Environment Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as I am still a vice-president of Environmental Protection UK, which for most of its lifetime was the National Society for Clean Air. In that capacity, I was a bit remiss in not putting down an amendment myself. I was originally fooled by the Government; it does not happen very often, but it did on this occasion. I thought that by having this as the second clause and PM2.5 right up front in the Bill, they had really seized the opportunity. I did not read it properly.

Clause 1 sets a particular status for long-term targets that then run through the rest of the Bill, but this clause says the target for PM2.5

“may, but need not, be a long-term target.”

Parliamentary draftsmen are usually comfortable putting “may”, because that gives them a certain amount of flexibility, but on this occasion they put “but need not” very clearly. That means that the target envisaged in this clause, as it stands, does not have all the overriding principles and follow-through in the rest of the Bill that a long-term target has. That is why the clause, as it stands, has to be amended.

I support all these amendments. I just want to say two or three other things that colleagues have not yet covered. Before I do so, I say to the House that, in the debates on air quality over the years, one supporter was the late Viscount Simon, a lifelong sufferer from asthma who normally took part and had a lot of insight; we will miss him.

I point out, first, that the WHO targets were set on the basis of health information from over a decade ago. Hopefully, the new ones will be updated. The limits that we have been working to on EU standards were largely set—and I speak as a pro-European—by what the German motor manufacturers would put up with. Even then, they fiddled the testing. So, what we put in as our targets here have to be robust, health based and universally recognised.

It is also important to mention something else. There is a bit of an assumption that, since traffic has been the biggest contributor to air pollution, this is being resolved as we move away from diesel cars. It is not. A lot of pollution from traffic comes from brakes and friction between tyres and the road. In any case, of course, traffic is significantly increasing. The problem will not automatically resolve itself. We need new measures, both for vehicles and for the way we manage traffic. Also, as I believe is covered more fully in a later amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, there are a lot of non-traffic-related sources of PM2.5 and other forms of pollution. They have to be covered just as rigorously.

Thirdly, as my noble friend Lord Kennedy pointed out, the tragic death of Ella Kissi-Debrah happened because of where she lived: on the South Circular, an already heavily polluted road. I would ask local councils of all political complexions not to alter their traffic arrangements to divert the heaviest traffic to areas where the poorest live and where there are likely to be more pedestrians and more children. Moving air pollution around is not a solution. I hope that is recognised.

I support these amendments as they stand. I hope that the Government will be prepared to take at least some of them on board and we can start making a dent in what is a truly terrible aspect of urban life and the health of our people.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 4 and 12 to which I have put my name. Before I come to that, I will say something about Amendment 54 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. I particularly liked the last two provisions—subsections (2)(e) and (2)(f) of his proposed new clause —on the training of professionals and, especially, on public information. I strongly believe that, if the public had any idea of the fatal effects of PM2.5 and their effects on health, they would be much more likely to accept some of what might otherwise be quite unpopular actions that needed to be taken to reduce the concentration of those particles. I very much support that.

I now come to Amendments 4 and 12. I have spent the last 18 months conducting my work in your Lordships’ House remotely via the wonders of modern technology, from rural Wales and, occasionally, Scotland. In those parts of the UK, air pollution, including from PM2.5 particulates, is low. Yesterday, I came back to London. As someone who suffers mildly from asthma, I noticed the difference immediately. I am now inclined to wear my mask outdoors on the street as well as indoors, not just to protect myself and others from Covid-19 but to avoid breathing in unfiltered London air.

The challenge of reducing the amount of PM2.5 in our air is a complex and difficult one, which the Government, assisted by dozens of scientists and economists, are already tackling to some extent. I do not underestimate the difficulty of reducing our national and local concentrations of these particles to below 10 micrograms per cubic metre. These materials are produced by many human activities, and some natural weather systems, which are beyond our control. Controlling some of them also requires international co-operation. But just because it is difficult does not mean that we should not set out to do it—and do so expeditiously.

The reason is, of course, that polluted air is the greatest danger to health of our time. PM2.5 causes damage to health from before birth, when it affects children’s brain and lung development, right up to old age, causing pulmonary and cardiac disease, liver damage, and damage to the brain—probably including dementia. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, has explained all that in great detail, so I need not go into any more detail. Everybody knows that polluted air can be fatal—sadly. That is why I support everything the Government are doing, including their dual target to reduce both national levels and population levels, particularly where pollution levels are high and health inequalities are greatest. To do that, they must support local authorities—but that is a debate for another time.

Our Amendments 4 and 12 do not impact on any of these activities or targets. The 10 micrograms in our amendment is not a target but a maximum—and if the WHO guidelines suggest a lower maximum, we should follow that. In other words, nobody will be happier than me if we can reduce it further. The Government tell us that they will announce their target and the date by which it should be achieved in October next year. Well, we all know how these things slip. Setting a target is one thing; achieving it in practice by a certain date is quite another. Our amendments simply hold the Government’s feet to the fire to achieve what Ministers themselves, including Mr Michael Gove, have said they want to achieve. This is for the sake of the health of the whole population, as there is no safe level of PM2.5, according to the WHO.

However, there are two other very important reasons why I want to see this target minimum level in primary legislation, and they concern wider climate-change policy. The Government have set the target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, but as yet there is no detail as to how this will be achieved: no road map. There are many possible routes and combinations of policies and technologies that could lead us to achieving net zero. By setting in primary legislation the maximum PM2.5 emissions at 10 micrograms per cubic metre of air—or whatever the current WHO-recommended level is—we will influence the Government to choose those routes to achieving net zero which do not contribute to small particulates in the air.

Some people might think that surely all activities which reduce CO₂ emissions must necessarily contribute to clean air—but this is not so. For example, the burning of biomass might emit less CO₂ in the long run than burning fossil fuel, but this combustion emits small particulates—which is why wood burning stoves should be banned, at least in towns and cities where pollution is already high. There is more than one route to net zero, and we should choose the cleanest and healthiest. I accept that the Government will want to convince themselves of the feasibility of the target they set, but many scientists have advised us that the 10 micrograms maximum can be done by 2030, and I would like to see the Government set out seriously to do so.

My final reason is that the Government’s record on air quality has not been of the best. In one of its final judgments before the UK left the EU, the European Court of Justice—which was instrumental in enforcing environmental protection—judged that the UK had “systematically and persistently” broken legal limits on air pollution, which, as we know, hastens the death of 40,000 people per year. The replacement for this enforcement body is the OEP, which is introduced by this Bill, which is why the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and a cross-party group of Peers are trying to amend the Bill to ensure the new OEP is properly independent and has teeth. It is also why we who have put our names to this amendment seek to ensure that the Government are legally obliged to set and achieve ambitious targets for air quality.