Transport Emissions: Urban Areas

Layla Moran Excerpts
Tuesday 22nd May 2018

(5 years, 11 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Michael Gove Portrait Michael Gove
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We have devoted £1.5 billion overall to supporting the growth of zero and ultra-low emissions vehicles, including a wider network of charge points, but I think there is more that we can do. One of the things I will be exploring with my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Transport and for Housing, Communities and Local Government is how we can do everything possible—both in planning and in the legislation that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), is bringing forward—to build on the leadership that my hon. Friend has shown.

Layla Moran Portrait Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
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Everyone has the right to clean air, including people in villages such as North Hinksey and market towns such as Abingdon in my constituency, yet those places have hotspots, and those sorts of conurbations are not mentioned at all in the clean air strategy. Will the Secretary of State confirm that his ambitions extend to smaller conurbations, not just cities?

Michael Gove Portrait Michael Gove
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The hon. Lady makes a good point. There are concentrations of poor air quality not just in our major cities but in other areas. There can be a combination of factors, including roadside emissions and emissions from domestic heating. Critically, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, acknowledged, sometimes emissions also come from agriculture. The strategy commits us to providing support for all those sectors, to move towards a cleaner future.