Air Pollution

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Westminster Hall

[Barry Gardiner]

How did I know that my right hon. Friend would be introducing that subject? I excised it from my speech because I knew he would. He is absolutely right, and he will have seen the assessment that came out just 10 days ago, which said everything he and I have been saying about the pollution caused by the third runway expansion at Heathrow. Whatever we think about the economy—as he knows, the assessment was not too hot on that either—it is a disaster for public health.

I do not decry the real progress on nitrogen dioxide that has resulted from the ultra low emission zone expansion. What the mayor has done has been really significant; the correlated reduction in admissions to hospital has been huge, and we really welcome that. But air pollution action must be targeted at hotspots. Even if the hotspots dipped below the 40 microgram legal limit, that would still be four times the World Health Organisation guidelines.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentions the Mayor of London, who has made substantial strides, but I refer him to the matter of emissions from buses and the only partial electrification of the fleet in London and elsewhere. Pollutants from diesel buses are a continuing problem, especially when buses are allowed to idle at bus stands close to residential property. That is of particular concern to my constituent Kate Hollis, whose 12-year-old son, Jack, tragically died from bone cancer, the spread of which the family believes was caused by pollutants from a bus terminus next to their house in my constituency. Does my hon. Friend, who knows a great deal about these issues and who, like me, is a London MP, share my and the Hollis family’s concern that electrification is going too slowly, with potentially dangerous consequences?

[Barry Gardiner]

I give my condolences to the Hollis family for the tragedy they have suffered. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the electrification of the bus system must go further and faster, but it is not just a London problem, as he knows: it affects areas across the country. It is absolutely vital that we roll out the electrification of vehicles. He knows—I will come to this later—that it is not simply the exhaust that is the problem with those large vehicles; it is also the particulate matter that heavier vehicles produce on the roads.

Although the focus is often on particulate matter and NO₂, we are falling behind on other pollutants. Ammonia, which is highly reactive, forms secondary PM_2.5. The UK is not projected to meet its 2030 reduction targets until at least 2035. We have made essentially no progress in ammonia reduction in 20 years. In the Netherlands, regulatory controls on agricultural ammonia contributed to a 64% reduction in ammonia emissions between 1990 and 2016. This is possible—other people are doing it— so the question is: why are we not?

Ozone—O₃—levels continue to be higher in rural and suburban areas, with long-term objectives remaining off track. Alongside particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide, ozone is the biggest contributor to outdoor air pollution, with higher concentrations on hot summer days. Achieving long-term objectives for ozone is not even legally mandatory.

There are two more categories of particulates that are of growing concern: ultrafine particulate matter—UFP—which comprises 90% of airborne particles, and black carbon, or soot, formed from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass. There are currently no regulations on safe levels of UFPs, despite research linking them with an even wider array of health problems than PM_2.5 and PM10.

The current official advice from the UK Health Security Agency that the health effects of UFPs are “adequately covered” by the particulate matter air quality standards is simply outdated. Black carbon is a major contributor to climate change and poses a significant health risk as a universal carrier for a wide range of toxic chemicals that find their way into our bloodstreams. We need a comprehensive monitoring system and specific targets for UFPs and black carbon as the evidence of their severe health impacts grows.

However, it is not just what we pollute; it is where we pollute. The focus to date has largely been on outdoor pollution, yet we spend 80% of our time indoors—in our homes, offices and schools, or commuting between them. Indoor air pollution is poorly regulated, with no legally binding national standards, and its key sources, such as wood burning, are woefully under-addressed. Indoor air pollution is absent from the recently updated environmental improvement plan, and we lack a comprehensive estimate of the health burden from indoor air pollution. Poor housing conditions that create damp and mould are deadly, as we know from the tragic death of Awaab Ishak. Far too many children experience prolonged exposure to black mould, and that can kill.

In some cases, concentrations of certain pollutants indoors exceed those outdoors. For example, biological aerosols, carbon monoxide and many volatile organic compounds are often present at significantly higher concentrations indoors. NO₂ levels can spike in homes because of gas cookers and poor ventilation. Approximately 36 million people in the UK are exposed to dangerous indoor air pollution from gas hobs and ovens that exceeds limits of pollutants permitted outdoors.

