Traffic-related Air Pollution

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not have a figure with which to answer my noble friend, but she is absolutely right to point out the value of trees. We have stretching targets for new woodland planting, which not only will help to reverse the declines in biodiversity and to lock up more carbon but will improve people’s health through both the air they breathe and the quality of their lives. We want to ensure that this is understood, not just by land managers but by local authorities and government departments which own a large amount of land. We want to ensure that everybody is part of the great national effort to improve our biodiversity and quality of life.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, in June the National Audit Office released a report on tackling local breaches of air quality. One of its conclusions was that the Government publish a lot of air quality data, but not in a way that gives the public accessible information about air quality problems and action in their area. It said:

“There has been little public engagement … and … a lack of transparency”.


What progress have the Government made to address those issues?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We are driving down emissions across all sectors in the economy, including through the nitrogen dioxide plan, which has seen emissions from road transport decrease over 52% in the last decade, and the environmental permitting of agriculture and industry, which has seen sulphur dioxide emissions from energy production decrease 87% over the last decade, and by regulating the most harmful fuels in domestic burning to reduce emissions by 2030. That is what we are achieving. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that we need to help people to make decisions about their lives, so part of our support for local authorities is to help the whole health disparity problem by making sure that people have more information about how they can minimise the impact of poor air quality in their lives. Some people cannot do that—for example, you cannot expect people to move away from traffic hotspots—so the driver is to try to reduce poor air quality and to improve the lives of those people. Trying to ensure that we are limiting those issues is an absolutely core part of the national policy.