Draft Air Quality (Domestic Solid Fuels Standards) (England) Regulations 2020

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2020 General Committees

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and to follow the hon. Member for Newport West. I shall support the SI today, but with a heavy heart. I came to this House to relieve the regulatory burden on our citizens and on businesses. I regret the fact that, while the aims are more than laudable and the Government have a fine record on seeking to improve the environmental quality of this country, we have not pursued and exhausted every other means in terms of education, working with the supply chain on a voluntary basis and the use of technology such as moisture meters. They would have achieved many of the same aims, but without the legislative sledgehammer that we so often resort to as a first rather than a last resort.

I represent a rural constituency—with fine air quality, I should add—but many of my constituents who are far off the grid and not connected to any other source of heating their homes will be genuinely worried about the impact of the regulations. There is also the timeframe in which they are being introduced. We are sitting here in September 2020 and, in some cases, the legislation bites as early as February 2021, when only an optimist would imagine that we will be fully free of the effects of the pandemic. Regardless of what we think about the SI, it will have a disproportionate impact on our rural citizens.

I put it to my colleagues that, while we should worry about particulates—the nasty, foul substances that imperil the growth, education and attainment of children—with lower bridge capacity to cross the Thames than at any time in the last 120 years, and with congestion on our streets owing to a lack of urban leadership in many of our great urban areas, devoting legislative time to a matter such as this, although I understand and fully respect the Minister’s great work in bringing it to the House, should perhaps not be the Government’s top priority at the moment.