Around half of all homes in the UK still use gas hobs for cooking, which for most people will be the biggest source of NO₂ pollution in their home. Yet gas cookers and hobs have been left out of home decarbonisation policy, and are totally ignored in the warm homes plan. If we want to protect people’s health from air pollution in the home and fully remove their reliance on fossil fuels, we need a policy pathway to transition to electric cooking in the home, such as the one developed by Global Action Plan and CLASP in partnership with experts and academics.

Pollutants such as radon gas are linked to 1,000 lung cancer deaths annually. In not only our homes but our workplaces, we are exposed to dangerous levels of pollution, some of us much more than others. As it stands, the Health and Safety Executive’s workplace exposure limit for inhalable dust, which includes PM10, is 10,000 micrograms per cubic metre for an eight-hour exposure. The WHO guidelines for PM₁₀ are 45 micrograms—not for an eight-hour exposure, but for a 24-hour exposure. The Health and Safety Executive limit is more than 650 times higher than the WHO guidelines.

This is a matter of not just public health, but inequality. Let us be honest: who lives on the busiest, most polluted streets? Who works in the dirtiest factories? Who lives in poor-quality housing? The answer is those who have no choice. They are trapped. Air pollution is an issue for this Labour Government because people who are poor are much more likely to die from it as they do not have the means of escape. It is a fundamental breach of their human right to breathe clean air.

Tackling air pollution is not just a DEFRA issue; it should span every aspect of our Government and every aspect of our lives, as air pollution does our homes, our schools, our travel and our work. We need a co-ordinated national action plan. At present, action on air pollution is structurally skewed towards urban NO₂ sites, because those are where the Government have faced the strongest legal pressure. That means that progress on other pollutants, as well as indoor air pollution, has stalled.

We must bring forward legislative proposals on clean air that unify and update existing laws in a new clean air Act. That was recommendation 34 of the joint report, “Improving Air Quality”, by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the Environmental Audit Committee, the Health Committee and the Transport Committee. That report published nine years ago, in 2017. All those Committees made that recommendation—in 2017. If it had been taken on, imagine how much further on we could be in tackling this issue and how much more progress we could have made.

That recommendation stands today, in the year that marks the 70th anniversary of the very first Clean Air Act. Just as we have the Climate Change Act 2008, under which the Government produce and can be challenged on legally binding carbon budgets, we need a clean air Act under which the Government set out detailed, thorough and demonstrably achievable plans to bring down the levels of pollutants. With legally binding pollutant budgets, the Government could set a graduated timeline by which the UK would have to meet the WHO guidelines for a comprehensive list of pollutants, building on the 2030 targets and with limit values for perhaps 2035 and 2040.

The Clean Air Fund suggested to the Select Committees that our target for meeting WHO guideline levels for most pollutants should be 2040. I do not know whether that is the best target; I would like to see it brought forward. However, if we set that as the goal, just as we have set net zero by 2050 as the goal, we could at least be making progress towards it. Co-ordinating a national action plan on air pollution under a new clean air Act would ensure that air pollution is no longer relegated to being just a DEFRA issue. In reality, it affects, and is affected by, every single Government Department.

Mr Efford, there is so much more in my notes that I could say, but I am getting exhausted and I can see that others in the Chamber wish to contribute. I welcome the fact that the Minister has stepped in for the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy); she has spoken to me, so I know she was unable to be with us today for her own very good reasons, and I accept that. I am grateful to the Minister for stepping in for her today, but will he please go back to the Department with this message? I know he is a new Minister in the Department, but new Ministers come in with new ideas. They can come in and say to the boss, “For God’s sake, I’ve just been in Westminster Hall, and I can’t believe what it is that we are doing.” Will the Minister try to make the case for us and for the 43,000 people in our country whose lives are being cut short every year? Let us do something imaginative, something bold and something worth doing: let us pass a clean air Act.