Environment Bill

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am delighted to see all these amendments and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Kennedy, for bringing them forward.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, gave an excellent introduction. I just have one slight problem with it: while the current Mayor of London is doing a lot on air pollution, he is also building a road that will negate virtually everything he is doing and has done. The Silvertown tunnel should be stopped immediately with not another penny spent on it. We all have to understand that building new roads is a mistake anywhere in the country, but especially here in London, when we should be concentrating on better, cleaner methods of transport.

I have worked the issue of air pollution on since 2001. The mayor at the time, Ken Livingstone, made a very good stab from a standing start at reducing air pollution, even though at the time it was just a warning flag that we were about to break EU limits. He did what he could in terms of the congestion charge and encouraging cycling, even though he was not a cyclist himself. Sadly, as soon as the mayoralty was taken over by the current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, things went a little bit skew-whiff. He did not get the whole issue of air pollution and that is a big problem because we know that, if you do not have targets for reducing something, it is likely to not get done. If we are going to clean up our toxic air, this Bill has to set binding targets.

The sources of air pollution are widespread: industry, transport, buildings and agriculture are all major contributors. We have to understand how each of those can be cleaned up and improved, not just for all of us who breathe it in in the cities, but for farmers who also experience a huge amount of pollution in their daily lives.

Air pollution has been found to cause death after a coroner ruled it was a cause of death for Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah. I pay tribute to Ella’s mother Rosamund, who campaigned and fought for so many years to reach this verdict. Ella is the first person to ever have air pollution as a cause of death and it is now official that Ella’s painfully cruel death was unnecessary, preventable and should never happen again to any child or adult. If the Minister is in any doubt about putting targets on air pollution into this Bill, I urge him to meet Rosamund, who fought a fantastic campaign virtually alone when she was suffering immeasurable grief from losing her eldest child. I think he would be convinced and would take it back to the department to insist that we put targets on air pollution into this Bill.

The coroner in Ella’s case said that

“there is no safe level for Particulate Matter”

in air and recommended a reduction in the national pollution limits to bring them into line with World Health Organization guidelines, which is exactly what my Amendment 29 would do. It would hook air pollution targets to the latest WHO guidelines and require the targets to be updated as the science develops. I believe this is the only safe way to proceed and the only way to be true to Ella’s legacy, so that no more children will die from choking on toxic air.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op) [V]]

My Lords, I support the intention behind all the amendments in this group today. I agree with the contributions of my noble friends Lady Hayman and Lord Whitty, and with virtually everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said. However, I will restrict my remarks to Amendment 156 in my name in this group.

The amendment seeks to put Ella’s law into the Bill. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, mentioned, on 16 December last year, the coroner in the case found that the death in 2013 of nine year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah, who had a severe case of asthma, was caused by “excessive air pollution”. Ella lived in Lewisham, in south London, very near to where I live. The fact that this poor child suffered a terrible death from breathing in toxic particles should be a matter of concern for us all. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, did, I want to pay tribute to Rosamund, Ella’s mother, for her tireless campaigning over seven years to get the verdict on 16 December last year. Ella is the first person in the UK to have had air pollution listed as a cause of death. We all know that thousands of people die every year due to respiratory failure, but Ella’s doctors, and others, were clear that the filthy air she was breathing was suffocating her and contributed to her death, and that is now recorded on the death certificate.

Amendment 156 in my name seeks to place duties on the Secretary of State in the Bill to ensure that the health of members of the public is put centre stage. I hope that the Minister and all Members of the House will support that. The amendment may not be perfect, but it sets out clear targets for the Secretary of State for particulate matter, at WHO levels, and a plan to achieve compliance, along with the monitoring of air quality, the publishing of live data and providing information to the public. It also seeks to ensure proper education, training and guidance for healthcare professionals.

I am hoping for a very positive response from the Minister today. I want to hear him say very clearly to the House that he is prepared to meet me, my noble friend Lady Hayman, Ella’s mother Rosamund and members of the Ella’s law campaign to see if we can get an agreement to put this in the Bill before we come back to this issue on Report. I assure the Minister that we will come back to this issue on Report, and I hope to be able to do that on the basis of co-operation and agreement. I look forward to the Minister confirming, at the end of this debate, that he is prepared to meet me and the other people I have listed.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to support this group of amendments, because this is the point where general environmental and climate change benefits directly coincide with health benefits. It is therefore plain common sense to give them total priority.

