Environment Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Jones]

I do agree, and I am sure that that topic will be dealt with by my fellow shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), very appropriately when we debate the next group of amendments.

I want to share some of Rosamund’s letter to the Prime Minister, from which I quote:

“Ella was hospitalised 28 times in 28 months and admitted to ICU five times, fighting back from the brink of death. Her condition meant her lungs frequently filled with mucus, which made her feel as if she was constantly suffocating.”

I was disappointed to hear the Minister say today that she is delaying the consultation about air quality until next October, because that means that an additional 36,000 to 40,000 people in the UK could die prematurely every year owing to exposure to air pollution. Among them are between 22 and 24 children and young people who die from asthma every year, eight to 12 of whom live in London. The UK has one of the highest death rates from asthma in Europe, whereas in Finland, a country with better air quality, not a single child dies of asthma in a year.

As Rosamund goes on to say, the Environment Bill is our once-in-a-generation opportunity to ensure that children born now—including our own children—can grow up breathing safe, healthy air. Those are powerful words from a mother determined to ensure that no other parent experiences the loss of a child and no other child loses its life because the Government refused to act. Labour will not stop in the fight for cleaner air, and if this Tory Government will not act, Labour will. Let me make clear again that we will deliver a stand-alone clean air Act when we win the next general election.

As we have heard, this Bill creates the Office for Environmental Protection, but fails to give it the powers that it needs. A strong, effective and trusted OEP is, in the words of my noble friend Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, essential to underpin all the other measures contained in the Bill. As the OEP will be scrutinising and holding Ministers to account in respect of their compliance with environmental laws, rules and regulations, it is vital for the OEP to be strong and independent, and to engage properly with all devolved nations in our United Kingdom.

It is also beyond comprehension that since the Bill worked its way through both Houses, Ministers have actually weakened their own proposals for this new office. If that approach continues, the OEP will become a lapdog rather than a watchdog, and this will be simply another missed opportunity for the Secretary of State. It is because of that missed opportunity that Lords amendment 31 in the name of Lord Krebs, Lords amendment 33 in the name of Lord Anderson, and Lords amendment 75 in the name of our former colleague from South Down, my noble Friend Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick, are so important. They strengthen the powers, reach and scope of the OEP, and they have our full support.

I thank Lord Teverson for Lords amendment 1, which requires the Government to declare a biodiversity and climate emergency. How can anyone disagree with that? I also thank Baroness Bennett for Lords amendment 2, which seeks to ensure that soil health and quality remains a priority area for environmental improvement; and, of course, I welcome Lords amendment 28 from Baroness Parminter. This amendment removes the exceptions in the Bill for policy making on defence and security, tax, spending and resource allocation from the requirement to have due regard to the policy statement on environmental principles. If the Bill is going to mean anything and if Ministers are serious about tackling the climate emergency, they will support those amendments today.

Lords amendment 12, in the name of Baroness Brown of Cambridge, is an important component of the fight to make this Bill fit for purpose. It seeks, very simply, to place a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to meet any interim targets that he or she sets. It is obvious why targets are required, and it is obvious why we need to be able to track our progress, monitor our focus and honour our promises. The amendment received cross-party support in the other place, and I hope that it will do so in the House today.

At every stage of this Bill, Labour has proposed fair, balanced and objective amendments that seek to make the Bill fit for purpose and, moreover, actually help us tackle the climate emergency and set out a real place to protect our environment and preserve our planet. I have said to the House before that we do not have time to waste: the climate crisis worsens each day, and real action is necessary. But that requires a strong Bill, not a half-hearted attempt that does not recognise, or match, the seriousness of the challenge in front of us.

Disappointingly for many in the sector and for the future of our planet, nothing in the Bill will stop the UK falling behind the EU on the environment and environmental standards. Over the past year, as well as dealing with the coronavirus pandemic we have seen fires raging across Australia, the US and the Amazon, at the same time as glaciers are melting away in the Arctic and Antarctic. We are seeing increasingly erratic and life-threatening weather patterns in our cities and rural areas alike.

This Bill needs energy and dynamism, and the amendments before the House today make a bad Bill better. I hope that Ministers will simply and finally do the right thing. They should accept these fair and balanced amendments from their lordships’ House, and I urge them to work with Labour to deliver a real plan to protect our environment and preserve our planet.

[Neil Parish]

It is a pleasure to speak to Lords amendment 1 and to this first group of amendments. I very much agree with the comments of the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) on David Amess and James Brokenshire. They were great colleagues in the House and we miss them very much. I send my condolences to their families.

I wanted to welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), but I cannot do so at the moment because she is not here. She will be a great asset to the environmental team. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) does a great job, but I am sure that some help will be needed with this huge subject and I look forward to my hon. Friend helping her with it.

