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

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Tuesday 29th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for setting out the intention of this SI so clearly and thank noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate this afternoon. The issue of toxic air quality has long concerned Members from across this Chamber, from well before the Minister was able to join us. Our criticism has always been that the action being taken is too little, too late. That is why the Government have ended up in court on this issue on a number of occasions.

We now have a proposal before us that specifically takes action on fine particulate matter which arises from the burning of wet wood and bituminous coal. As the Minister said, this is known to be the major source of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, including lung cancer. These proposals are acceptable as far as they go, but do they go far and fast enough?

Having read the SI and the Explanatory Note, as well as the debate in the other place, it seems to me that since the Government set out to tackle this health hazard, they have been busy scaling back and limiting their proposals. We have national and international obligations to phase out the production of PM2.5, which has been identified by the WHO as the most damaging air pollutant. According to the impact assessment, the Government are set to miss their legally binding target for a reduction of PM2.5 by 31 kilotonnes by 2030 if no action is taken. The Explanatory Note goes on to say that this instrument will abate approximately 9.37 kilotonnes in the year 2030. I hope the Minister will help me on this because, unless I am reading these figures wrong, we still have a huge gap in meeting our legal requirements, and indeed a huge mountain to climb to meet our international obligations on this issue. Can the Minister please clarify what proportion of our 2030 target will be met by these proposals? Can he tell us when we will see the remaining pieces of legislation that will make sure that we deliver properly on our national and international commitments? Is it also true that the Government published a more ambitious draft SI earlier in the year that has now been replaced by this version which includes longer delays for implementation?

I have a number of questions about the detail of the proposals. First, can the Minister clarify the open tender arrangements for appointing the certification body? This question was raised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and again today by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. I have experience, in another life, of ombudsman bodies being appointed to businesses in the sector that have a clear, vested interest in the outcome of their judgments. Can the Minister assure the House that the certification body or bodies will be truly independent and not able to benefit from the products that they certify?

Secondly, the proposals understandably raise concerns about people living on low incomes who rely on solid fuels, particularly in rural areas. Does the Minister accept that these families need greater financial help to transfer the source of their heating from health-damaging to safe fuels? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mann, that we could be far more ambitious on this issue. Surely this is particularly pressing, given that, as the Minister has already acknowledged, those who continue to use these toxic materials threaten not only the health of their families but that of their neighbours and the community around them.

The Minister also made it clear, as is identified in the Explanatory Notes, that clean fuels are actually less expensive than traditional fuels once energy efficiency is factored in. In these circumstances, is there really a case for a delay in the coal-burning ban beyond that which was originally envisaged, particularly when there are healthy alternatives already freely available?

Thirdly, would the Minister like to comment on a letter I have received from a producer of smokeless domestic fuels, who points out that all the makers of smokeless fuels are UK based, while all the coal we use is imported? There would, therefore, be a benefit to UK businesses in making the shift to clean fuel more quickly. Finally, will the Minister again update the House on the timing of the Environment Bill? I know that we ask this question regularly, but I am going to repeat it. The Bill is languishing in the Commons and we now understand that it is not due to leave there until Christmas, so it will not begin consideration in the Lords until the new year. We need the Bill to be passed to make broader progress on the clean air strategy. As it already seems that it will miss the end-of-year deadline, we will be left with a regulatory gap on this and other issues. Why has it been delayed? What steps is the Minister taking to chase it up?

We are not going to oppose this SI, but I have to conclude, sadly, that it is a poor imitation of the kind of ambitious policies we need to clean up our toxic air and deliver on our WHO targets. I look forward to the Minister’s response.