Reducing emissions of NOx, CO₂ and PM2.5 are vital targets. I read this week that research by Imperial College London has revealed that, in London and other cities, there is still lead in our atmosphere—in the air. Lead was banned from petrol 20 years ago, so we need to bear in mind how long it takes to produce a long-term solution to these problems.

The problem with the Bill as it stands is that, although it commits to targets, they are too vague and much too far in the future. The Environmental Audit Committee drew attention to what it called the “needlessly long timeframe”. The details of the target will not be in place until the end of next year, when it could be in place as soon as the Bill passes through both Houses, and there will be no requirement to meet the target until at least 2037. That is so distant as to absolve the current Government, and the one after that, of any sense of responsibility and incentive to take the difficult decisions required. Even the aviation industry, which has the greatest technical challenges in dealing with emissions, is urging the Government to set shorter-term interim targets. It argues that only shorter-term targets will incentivise investment in nascent clean technologies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I tried to explain our approach to air quality monitoring in response to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, but the noble Baroness has taken up the issue as well. There is a network of monitoring across the UK. It is not complete or perfect, but we keep it permanently under review and have committed increased investment both to fill in the gaps and to upgrade and update the infrastructure, just to make sure that the network is doing what it is supposed to.

The noble Baroness asked where the responsibility lies. While the responsibility for meeting the national target that we will set as a consequence of the Bill, the PM2.5 target, will clearly be with national government, there is a huge role for local authorities when it comes to delivering those reductions. This will happen only as a result of partnerships. There are things that local authorities can do to tackle air pollution, but there are things that they cannot do and areas in which they rely on national government. For example, the initiative on cars—the transition to electric vehicles—can be helped by local authorities via charging networks, but fundamentally it will result from national policy.

The noble Baroness mentioned idling. Ultimately, that will have to be enforced by local authorities. I was involved in campaigns of that sort, specifically on idling, as the Member of Parliament for Richmond Park. It was extraordinary how many people would unthinkingly leave their engines on at a level crossing that would sometimes be down for nearly 10 minutes. Once they were politely asked to turn their engines off, they always did—not surprisingly—and we found that behaviour improved dramatically over just a few months. The local authority became better at issuing fines for repeat offenders. That was not the objective—no one wanted to see an increase in fines—but it was effective as a deterrent.

It is a complicated answer because ultimately, if we are to get where we need to go, it will be through collaboration between local, regional and national government.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response to this important debate. When I spoke to my Amendment 156, I made a request to him to meet me, my noble friend Lady Hayman, Ella’s mother, Rosamund, and members of the Ella’s law campaign. He did not address that when he spoke, so I ask him again: will he please agree to meet us before we get to Report?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I apologise for not addressing that. Yes, I am very happy to meet. We will be in touch after the debate.

Environment Bill

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 54 in this group. Like my noble friend Lady Hayman, I had the privilege of meeting Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah. I was at the meeting that she had with the Minister last week, and I thank him for being generous with his time. I am sure that, like my noble friend Lady Hayman, he could not help but be impressed by Rosamund’s humanity and commitment, and her determination to ensure that her daughter’s tragic death is not something that will happen to other families. That is why I have tabled this amendment, which I also tabled in Committee. I also very much support Amendments 4 and 12 in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman.

In our meeting we were all in agreement—the Minister and Rosamund agreed about everything—until at the end there was the problem of the “but”. The Minister said, “Of course we will have to do some more consultation and look at this a bit further. We are with you, but”. Probably the only difference on both sides now is that “but”; apart from that, I think we are all in agreement. I hope that the Minister can go further than that today and give us some good news. If not, I know my noble friend Lady Hayman will test the opinion of the House on Amendment 4, and in those circumstances, I hope the House votes for it.

