of Dillington and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am just popping up, as one does in Committee, to add my support to Amendment 20 and to most of the other amendments in this group. I do not have much to add to what the proposers and subsequent speakers with their great expertise have said. I support the ambitions behind this group. I am not quite sure whether—or for that matter why—the Government might set their sights on a target more damaging to health than the WHO recommendation, but I believe that we should insist on having challenging targets.

I have read that between 2010 and 2017 there were reckoned to have been more than 30,000 premature deaths per annum in the UK due to air pollution, many of them stemming from excess PM2.5 particulates. In the EU, the figure was reckoned to be 390,000 premature deaths per annum. It occurred to me that if these deaths were being caused by a respiratory viral infection from Wuhan, I suspect that we might have to be in permanent lockdown. However, this pollution has built up gradually and somehow we have become complacent about it.

There are many different sources of PM2.5 particulates and if we tackle them all in a measured way with the right research and a variety of regulations and encouragement, it should be possible to make a big difference. After all, we have managed to achieve a big reduction in nitrous oxide and sulphur dioxide—NOx and SOx as they are called—in recent decades without impinging too much on anyone’s quality of life while actually enhancing everyone’s quality of life. I am confident that we can build on that success with the right research, encouragement and regulation and, as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said, public information.

I realise that a target of 10 micrograms per cubic metre is going to be hard to achieve by 2030 and even measuring it is, I believe—and as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, confirmed in his excellent speech—not a simple matter. For the safety and health of our children alone I believe we must be ambitious on this issue, so I strongly support these amendments.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to two amendments in this group, Amendments 20 and 49. These amendments deal with the same fundamental problem—the impact of air pollution on health. I declare my interests as I chaired the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee inquiry into allergies. I am a Bevan commissioner in Wales. Sadly, I also have family who are exposed to very high levels of pollution because of schooling.

The dignified campaign of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s mother, following her daughter’s tragic death, has shown us why health must be at the centre of air pollution strategies. These amendments are widely called for from across paediatric and child health, chest medicine and related disciplines, and by the Royal College of Physicians, the British Lung Foundation, Asthma UK and others.

Simply meeting limit values is not enough because there is no safe level of pollution exposure. Research in the last five years has shown that air pollutants reach every organ of the body with deleterious effects, ranging from damage to the foetus’s developing lungs in the womb, and the heart and brain, right through to damage to the adult body, causing accelerated ageing of organs throughout life. Very small particles—less than 2.5 micrometers—from anthropogenic sources are a particular problem. They stay suspended in the air for prolonged periods and have a propensity to penetrate deep into parts of the lung where gas exchange occurs. Ultra-fine particles are especially problematic because, in many ways, they behave like a gas. These particles damage the end organ in the lung, the alveoli or distant air sacs where essential lung function occurs.

The UK has the worst death rate from asthma in Europe and is one of the countries with the highest incidence overall. Exposure to air pollution is likely to be a key driver in this disorder, which takes lives and costs the NHS dear. As particles become smaller, their relative surface area increases, which means that chemicals carried on the surface also increase. They are then released into cells and, internally, within parts of cells such as the mitochondria where energy is produced, and they are the source of damaging oxidant chemicals.

The WHO guideline values for particulates are health based. They must be the basis of the minimum targets set, recognising that, in July this year, these will be further revised downwards. Large epidemiological studies have shown that there is no safe level of pollutant exposure and therefore no safe threshold. We have a huge problem. Eight thousand schools are in places which exceed air quality limits. Some 25% of all car journeys are school runs. One in four hospitals and one in three GP surgeries is in an area where air pollution is above the WHO limit for fine particulate matter. Twenty years ago, the Government’s own Air Quality Expert Group recommended,

“Impact analysis of policies or specific developments, whether for industry, transport, housing etc., should take account of the interlinkages of emissions of air quality and climate change pollutants.”


To the shame of us all, this has not occurred.

Simplistic thresholds are not good enough for health. Health will not improve unless the chemical characteristics and sources of particles are tackled. Those from anthropogenic sources, such as diesel engines, and road and brake wear are likely to be far more toxic than particulates originating from geological or natural sources.

Daellenbach and colleagues’ recent research, published in Nature last November, points strongly to this type of man-produced particulates being most closely associated with adverse health outcomes. This type of particle is closely associated with tissue damage. They derive principally from traffic—from diesel, brake wear and tyre friction on the road surface, as well as from domestic biomass burning, such as log burners. Simply eliminating diesel engines will not be enough, unless braking systems, road surfaces and activities that generate particulates are tackled. It is worth noting that, during Covid, there have been reports of such air pollution actually worsening in some areas, due to the large number of small lorries and trucks involved in domestic deliveries.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Cameron of Dillington and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 15th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, first, for the purposes of all of Report, I declare my interests as a farmer and landowner, as chair of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, and chair of the advisory board of the Government’s Global Food Security programme on research. In Amendment 29, we have the key to getting the whole new farming and environmental land management programme to work on the ground. It is exciting that we have a new approach to helping farmers produce our food and manage our countryside. But with some basic ELM schemes still being piloted, neither we nor even the Government know exactly where we are going.

The pilot stage of ELMS is, in a way, providing the Government with their own training. I hope they will learn from it, but one thing is certain: farmers and land managers will need all the help and training they can get if we are to make this new approach work on the ground. Because there is little time between now and the putting in place of thousands of ELMS contracts, we must get a training scheme in place as soon as possible—training a farmer not only in how he can best judge what he and his land can provide of value for the nation, but in how best to deliver that value. With proper training it will be better for farmers, better for our flora and fauna, better for visitors and above all, as others have said, better for the taxpayers, who might then get the best returns that their money can buy.

Farming is one of the most isolated jobs in the world. Farmers are not necessarily slow to change, but without some form of proper training scheme it will be hard for them to engage successfully with this brave new world. Without their successful engagement, not only will the brave new world not happen but farmers themselves will fail financially, in their droves.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I call the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon. No? Then we will move on to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.