Air Quality (Legislative Functions) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to support the regulations before us and to follow my noble friend Lady Altmann. My enthusiasm and excitement for hybrid and electric vehicles are strongly tempered by their cost, the inability to charge them up in rural areas and the rising cost of insurance, which I understand is significant for hybrid and electric vehicles.

I welcome the measures before us to reduce industrial pollution much more than some of the Government’s measures referred to by my noble friend the Minister, who so eloquently presented the regulations. The measures I hesitate more over are those that will negatively impact on rural areas, such as those restricting the sale of traditional household coal and small volumes of wet wood, as well as of solid fuels. These need to be considered with great care, particularly weighing up what the impact will be on deeply rural areas, particularly those that are vulnerable to cold spells, such as the north of England.

I support a number of the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, raised, in particular understanding the Government’s role in amending and changing the categories in the UNECE protocol. In this regard, is there an opportunity to amend them in the forthcoming COP? If that is the case, could my noble friend the Minister identify which countries, including our erstwhile partners in the European Union, are likely to support such an amendment?

Perhaps my greatest concern is how we can ensure that these amendments today and the broader thrust of the government measures, most of which I welcome, to improve air quality will be implemented and enforced. All of us who are familiar with and have worked with environmental law over the past 20 or 30 years know the role of the European Commission as the safeguard of the treaty obligations into which we have entered. I understand that today’s regulations transpose those, as agreed in Regulation 166/2006 of the European Parliament and the Council, to which my noble friend referred in outlining the regulations this afternoon.

There is a very real issue here: for the first time—this is something that we should welcome, if we could only understand it more fully—we are going to cover public authorities in the round and their environmental responsibilities. Many of us are familiar with water companies and farmers who are heavily censored for any spillage or pollution. It is currently unclear—it really is a lacuna—who is applying the rules in the event of a breach of the air quality rules as currently exist and will apply these regulations if we adopt them today. If it is to be the office for environmental protection, I would welcome that, but we have not yet had the chance to consider what its role, staffing and resources will be and what the relationship will be between the office for environmental protection and other bodies such as the Environment Agency and Natural England.

As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, asked—and I know it causes great concern across the devolved nations—are we going to have disparity in the way that regulations such as these will be implemented in the four nations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as we are going to have at least three offices of environmental protection operating? In welcoming the regulations and enthusiastically supporting the positive approach that both the Minister and the department are taking in this regard, I believe we have a long way to go to ensure that any breaches of these air quality regulations are firmly stamped on and that we, and those who might be accused of transgressing, actually understand what the remit of the OEP and other bodies will be. I welcome the regulations.