I want to talk about what happened to Ella. Rosamund and Ella lived near me in Lewisham. Ella died at the age of nine while suffering from one of the most serious cases of asthma ever recorded in the UK. Her chronic condition lasted 28 months. She suffered greatly, and fought to breathe right to the very end. On Ella’s final night in Lewisham, the borough recorded one of its worst spikes ever in air pollution. She had been hospitalised 28 times in 28 months, admitted to the ICU five times, and had fought back many times from the brink of death. Her condition meant that her lungs constantly filled up with mucus and made her feel that she was suffocating.

In December 2020 there was a landmark victory for Ella and her family. She became the first person in the UK—and the world—to have air pollution listed as a cause of death. The coroner, Philip Barlow, found that she had died of asthma that had been contributed to by exposure to excessive air pollution, and the primary source of that was traffic emissions.

Eight years after Ella’s death, we have also learned that between 36,000 and 40,000 people in the UK die prematurely due to exposure to air pollution annually, and that all of us suffer from its negative health effects. Thousands are impacted every year and, across the UK, 22 to 24 young people die of asthma, eight to 12 of them in London. The UK has one of the highest death rates from asthma in Europe. In countries such as Finland no child dies from asthma. Toxic air impacts on the health of all of us, from cradle to grave. It is now a public health emergency, and Covid has highlighted the inequalities in health.

This is, in many respects, a very good Bill, but it completely fails to address the issue of air quality. That is why we are tabling these amendments. I hope that the Minister will respond positively and give us more than the “but” that we got at our meeting with him last week. If not, I hope, as I have said, that my noble friend will divide the House. I will support Amendment 4 tonight. I support all the amendments: Amendments 4 and 12 and Amendment 54, to which I am speaking now.

All we are asking is that the Government adopt the World Health Organization’s guidelines and targets. That is a pretty reasonable way forward: the World Health Organization’s particulate matter targets. I hope that the Minister can give us some good news in his response to the debate.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

I support Amendments 4 and 12, and I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, for the superb way in which she introduced this group and encapsulated the strength of feeling about the importance of these amendments.

I remind the House that air pollutants reach every organ of the body. They affect growing foetal tissue, not just adults. They affect organs as they develop in children and throughout people’s lives. Very small particles are a particular problem because they stay suspended in the air for prolonged periods and have a propensity to penetrate the deep parts of the lung. Ultrafine particles are especially problematic because in many respects they behave like a gas. As particles become smaller—into the nano scale—their surface area increases exponentially, so chemicals carried on their surface are released into cells and become bioavailable as toxins in the mitochondria within cells. The damage goes throughout the body.

The WHO guidelines are health-based and due to be revised downwards. They will not remain at their current level for many years: they will get tighter, because large epidemiological studies have shown that there are no safe levels of pollutant exposure. I remind the Government that as far back as 2001 their own advisory committee on air quality stated:

“Impact analysis of policies or specific developments, whether for industry, transport, housing etc, should take account of the interlinkages of emissions of air quality and climate change pollutants”.


That has still not occurred.

To increase the relevance of air pollution controls in environments where people live and move around requires greater input that takes into account real-life exposures in different settings, especially urban environments where people work and live close to busy roads and the foci of traffic congestion.

It has been shown in the bay area of California that there is a direct link between health impacts and the levels of pollutants in the air. There are enormous impacts, even from a single two-hour commute in a car. That has been shown to increase human stress metabolism, with very clear differences between people with normal lungs and those who are asthmatic. People with asthma are particularly vulnerable to air pollution.

I stress that point because, in addition to the growing evidence that air pollutant exposure increases susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection, as has already been said it enhances the severity of, and likelihood of death from, a lot of other lung diseases. It is all linked to the social determinants of health. Ella’s death illustrates the tragedy for many.

I remind the House again: the UK has the worst death rate for asthma in Europe and one of the highest incidences of asthma. I worry that short-term finance is driving resistance from the Government, because monitoring levels of these very small particles requires different equipment from that in use at the moment. To avoid doing this properly, however, is a real false economy. Quite apart from tragic deaths, there is the cost to the health service and social care. By installing equipment to measure particulates equal to or less than 10 micrograms per metre cubed, the Government will be prepared and able to set an example to other nations when the WHO guidelines change.

This amendment sets a quality target with a deadline far enough ahead to be achievable. Delay will simply mean that we will be playing catch-up, rather than providing the leadership that is desperately needed.