Oral Answers to Questions

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend draws attention to just one of many ways in which farmers are making sure that our natural environment is enhanced. Our new environmental land management schemes should better reward farmers and allow other landowners, such as the RSPB, to continue their good work.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

T6. Last week in Transport questions, the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), told me that the Government were taking the dangers of toxic air to children’s health “very seriously”, but that the issue was “complex and multifaceted”. Given that UNICEF tells us that 4.5 million children are growing up in areas with unsafe levels of particulate matter, does the Secretary of State agree that his colleagues in the DFT need to pull their finger out, because under existing plans, those toxic levels of air pollution will continue for the next decade?

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely agree that we need to take the issue of air quality more seriously. It is absolutely the No. 1 environmental threat to public health, and that is why our recent air quality strategy, which I launched with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, was applauded by the World Health Organisation as an example for other countries to follow.