Environment Bill

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

4: Clause 2, page 2, line 24, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
“(2) The PM2.5 air quality target must—(a) be less than or equal to 10µg/m3, (b) so far as practicable, follow World Health Organization guidelines, and(c) have an attainment deadline on or before 1 January 2030.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment sets parameters on the face of the Bill to ensure that the PM2.5 target will be at least as strict as the 2005 WHO guidelines, with an attainment deadline of 2030 at the latest.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 4 and speak to Amendment 12. Both are in my name and the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Finlay of Llandaff and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and I thank them for their support.

Amendment 4 would ensure that the new legal target for fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, commits the Government to reducing this pollutant to within the existing World Health Organization guidelines by 2030 at the latest. Amendment 12 would ensure that the importance of protecting health is reflected in the target review process set out in the Bill. But before I get into the detail of why these amendments are so important, I express my thanks both to the Minister and to the Defra officials for their time in meeting with me and others during the Recess and for the detailed information provided on their work in this area.

In his response to our amendment on air quality in Committee, the Minister said that

“the Government recognise the importance of reducing concentrations of PM2.5 and the impact this has on our health.”—[Official Report, 23/6/21; col. 306.]

Air pollution is also recognised by the UK Government to be the single largest environmental risk to public health that we have.

In Committee, noble Lords drew the Minister’s attention to the role that air pollution played in the death of nine year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah. I was privileged recently to meet her mother, Rosamund, who shared with us her frustration at the Government’s lack of urgency in tackling damaging toxic air, despite recognising the serious health implications for people and communities. The motivation driving her campaign is simple: to make sure that what happened to her daughter does not happen to other people’s children. Amendment 54, in the name of my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark, seeks to enshrine in law the recommendations of the coroner’s prevention of future deaths report into Ella’s death, and we strongly support it.

Sadly, air pollution accounts for eight to 12 deaths every year in London alone, and it is 13 to 15 year-olds who are most at risk. Until our air is clean, our children will continue to die. The Government must grasp the urgency of this. The UK currently complies with the less ambitious existing legal limit of PM2.5, which is double the WHO guideline. Reductions in this pollutant have stagnated in recent years, so setting a more ambitious target in the Bill would drive action to better protect people’s health. The Minister assured the Committee that the Government’s target on PM2.5 would be ambitious, and he acknowledged the gravity and urgency of the situation. However, we then heard that until the Government completed the ongoing work and consulted the public again about the kind of restrictions that would be needed to be placed upon us, particularly in large cities, it would not be appropriate to write that limit into law.

We understand that reducing PM2.5 to meet the WHO recommendations is not easy—there are uncertainties about the future and the impact of climate change, and there are natural ways in which these particulates are produced so we can never bring the limit down to zero. However, we are deeply concerned that the Government are still researching, modelling, discussing what to do and looking at further consultations two years after the publication of the clean air strategy and after the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants, which provides independent advice to the Government, said that reducing concentrations below the WHO air quality guidelines would benefit public health.

We have SIs promised for October next year but no indication as to exactly what the targets will be. It worries me that the Government’s unwillingness to accept this target and put it in the Bill might reflect their concern that the target is simply not achievable. The Minister has previously informed your Lordships’ House that

“at this stage the full mix of policies and measures required to meet the current WHO guideline level of 10 micrograms per cubic metre is not yet fully understood”,—[Official Report, 23/6/21; col.306.]

yet in 2019 Defra had technical analysis from leading scientists at Imperial College London and King’s College London which concluded that achieving the WHO guideline of PM2.5 was technically feasible. The analysis also highlighted that the measures the Government have already committed to as part of their clean air strategy could take us 95% of the way towards the WHO recommendation for what should be the basic level of protection.

Further independent analysis by King’s College London commissioned by the Greater London Authority, which I referred to in our previous debate, has subsequently shown that, with additional action, achieving the WHO guideline of PM2.5 is feasible by 2030 in our most polluted city in this country. Surely that should remove the main barrier to achieving this goal. The Minister also referred to the Mayor of London study, confirming that officials were going through it and taking it into account. Does his department now agree with its findings, and what action is being taken as a result of it?

Today we have seen the publication of a report, funded by the Greater London Authority and carried out by researchers at Imperial College London, that provides a comprehensive overview of the most credible evidence of the links between air pollution and Covid-19. We already know that air pollution has harmful effects on the lungs, but until now it has been most associated with non-infectious or non-communicable diseases that cannot be directly transmitted between people—for example, the links between air pollution and cancer, stroke and asthma are all well established. Covid-19, however, is an infectious lung disease, and questions have begun to be asked about whether air pollution played a role in the spread of this devastating disease.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

That is a really important point. In this debate and previous debates, I have said that our knowledge base is not complete, and it needs to be much more complete. It may not ever be totally complete, but the Government—particularly Defra, working with the Department for Transport and Public Health England—are researching the issue exhaustively, with a view to informing the targets that we are obliged to set in the short term.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate. I will be very brief because I know that we are all looking forward to a break. I will not go into any detail about individual contributions, but I thank everyone who has spoken in support of my amendments—it is very much appreciated, and it has demonstrated that there is a lot of very strong feeling in the House about the concerns that we have raised.

I come to the points that the Minister made. Having met Defra officials on a number of occasions, I do not doubt at all that they are working extremely hard on this issue—for example, the planned exposure targets are extremely important—but that does not alter my frustration, and that of many others, that the urgent action that we need now is simply not happening and is being put off yet again. We have heard time and again that this is a health emergency, and I do not believe that the Government are treating it as an emergency. If that was the case, these amendments would be accepted, in my opinion.

We believe that our amendment is critical to drive the progress that we need. We also believe that a lot of existing evidence and information is already available in order for the Government to start taking action. On that basis, I would like to test the opinion of the House on my Amendment 4.