Air Quality

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to see you in the Chair, Mr Betts. I was not a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee when it prepared this report, although I have subsequently joined and was there for the evidence session on Tuesday, when the Minister once again reassured us that air pollution was a top priority for her Department and, indeed, for the Government. Some of us remain to be convinced, including the courts, as we have seen with the recent ClientEarth proceedings and with the news that the European Commission is taking the UK Government to court for their failures in dealing with the Volkswagen scandal.

In its response to the report, DEFRA described its air quality plan for nitrogen dioxide as “an ambitious plan”, which rather begs the question why it was snuck out on the last day of Parliament before last year’s Christmas recess, hidden in a flurry of written ministerial statements. We will, no doubt, get a similar flurry next week. In its response, DEFRA also rejected the Committee’s call for a comprehensive strategy on the grounds that:

“The national air quality plan for nitrogen dioxide already sets out a comprehensive plan”.

But, as we discovered on Tuesday, it only covers NOx. It was disappointing that the Minister did not seem to appreciate, when we spoke on Tuesday, that it was time to update the 2007 plan, which covers all air pollutants. It was more reassuring that the Minister of State, Department for Transport seemed to accept that it was time to do so.

It was also worrying how many times the Government’s response to the report was simply to repeat:

“£2 billion has been committed since 2011”,

with little mention of future plans and funding. DEFRA’s contribution, the air quality grant scheme to support local authority action, went down from £3.1 million in 2012-13 to just £0.5 million last year—a funding cut of 84%.

The Select Committee report expressed concerns about weak national leadership and evidence from the ClientEarth court case suggests that it is the Treasury that has been leading on air quality policy, not DEFRA, by blocking measures to reduce pollution levels. If the Treasury is not prepared to listen to the public health arguments and the moral arguments that we are facing a real emergency, perhaps it needs reminding of the £20 billion that air pollution costs the UK economy every year —10 times the amount that the Government boast they have spent on improving air quality in five years.

Ministers should not need to be dragged through the courts twice to realise that their air quality plan is just not good enough. Ministers’ optimism has little basis in reality. Last year, DEFRA decided that just eight of the 43 air quality zones would still exceed legal limits for NOx in 2020, yet just one year earlier, 28 zones were still expected to be non-compliant. The reason for their belief in this rapid improvement was due to new modelling. Ministers were warned that if real-world emissions were much higher than expected, 22 additional zones would exceed the legal limit, and we now know that diesel emissions are up to 12 times the legal limit.

Why did Ministers choose to base their plans on such optimistic assumptions? Why did they try to block European Union legislation on random inspections of vehicles’ real-world emissions? Why did they support loopholes that give car companies permission to pollute well above legal limits into the next decade? Why are Ministers still ignoring passenger cars, even though they are responsible for 29% of NOx emissions in the UK? The answer, as we learnt from the ClientEarth court case, is that Ministers were not trying to reduce air pollution levels to safer levels, to limit the damage to people’s health, or to prevent premature deaths. For the Government, this was simply a bureaucratic exercise to avoid EU fines and further court action. My constituents and all our constituents are paying the price because Ministers decided that, to meet this technical requirement, they only had to worry about five cities: Southampton, Derby, Leeds, Nottingham and Birmingham.

Yet, as every Bristolian knows, we are never far from the top of the list of most congested cities. Parts of Bristol regularly exceed nitrogen dioxide limits and the World Health Organisation lists Bristol as one of the most polluted cities in the UK for particulate matter. Only this month, the city was warned that it was facing its worst air pollution levels in a decade, with the Government’s index scoring us a worrying nine out of 10. The consequences are clear. According to the British Lung Foundation, people in Bristol are 16% more likely to die of lung cancer than the national average, 12% more likely to be admitted to hospital with asthma and 40% more likely to be admitted to hospital with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A recent study indicated that nitrogen dioxide and particulates are responsible for 300 premature deaths in Bristol annually—8.5% of all deaths in Bristol each year. Perhaps the Minister would highlight to her Treasury colleagues the fact that air pollution costs Bristol £84 million a year.

The British Lung Foundation has expressed to me that only two schools in Bristol have air pollution monitors within 10 metres. There are three schools in my constituency alone in areas where nitrogen dioxide levels are illegally high. Thankfully, we now have a Mayor, Marvin Rees, who is committed to tackling our air quality crisis and has cross-party support across Bristol City Council for a clean air zone. Bristol has responded to the clean air zone framework consultation, has applied for air quality grants and is working with Core Cities on a comprehensive list of recommendations, although it is worth noting that the Mayor has written to me saying that it is a shame that core cities are required to compete against each other for air quality grants.

Bristol’s cabinet member for transport has recently announced with First Bus that routes along Fishponds Road, one of the busiest streets in my constituency, would benefit from a new fleet of low-carbon buses, so the council does understand the need to work with transport providers and taxi fleets. However, the Mayor, like the experts who gave evidence to the Committee, has made it clear that the council needs support from national Government to strengthen legal powers, fund investment, work with vehicle manufacturers and help with real-world data if we are to design effective clean air zones.

To conclude, I welcome the new joint air quality unit between DEFRA and the Department for Transport, and the recognition from Ministers that we need a cross-departmental approach. It was disappointing, however, that DEFRA refused to answer my written parliamentary questions on the work of the clean growth committee, in order to

“protect the integrity of the policymaking process”.

The public have a right to know whether Ministers are suggesting solutions to a problem that is killing tens of thousands of people every year. Is not such a complex problem that affects so many of us best addressed through open engagement, rather than through such cloak and dagger secrecy?

The Government’s response to the Committee’s report assured us that:

“Specific actions have been developed over the course of these meetings”.

So I do hope that we can hear more from the Minister about exactly what those specific actions are.

There is common agreement now that air pollution is an issue that we absolutely must tackle. Perhaps it is now time for a new clean air Act to be passed, some 50 years after the last one. I urge DEFRA to come back to Parliament with a comprehensive, forward-looking plan that includes detailed actions and specific timeframes. It really is time for an end to the complacency.