Oral Answers to Questions

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Before I bring in the shadow Minister, may I just ask Ministers to speed up the answers? We have to get through some more Members.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is my first time appearing opposite the Minister; hopefully we will have many fruitful discussions.

There is growing evidence that deaths due to covid are higher in areas of bad air quality, but lockdown means that right now we are breathing the cleanest air that we have had in generations. We need to do all we can to ensure that many of the survivors of covid, who will have weakened lungs, are protected. Air pollution currently kills 40,000 people each year, with 40 of our towns breaking the World Health Organisation limit. The Government and the Minister dismissed putting targets in the Environment Bill, but surely covid has changed all that. Will the Minister sit down with us and agree a form of wording that will require Ministers to set targets on air quality in order to reach the WHO standard by 2030 and help save British lives?

[Rebecca Pow]

As the hon. Gentleman alludes to, the Environment Bill delivers key parts of the clean air strategy and introduces a duty to set an ambitious, legally binding target on PM concentrations of pollutants of greatest harm. I know that he will also be interested in the independent Air Quality Expert Group, which has been analysing the situation so that we can learn lessons from coronavirus, and from air quality and its potential impact on human lives. Air quality is a serious issue for human health.