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

Lord Tope Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

I think I have made it very clear to the Minister where our concerns lie. I know that I have asked an awful lot of questions but this is really important. We know that time and again senior health professionals have made representations to the Government because they are concerned about the huge health implications for our population if the ambitious targets that we would like the Government to aim for are simply not met. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I will be brief, but I must first declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and, more particularly for this debate, as a co-president of London Councils, the body that represents all 32 London boroughs and the City of London.

In 2019, I introduced the Emissions Reduction (Local Authorities in London) Bill to grant local authorities greater powers to reduce emissions in their areas. The Bill was supported by the City of London and all the London boroughs but, unfortunately and inevitably, it made little progress beyond this House. Subsequently, although the provisions of the Bill received cross-party support as amendments to the then Environment Bill, they did not make it into the final Act.

Fine particulate matter is the pollutant most damaging to human health. It is a dangerous carcinogen that penetrates deep into our lungs and bloodstream. The two air quality targets set out in the draft regulations which we are debating today are an opportunity to make a significant impact on the level of PM2.5 in ambient air. Many emissions are from non-road sources, collectively referred to as “combustion plant”. Relatively little public attention is paid to that but tackling those emissions will be crucial to reducing PM2.5 levels.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, the City of London saw a 40% decline in levels of nitrogen dioxide compared with 2019 but levels of PM2.5 remained roughly the same despite the significant fall in transport activity. To achieve a meaningful reduction in PM2.5 levels we need to address non-road emissions. One way of doing this would be to empower local authorities to place limits on the use of highly polluting plant in their area.

The proposed fine particulate matter annual mean concentration target of 10 micrograms per cubic metre is the right approach. There is consensus among many air quality experts that a 2030 target is achievable and proportionate. The Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants published a statement in January 2022 in strong support of a reduction in PM2.5 to 5 micrograms per cubic metre, with 10 micrograms per cubic metre as an interim target.

The Clean Air Fund’s 2022 report, The Pathway to Healthy Air in the UK, concluded that by 2030 most of the UK will comply with 10 micrograms per cubic metre if policies already planned are implemented. It goes on to state that the achievement of 10 micrograms by 2030 can be done at virtually no additional cost. The report details various positive health impacts of achieving the target by 2030. I noted the Minister’s concern for the effect on business. He may be interested to know that the City of London, which has some interest in business, has already adopted the target date of 2030.

These impacts we are talking about include 98,000 life years gained, 3,600 fewer respiratory hospital admissions per year and a reduction in the number of symptom days in asthmatic children of 388,000 per year. In these circumstances, will the Minister at the very least consider bringing forward the implementation date to 2030? If he will not, in his reply will he state clearly why the Government are so determined to set so unambitious a target?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, because I thought her analysis of this statutory instrument was excruciatingly thorough and coruscating, quite honestly. It was possibly her finest hour, but I am sure she is going to have many more.

I would have liked to have stopped the Minister several times during his opening remarks because, quite honestly, I would have liked to refute things or challenge them because they were so off-beam at times with some of the language he used. He said things such as “What would we want to snuff out?” I can give him a list and explain very clearly how we could achieve much tougher targets.

These targets make exactly the same mistakes as the targets on water that we argued over last week, which is that they are too little, too late. The Government have had the opportunity to show the public that they care about the quality of our water and air. They say they want to improve human health and reduce environmental pollution and that there is some urgency to their actions but that is absolute nonsense. I have seen no ambition in these proposed targets to reduce the thousands of premature deaths due to air pollution that this country suffers from.

The Minister said that we would restrict freedoms. What about the freedom to breathe clean air and not be ill from breathing the air in our urban spaces? That is absolutely a human right and something we could deal with. The Minister talks about restrictions but what we can do is make it easier for people to do the right thing. We can make it easy for them not to use their cars by giving them decent public transport. This is something that the Government do not seem to be able to tie up at all. They cannot see any relationship between a carrot and a stick. I know that Ken Livingstone is not held in the highest esteem any more but he really understood that and when he brought in the congestion charge, he massively improved public transport. It made a huge difference to travel patterns in London.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said she was looking for ambition. She has certainly failed to find any ambition in these targets. It is totally unacceptable that the Government are proposing to delay compliance with the World Health Organization’s air quality guideline for fine particulate matter. Of course it is a complex problem but, as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, pointed out, not only road traffic but plant is responsible. We could insulate buildings, which would mean that people used less energy, for example, and therefore polluted less.

A target was published in 2005 that this country will not now hit until 2040. That is appalling, isn’t it? It is the same as with the sewage targets: putting everything back a couple of decades means that most of us will not live to see a country where we have clean air and clean water. I have no problem making sacrifices for the next generation—I do so on a daily basis—but I prefer to make sacrifices that deliver improvements while I am alive, if possible. And I am saying that it is possible, but this Government choose not to do it.

The World Health Organization has halved its guideline for PM2.5 to 5 micrograms per cubic metre. That happened over a year ago. So not only are we delaying targets; the targets we are using are already out of date. The science has moved on but this Government and this country have not.

