Deregulation Bill

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Grand Committee

“(8) Where limit values set out in Schedule 2 and target values set out in Schedule 3 are not met by the date specified in more than one zone, the Secretary of State must draw up and implement a national framework for Low Emissions Zones to ensure compliance with each relevant limit value within the shortest possible time.””

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I move this amendment on behalf of my noble friend Lord Grantchester, and with his permission.

We come to page 154 of this remarkable and fascinating Bill. Hidden within it is a remarkable backing off, if not a total retreat, by the Government in relation to the important issue of air quality. A relatively, apparently, small deletion from the Environment Act 1995 needs to be seen in a broader context. I brought this wider context to the attention of the House yesterday in Oral Questions—and I should, once again, declare an interest as the vice-president of Environmental Protection UK, although as of now I am very temporarily speaking on behalf of the opposition Front Bench.

Yesterday in my OQ I asked the Government to spell out what they were doing about air pollution, which still causes 29,000 premature deaths. We have failed to meet EU standards in the vast majority of areas; 93% of the designated urban sites are not meeting their criteria, and the WHO has indicated on the N0₂ front a significant part of our urban area to be in a dangerous state. That includes this city and the second city of Birmingham, as well as places like Nottingham and many other urban areas. The Government’s own forecasts in this area indicate that those areas—London, the West Midlands and west Yorkshire—are unlikely to meet the EU limit values for N0₂ until, at the earliest, 2030. That is 15 years after the EU deadline. Some 29,000 premature deaths requires the Government to have a bit more urgency about this.

In the Question yesterday, other noble Lords also intervened; the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, talked about low emission zones and my noble friend Lord Hunt of Chesterton, who has just returned to join us, raised the issue of diesel. No doubt we will come back to that in a moment. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, replied, accepting the difficulties in one sense, but spelling out a range of the things that the Government are doing and a rather more impressive list of things that the Mayor of London is doing—some of which I accept.

The Minister’s colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, also denied that the Government were lacking a strategy, but the reality is that the Government abandoned the national strategy on air quality. They tried to draw up a new one in 2013 but the reaction from stakeholders was such that they had to drop it and indeed it would not have met the EU requirements. They have removed the impetus that the previous Government had towards local authorities introducing local low emission zones and the only real initiative that the Government have taken in this area is a failed attempt to get the EU to agree to the postponement of the application of the next stage of EU limit values. I was right to say that there is no strategy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think there are some limits to how far we would necessarily take this as a general model in this area. The noble Lord will be well aware that all efforts to agree speed limits within the European Union and to deal with the problem of cars going extremely fast are blocked by the Germans, who have a very powerful lobby, not unconnected with BMW and Mercedes Benz, which insists on having cars which are extremely powerful, which we all know also produce more pollutants when they are being driven very fast. They are driven very fast across Germany, rather more quickly than they are allowed to be driven through other countries, so Germany is a mixed example, I think.

This government proposal is not to lower air quality. I recognise in the admirably clear speech of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, the much wider issues which he is raising about the Government’s overall strategy on air quality. This is a deregulatory measure which simply aims to remove the requirement for a further assessment when an air quality zone has already been agreed. The Government give active support to local authorities when it has been decided that a low emission zone or strategy is the appropriate action. We have so far funded 15 separate low emission zone-related projects or feasibility studies for our local air quality grant scheme. We have also disseminated the results that have come from these studies as good examples for local authorities. Since 1997, over £52 million has been spent to support local authorities in delivering low emission strategies, including feasibility studies with low emission zones and the uptake of clean vehicle technology and programmes to change behaviour.

There is regular feedback from local authorities, and an independent review of local air quality management in 2010 indicated that this requirement for a further assessment, or a second round of assessment, did not add to the understanding of local air quality and actually delayed the production and implementation of local action plans required under the Act. This was confirmed in a consultation with air quality stakeholders in January 2013. I refute the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has put forward—that this is an attempt to weaken the local air quality regime. This is very much an attempt to support what local authorities do and to speed up their implementation of such zones when they are agreed. The Government continue to give active support in this regard. I recognise what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said about the overall problem of air quality. As I sat listening to him, I recalled that, as a boy, when I first came to a choir school in London, I was here just in time for the last great smog, in 1953 I think it was. Air quality has improved a little since then, and life expectancy has improved with it.

However, this change is a limited one, as are many others in the Bill. It will allow local authorities to prepare and implement air quality action plans more quickly and to avoid duplicating information gathered either in the earlier, detailed assessment stage that is required or in the preparation of the air quality plan. That is the limit of what we are attempting to do here. We remain actively committed to higher air quality throughout Britain. We have supported local emissions zones: I have just been handed a note which remarks on the local emissions zones in Oxford, York, Bradford, Southampton, Birmingham and Hackney. With that reassurance, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Whitty]

I thank the Minister for that. As on the previous occasion, I have no option but to withdraw it. However, the basis on which I withdraw it is not quite the same as the Minister’s.

The Minister is right to say that this is a relatively specific requirement, relating to checking what the effect would be of the emission zones, once established. But that is part of the evidence for extending them further. If they were simply replacing it with something more useful, I would not object to the deletion as such. But the reality is that that is just one part of what the Government seem—despite what the Minister has said—to be retreating from. They are not encouraging local authorities in a broad sense, although some local authorities, because of impetus within themselves, are still putting forward local emission zone propositions. I was surprised to hear Birmingham on that list, but I take the Minister’s word for it; some of the others I do know about. Local authorities as a whole do not feel that they are being encouraged to initiate new local emission zones. The Government are not really answering the essential thrust of this: if they are deleting what they regard as pernickety requirements, they should do so in the context of replacing them with a broader approach to encourage initiatives and activity at local and national level to improve our air quality.