Traffic-related Air Pollution

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister comment on the relationship with the department of health? I am firmly convinced that there would be significant cost efficiency for the health service if air quality was improved more rapidly in inner cities.