I have a few questions. I realise that they will not be answered today but I would like them answered. I am happy to write to the Minister, but I will now read them into the record. First, are the Government taking literally the wording of Section 4(2) of the Environment Act 2021:

“Before making regulations under sections 1 to 3 which set or amend a target the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the target, or amended target, can be met”?


Doing so would mean the Government not protecting anyone until the last person in the entire country was protected from air pollution standards set in 2005. I would like clarity on that.

Secondly, what computer modelling can the Government possibly be using that shows that the UK cannot or will not achieve the WHO’s old air quality guideline until 2040? That modelling has to be out of date; it cannot possibly be anything that any of us on this side of the Chamber could have come up with.

Thirdly, are the Government aware that official modelling done for the revision of the Gothenburg protocol shows that less than 5% of the UK population would be exposed to more than 6 micrograms per cubic metre of PM2.5 by 2030, and only 8,000 people above 7 micrograms per cubic metre? That is the baseline case.

Fourthly, are the Government aware—actually, I think the Minister did mention this—that the European Commission is proposing to comply with the old air quality guideline for PM2.5 by 2030, 10 years earlier than this Government, and that it is proposing to halve the current level for nitrogen dioxide by the same date? Where is our Brexit dividend? People will say, “I voted for Brexit. I want my dividend. Where is it in this SI?”

Instead of this nonsense and all the flannel we keep being given about targets, I ask the Government to support Ella’s Law—my Bill that would make clean air a human right. It is in the other place at the moment, and I suggest that all noble Lords on the opposite side of the Chamber lobby their friends and family to sign up to the Bill and say, “This is what would actually fix the problem we are facing.”

These targets will not fix the problem. People will suffer and die, and the Government will never hear the end of it while we few are on this side of the House.

Deregulation Bill

Lord Tope Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Lords Chamber

If the rest of the country wants to or has to conform to the legislation, so be it. In many, many occasions, under the London Local Authorities Act, London differs from other parts of the country. That is what that Act is about: to give London the ability to do things that it needs to do on the basis of London’s necessities. I ask the Minister to consider meeting us again to discover whether we cannot, before Third Reading, have London removed from this process. It will not do anything different from the rest of the country: it will be part of it, but it will do it in its own way. I beg to move.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Hanham very strongly and very warmly. I have no particular London interest to declare now, other than that as a resident of London for many years. I was until last May, when I took voluntary retirement, a London borough councillor for 40 years and leader of the council for 13 of those years. If I learned anything from that experience, it was not to mess around with the waste collection system unless it really needed it.

The very simple question to the Minister is: why do the Government feel that London’s system—which, as far as I am aware, has worked extremely well for the last six or seven years and meets all the Government’s requirements in this Bill—is so in need of change that it requires what is in effect eight pages of primary legislation, if you include what is in the Bill and in the schedule, to correct it? What is so wrong with it? The current system is decriminalised and has an appeals system. In fact, it is working so well that there has never actually been an appeal on waste, but the system works well because it is the same or a similar system to that used for parking appeals. There have been just a few parking appeals over the years, so we can say that the system works well and would work well should there ever be an appeal within the waste system.

The other purpose may be to bring London into line with the rest of the country. Why is that necessary? As my noble friend said, there are many issues—two of which we will be discussing next week—on which London has different and separate legislation and provisions to those of the rest of the country. This is one that has existed since the 2007 Act. As we have said, it has worked well and I am not aware of any difficulties, although perhaps we might be about to hear them, so why not leave well alone? This is a system that is tried and tested, is working well and is hugely less cumbersome, time consuming and cost consuming than that proposed in the Bill.

If the Minister is not in a position to agree to these amendments tonight, may I echo the request from my noble friend that he at least agree to meet with us, try to understand our concerns and see whether we can, at least, reach a sensible solution that does not bring such lengthy, cumbersome and unnecessary burdens on London, which already has a much better system that is working? This is not deregulation; it is excessive regulation and does not belong in a Deregulation Bill.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Tope, I do not have any current London government interests to declare, although I was the founding chair of the artist currently known as London Councils, which was then called the Association of London Government, for five years. I was a London borough leader for a number of years and an elected representative in London for 26 years, and for two—or perhaps four—years I was chair of a London organisation called London Waste Action.

I find Clause 44(6) to be quite bizarre, particularly in a Deregulation Bill. What I understand has happened is that the Government looked for a model of deregulating some of the complexities outside London, found that London had a system that worked and decided to replicate something like it for the rest of the country. However, because of some natural desire in the relevant government department to make things more rather than less complex, which this Bill is supposed to stop from happening, they produced a system that is more complicated than the London one. Then, for ease of simplicity and universality—quite against the principles of localism and devolution, which we understood the Government were in favour of—they decided to impose this more complicated system on London, even though London has a system that works perfectly well.

