Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill [HL]

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 8th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome Rosamund to the Public Gallery; I congratulate her on everything that she has achieved in this area and condole with her on the fact that she has had to. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on bringing the Bill for us to consider.

I will give some words from history: “We saw the lungs of little ones not developing to full size, projecting that, by age 50, they would have the lungs of someone aged 65 and all the attendant health issues that would result”. Other writing details a young person in hospital with pneumonia being strongly advised to leave the city if they did not want their life to be foreshortened because of the air that they breathed. Is this from Victorian times or are they Elizabethan writings? No, it is testimony from today for today. On the basis of that at least, it is high time that we pass the Bill in short order.

There is nothing new in clean air: the first legislation was passed in 1306. But the most famous Act, which is slightly newer, is the Clear Air Act 1956, which was a result of the Great Smog of 1952. At this stage, the United Kingdom was world leading in this area, but we are not today.

We have heard from noble Lords what the Bill does. It could not be simpler: it enshrines the right to breathe clean air. It is impressive in many ways, not least because continuous improvement on the levels of the pollutants listed, year on year, is built into it. It is also impressive because it looks not just at pollutants that harm humans but at pollutants that extinguish our environment.

Part of the problem with clean air is its intangibility. If water came out of our taps that was brown in colour and foul in stench, we would not go anywhere near it; air is more complex, but just as significant to the health of everyone in this country. What will be the consequence or fallout, if you will, if we do nothing? The situation will continue: some 9,500 lives will be ended before their time in London, and that will be multiplied across the country. Clean air, or the lack thereof, is the largest environmental health threat in the United Kingdom.

I say to my noble friend the Minister that we need to look at what education can do. I urge him to speak to the Schools Minister to have the nursery rhyme reintroduced and urgently updated in our schools: not “London’s Burning” but “London’s Choking”. It should be rewritten for the cities up and down our country.

Similarly, what can we ourselves do in terms of education? A fabulous app, Tenzing, tells us the most polluted streets and roads in our capital and across our country. I advise avoiding cycling on Euston Road and the Strand, to name but two. This shows what we can do with data in real time and how technology can help us in this fight for a better environment for the benefit of all of us. The nitrogen oxides in Kingston park are 40% lower than in Green Park in the centre of our capital city.

This is a comprehensive and impressive Bill. It is appalling that we need it, but we do. I will give another example: a marathon runner contracting asthma on our streets as a result of simply trying to keep fit. One individual testimony from someone running on our streets should go to those who are running our streets. But it is for more than our athletes or those suffering from asthma: clean air is so self-evidently for everyone. We often talk about the beating heart of our city, but we should talk much more about the collective lungs. From Storrington to Swansea, Warrington, Brentford, Bristol and beyond, breathing clean air is a human right for all of us.

But it is for more than just our cities: this is for our country. There could barely be a more fundamental right than breathing clean air, yet millions are denied it daily. It is high time to act, for all of us, so that we can breathe more easily—in short, to clear the air. I ask the Minister just this: will he support the Bill and save our breath?