Air Quality

Debate between Geraint Davies and Andrew Selous

Thursday 15th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I am probably something of an interloper today, given that I am not a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. However, I am a member of the Select Committee on Health, and this issue is equally important to members of that Committee. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), the Chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, said, this is an urgent and important issue. The fact that there are 40,000 to 50,000 additional deaths in the UK each year shows how significant it is, and we are right to pay real attention to it. However, we need to realise that this is also a global issue. The American Association for the Advancement of Science calculated that in 2013 there were 5.5 million deaths as a result of air pollution worldwide; 1.6 million were in China and 1.4 million were in India. That does not make the issue in our country any less urgent, but it is important to put the debate in a global context.

[Geraint Davies]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that 10% of deaths in the UK are linked to air pollution compared with 17% in China? Let us not pretend that we are not appalling and that they are worse.

[Andrew Selous]

I would not be speaking in this debate if I did not think this was an important issue. We all have a shared purpose, wherever we sit in the House, in wanting to take serious action on this issue.

Going from the global level to a local one, the constituency I represent has three market towns. One of them, Dunstable, has an air-quality management area in the town centre and in the Luton Road area. There are 37 different monitoring points for air quality in that area. I remember many years ago, not long after I was first elected, my excellent GP in the centre of Dunstable telling me that many more children who live in central Dunstable—close to the A5 trunk road, which goes through the middle of the town—suffered from asthma than the children who lived in Dunstable’s suburbs or the villages around the town. That is replicated up and down our country, not just in town centres. People who live next to busy roads are affected, which is something that we absolutely need to bear in mind in future planning decisions.

I completely agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton said about making sure that we transition from dirty energy in road transport to cleaner energy in an affordable way for our constituents. We all want clean air, but people have cars to get to work, to take the children to school and to go about their daily lives. Cars are a necessity for very many of our constituents. We need to think about who the people are who drive older diesels. They will mainly be constituents who are perhaps less well-off, which is why they are driving an older car that is a bit more economical. It is really important that we provide mechanisms to help constituents on lower incomes transition to cleaner vehicles, and I very much hope that we will.

In May 2011, I held a Westminster Hall debate on ultra-low emission vehicles. The then Transport Minister replied to the debate by saying that the Department had “two objectives”, which were

“to create growth and to cut carbon.”—[Official Report, 10 May 2011; Vol. 527, c. 382WH.]

Those objectives are both excellent. I hope that today the Minister, who I know really cares about this issue and is determined to make progress on it, will perhaps let us know about a third objective to go alongside the Department’s former second objective of cutting carbon—namely, to improve air quality. That would be very helpful.

I want to press the Minister on the scale of our country’s ambition and policy on ultra-low emission vehicles. When I held that Westminster Hall debate some five-and-a-half years ago, I noted that the Committee on Climate Change had said that the United Kingdom should aim to have 1.7 million ultra-low emission electric vehicles on our roads by 2020. At the time there were only 57,000, and I said that the total of 57,000 was a pretty small share of the then 28.4 million cars on our roads. I also noted that Japan had the much higher goal that 20% of all its vehicles would be electric or plug-in hybrids by 2020. It is important that we have world-leading ambition in this area so that, first, we get clean air, and secondly, absolutely critically, the United Kingdom is right at the forefront of benefiting—to ensure that we have good jobs, economic prosperity and growth—from this industry, which is taking off around the world.

Staying with the far east, China’s goal is to have 5 million all-electric and plug-in vehicles on its roads by 2020, and a number of Chinese companies are already working actively in that area. Zhejiang Geely has bought the London Taxi Company and is making the electric TX4 Euro 5 London taxi cabs, which will be launched in the middle of next year.

China Daily has referred to Norway and the Netherlands as

“leading electric vehicle growth in Europe”.

I am disappointed that China does not believe that the United Kingdom is in that position and I look forward, with interest, to what my hon. Friend the Minister will say on that when she winds up. Norway and the Netherlands plan to phase out diesel vehicles entirely by 2025, as do, at the city level, Paris, Madrid, Athens and Mexico City.

On the bus front, it is good to see that the Chinese battery company, BYD Company or Build Your Dreams, has teamed up with Alexander Dennis, the British bus company, to bring electric buses to London, Liverpool and Nottingham. I echo what the Chair of the Select Committee said about the need for joined-up, cross-Government action within this area, but I am most concerned about how we are tracking whether the United Kingdom is on target to meet our 2020 objectives. I would like reassurance that there is a real mechanism to look at that, and that, where we are falling short, Ministers are getting their heads together to take the appropriate action to ensure that we are a world leader in this area not just for our constituents’ health but for the benefit of the United Kingdom’s economy.