I frankly do not understand the logic of this. The model that exists in London has emerged through a London Local Authorities Bill, which was passed into legislation by Parliament; it is a locally determined scheme that decriminalises the system and provides a system of appeals which, as the two noble Lords who have spoken have indicated, has worked well since it was introduced. The Bill before us would sweep it away and replace it with a more complicated system, which would necessarily introduce a degree of delay. The process that the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, has described—of forming an intent, telling someone that you might have an intent, then telling them that you have had an intent and giving them an opportunity to make representations and an appeal at each stage—is unnecessarily cumbersome.

The reality is that we are talking about people who are dumping waste. They do so—I have watched it happen, taken photographs and tried to get something done about it. They turn up late at night with a van and they dump a pile of waste somewhere, on the assumption that local authorities will sort it out. The reality is that this is not a process where you need this incredibly complicated system to deal with it. You simply need to pursue those who are offending. What we will create as a result of the Bill is something that will be more bureaucratic and slower, will cost more and will go against the principles of devolution, because it was a system developed by London local authorities in the first instance.

Waste is a big matter—as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said, “Never go against issues of waste”—and is the third-largest item of expenditure within local authorities. It is a massive part of the business of local government. Here we have a scheme that was developed by London local authorities and that is working well. Now the Government want to come in heavy-handed and against the principles of deregulation and devolution, and impose a complicated, overly bureaucratic and expensive system.

I am sure that the Minister will recognise that Clause 44(6) has crept in by accident, along with its accompanying Schedule 12, and agree to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, and simply take them out of the Bill so that we can allow the current arrangements to continue. However, if he does not have the authority to agree that tonight, I hope that he will meet with the noble Baroness, myself and others who might be interested, along with London Councils, so that there can be a proper discussion about this before we get to Third Reading. It can then be remedied at that stage, either by the Government or perhaps by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, introducing a similar amendment and putting it to the vote.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord De Mauley]

I am quite happy to do that. If I cannot do so during this debate, I will let the noble Lord know whatever information I can find for him.

Clause 44 would ensure that this best practice is adopted and that additional safeguards for the individual are available across all boroughs.

I understand that my noble friend is concerned that the process of issuing penalties will take too long. We need to get the balance right between protecting individuals’ civil liberties and dealing with behaviours which damage local neighbourhoods. We intend that this is reflected in legislation. Since the Deregulation Bill was first published in draft, we have amended Clause 44 so that local authorities will not have to issue multiple warnings to people who repeat the same behaviour of causing harm to the local amenity within a year.

We also believe in a fair and measured approach to penalties. A shoplifter committing a first offence may be issued with a £90 penalty notice for disorder. My noble friend’s amendment would levy penalties of £110 for mistakes and carelessness with Londoners’ bins. Clause 44 allows us to set the level of penalties at between £60 and £80 because we do not believe such mistakes and carelessness should be penalised more heavily than shoplifting. I understand my noble friend’s focus on London and know she would like the city to be treated as a special case. However, other cities in England have, for example, high-density housing, transient populations and student populations. I am sure she would accept that a proportionate, fair approach should apply throughout England.

My noble friend asked why the clause needed to be so wordy. We appreciate that the clause and the schedule are long and look complicated. There are two reasons for that. First, we want to be clear about the process that local authorities must go through as we do not want householders to be penalised for a first-time, inadvertent mistake. Secondly, we are looking to align two different systems, set out in the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the London Local Authorities Act 2007.

To summarise, this clause as it stands will introduce the protection that a household needs from being punished for a simple mistake or for people throwing the wrong rubbish into someone else’s bin. It will align all of England with a sensible approach that keeps residents informed and levels of penalties proportionate.

My noble friend Lord Tope asked whether I would be prepared to meet him about this, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, asked the same question. Of course I would be prepared to do that, but I would not want to raise any expectation that the Government will change their position on this. I ask my noble friend to withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Tope]

Is the Minister able to answer the question that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, put to him about the number of prosecutions? As I understand it, he does not have that information to hand. The fact is that in the six or seven years of operating the scheme there has not been one single appeal against the issue of penalty charge notices. Would he conclude, as I do, that that suggests there have been very few issued and even fewer judged to have been unfairly issued?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I originally put the question to my noble friend of whether he would be prepared to meet us. He said he will and I thank him for that. I will take up his offer as soon as we can so that we can try and get some sense into this before Third Reading.

I have stood in the same position as the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and I have at times thought that the brief in front of me was absolute rubbish. I have to say that I think that this falls into that category. This is not about one person putting a bit of rubbish into somebody else’s recycling bag. This is about bringing into the whole country a decriminalised system of enforcement of waste in relation to receptacles, dustbins and whether or not you put your rubbish out in plain bags. If the five pages plus five pages of schedule on this legislation are intended to amend the problem of one unknown person putting one bit of rubbish into another bag, I think deregulation has lost its meaning.

I will not say any more. I am extremely disappointed with the noble Lord’s response. London has its own legislation on many fronts and it always acts responsibly. It has led the way with the decriminalisation of waste collection and changes to the Environmental Protection Act. It is not just being unfriendly and prosecuting people unnecessarily. The whole nature of what I was concerned about in the noble Lord’s briefing has been misunderstood. I hope that that was what it was. I look forward to meeting him and we will make sure that that happens. In the mean time I will withdraw my amendment.