Air and Water Pollution: Impact

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I join in the thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, for introducing this debate, and her impressive introduction. I want to use my time mainly to focus on the regulatory framework for controlling air quality in the UK in the post-Brexit scenario. I declare an interest, in that I am the current president of Environmental Protection UK, Britain’s oldest environmental charity—formerly the National Society for Clean Air, which was instrumental in bringing into being the Clean Air Act 1956.

I make no apology for repeating my reference to that Act, which I did in the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, in July. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, I have another, personal interest to declare. As a 10 year-old living in west London with heavy congestion on the ground and under the Heathrow flight path, I was diagnosed with severe asthma. I continued to live in London for many years and, as a result of the Clean Air Act 1956, it began largely to clear up. But for a lot of other people, air pollution is still a problem in London, as it is in many urban and semi-urban parts of the UK.

As the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said, we have made progress. We have drastically cut sulphur dioxide emissions, for example, and many other pollutants have been reduced. This is partly because of the elimination of dirty factories, partly because emissions have been better managed and partly because there has been better regulation. Whatever the reason, we have made progress. The remaining area is principally, but not only, traffic and that is mainly, but not only, diesel—the wear and tear on the tyres and brakes also contribute to air pollution. Traffic volume is an important issue, but some 50% of air pollution is non-traffic—it comes from construction sites, agriculture, static plant, wood burning and gas appliances. Nitrogen dioxide and particulates have proved very difficult to reduce. Some are stubborn; some have been reduced but are now going up slightly again. There are more than 40 areas within the UK which are not meeting EU standards, which were supposed to have been achieved by 2010.

The medical effects have been spelled out this week in a substantial article in the Lancet and by evidence which, I suspect, we have all received from the BMA, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and the Royal College of Physicians. So we are looking not only at the statistical evidence of air pollution on mortality and on general ill-health, but our physicians have now identified the plausible means whereby damage is done and have shown that very small, ultra-fine particles enter the bloodstream within minutes of being inhaled. As has been said, this is particularly a problem for infants and young children and for children in the womb. The net effect on adults and children has been to contribute to 40,000-plus deaths nationwide, through pulmonary, cardiovascular and other diseases and aggravation of pre-existing conditions.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, there is also a social dimension. It affects the least well-off, and children are the least well-off in our society. One could say that the diesel cars of the top 25% are damaging the health of the bottom 25%, and the children in particular.

The way in which this has been dealt with has been very dependent on EU regulations and ultimately on EU enforcement. These regulations have not been met, either within the UK or within many other European countries. Enforcement has been difficult. As the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, indicated, the Volkswagen crisis has shown that the power of the German car manufacturers has overridden the health of the European population. Whether or not there were other ways of dealing with that, it greatly aggravated both the problem and the credibility of the system. The value limits in these EU regulations are at twice the level which the World Health Organization suggests are safe.

Even to meet the EU standards, the UK Government will need a more effective air quality strategy than they currently have. Having been found wanting in the courts twice over the last few months, the latest July version of Defra’s air quality plan admittedly includes a number of new elements—in particular, a target of 2040 for the end of petrol and diesel cars, which is less than other public authorities in Britain and Europe have set. It also provides some funds to support low-carbon vehicles. However, if you add up the totality of the air quality strategy, it is, in effect, a call for local authorities to draw up their own plans without any significant additional powers or resources. It is still not a coherent strategy, nor is it a coherent way in which to develop clean air zones. Local authorities have been somewhat slow in developing those. There is a real need to focus on the areas of worst pollution and to ensure that all central and local government-sanctioned developments near the areas of highest pollution do not cut across that.

This may be a minor example in some ways, but the reference of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, to trees reminded me that just this week I saw an article in the Camden New Journal, which said that it was proposed to cut down 50 plane trees, which absorb pollution, to house temporarily the taxi rank displaced by HS2. That is an absurd counteraction. There is an even worse one: the London mayor has begun to develop an ambitious programme to introduce charges on all diesel vehicles and develop ultra-low vehicle emissions zones, but that could be undermined by the decision on Heathrow. Only yesterday, the Times stated that the latest reports suggest that the evidence relating to likely air quality problems arising from the building of a third runway at Heathrow mean that even the EU’s current levels will be undermined. I say to the Minister and his transport ministerial colleagues that the Times also stated that the risks of those limits not being met are low at Gatwick but very high at Heathrow. Given that new evidence, is the Minister inclined to change the approach to the building of a third runway at Heathrow?