Environment Bill

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 20th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend takes a huge amount of interest in this issue and I know my officials met him very recently to discuss the detail.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Rebecca Pow]

I am just going to answer this question.

Yes, the WHO has already lowered what it thinks is the safe limit, which I think demonstrates how complicated the issue is. It would be wrong to set a number on the face of the Bill without being absolutely certain that it was the right one—as my hon. Friend understands. I have spent a great deal of time on this issue with academics and scientists, and I am happy to share with others if that is helpful. We must make sure we get this right before we set the target. To be clear, to achieve even the 10 micrograms per metre squared in our cities would require significant change in all our lives. It would likely introduce policies aimed at restricting traffic kilometres by as much as 50% or more, a total ban on solid fuel burning including wood, and significant changes to farming practices to reduce ammonia, which reacts in the air to form particulate matter.

[Mr Sheerman]

In the spirit of what we all felt and discussed after the tragedy of last week, I feel passionate about all these issues but I am determined to be good-tempered and pleasant to everyone in the whole of the debate. Along those lines, I have a passionate interest in clean air and have worked in this area for 27 years—I started an organisation called the Westminster Commission for Road Air Quality 27 years ago. The fact of the matter is, however, that this is glacially slow movement. We are poisoning pregnant women, older people and children in every town and city. Why are we not committed to sustainable development goals? Why do we not have a sustainable development community in every town and city? It all seems so glacially slow. I can almost see the spectral vision of Lord Lawson at the back there—that is what really worries me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is a keen runner and gets out and about, probably on his bicycle as well, and he makes a very good point. This is why our net zero strategy, our road to decarbonisation for transport and the £2 billion that we have invested in cycling and walkways are so important. All those funds are being incorporated when local authorities apply for their budgets to deal with their hotspots. The clean air zone areas, which we are bringing in across the country, take advantage of exactly the opportunities that he raises.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Minister is being generous and kind in giving way again. Has she seen the experiment in the cities of Oxford and London, where air quality detectors are on every waste truck? Every week, waste trucks go to every house in every street in the country. If we put those on every waste truck—and it is cheap—we would know the hotspots and the British public would know very quickly what sort of atmosphere their children were growing up in and what air we are breathing. Will she have a serious look at that and, in the process, discuss it with Sir Stephen Holgate, who is such a magnificent expert on all that?

[Rebecca Pow]

I would suggest a meeting with the new air quality Minister—actually, I meet Sir Stephen Holgate regularly, as he is one of our advisers. We are increasing monitoring across the country for exactly the purposes that the hon. Gentleman mentions: the better the data, the more we know what action we can take.

The targets that we are working on are being carefully approached with experts such as Sir Stephen Holgate, as well as others from Imperial College London and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. We have two expert panels: the air quality expert group, chaired by Professor Alastair Lewis, and the committee on the medical effects of air pollutants, chaired by Anna Hansell of the University of Leicester. That will ensure that we get the targets right and that they are informed by the latest atmospheric science and health evidence. We will, of course, share those findings with the World Health Organisation.