I welcome the progress of the Bill, and I appreciate the fact that the Government have been open and willing to engage on some of the issues raised. I have no doubt that the amendments put forward by the other place have shaped the Government’s thinking and will make the Bill stronger. The Government might not support the Lords’ amendments, but I urge them to take notice of them as the Bill is finally brought to fruition.

On another positive note, I commend the Government for setting up the interim Office for Environmental Protection. I also welcome the appointment of Dame Glenys Stacey as its chair, because I believe that she will do a very good job. I hope that the OEP will be able to improve the environment by ensuring that some cases can be settled before they even get to court. That will be a really strong role for the OEP. I also want to ensure that the independence of the chair and the OEP is maintained. I have confidence in the present Secretary of State, but we need to ensure that those offices are independent for all time. Soil health, including organic matter and soil erosion, are also important issues for the way forward, and we need to ensure that we get them absolutely right.

Lords amendment 3 would set out a stringent target for cutting PM_2.5 and I completely agree with the intention behind the amendment. I want us to commit to matching the World Health Organisation limits by 2030, and as I said in a question to the Minister, the WHO is reducing those levels. However, the Bill as it stands includes a legally binding duty on the Government to set an air quality target by this time next year, October 2022. We have had a lot of consultation on this, and I urge the Minister and the Government to get on with it. I look forward to their setting that target, and if they do not have to wait until October 2022, please will they not do so?

I would welcome some detail from the Minister on the timetable for the public consultation next year. When will it be launched, how long will it run and when will the results be published? This really is a pressing issue, so we cannot let that target date slip further. I would also be grateful to know whom the Government plans to consult on the targets. How will they engage with non-governmental organisations, businesses and the wider public? Will the consultation include the option to express support for matching WHO guidelines on PM_2.5? Current UK limits are 25 micrograms per cubic metre. The WHO’s recommended limit is 10, and that was set in 2005. It has spent the last five years reviewing its guidelines and it has just updated them. This new limit is half its current limit, at 5 micrograms, which is five times lower than our current UK limit. I hope that the Government will consider any new WHO guidelines that have come out by the time of the consultation next year. I do not want to see us consulting on matching a target that the WHO set in 2005 and that is no longer relevant.

The WHO also confirmed last year that the guidelines should be the minimum goal. I would like that number to be as low as possible. These particulates are among the most dangerous pollutants. They are small enough to pass through the lungs into the bloodstream and into our organs, so ideally the legal limit should be zero, because there is no safe level of PM_2.5. I know that this would be almost impossible, but bringing that number as low as possible would still mean saving thousands of lives. As we drive to achieve much lower carbon emissions in this country and across the world, we must remember that air quality affects our day-to-day lives. It affects people’s health every day and is potentially killing people as we speak.

We have to ensure that this is one of our great priorities. It is so important, because poor air quality is directly affecting people’s health and lifespan in some hotspots in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) made the point that we need to concentrate on those hotspots by working with local authorities across the piece to deliver better air quality. When our Joint Committee comprising four Committees of this House looked into air quality, we saw that it was not just DEFRA, Transport and Local Government but virtually every part of Government that would help to deliver better air quality.

[Sir Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Does he agree that constituencies such as mine would be more reassured if the Government were to set up some sort of taskforce to pull together these various agencies? Funding is available to local authorities, but there is a lack of strategic focus to enable everything to be pulled together. That is something sensible that we could do to reassure people that the can is not simply being kicked down the road until next October or beyond.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point about a taskforce. Whether it is a taskforce or an individual, somebody needs to pull all this together to make sure that it actually happens. That is absolutely key as we move forward.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Gentleman has made many interventions, but I will allow him one more.

[Mr Sheerman]

This is a very quick one. The hon. Gentleman and I share this passion, and he knows that a number of our towns are trying to make themselves sustainable under the United Nations sustainable development goals. Many councils now have a climate change emergency resolution and climate change commissions, but they do not quite know what to do. Does he agree that, given that we have all these groups in these towns and cities, we should go for 500 towns and cities in this country, such as Huddersfield, that are committed to becoming truly sustainable under the UN sustainable development goals?

[Neil Parish]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that short intervention! We have taken evidence from the Mayor of Bristol. He talked about air quality, and he told us that the M32 comes right into the centre of Bristol, but the trouble is that the Mayor has little control over what happens on that motorway. That is why I very much agree with joining up what the Government and local authorities are doing across the country. We can do more, and there needs to be more urgency about it.

We must remember nine-year-old Ella, whose death was caused by exposure to air pollution. Her primary source of exposure was traffic emissions. We cannot have our children growing up in a world in which the air they breathe could potentially kill them.

On that note I stress that, although a broad reduction target could help drive improvements across the country, we also need strong limits on concentrations in particular hotspots. We need action on that quickly, as it would ensure that everyone benefits from a minimum level of protection. Without such action, people living in pollution hotspots could be left behind and existing health inequalities could be widened, so this is something we need to address.

The US and the EU are considering tightening their own limits. If we want to be world leading, we need an ambitious target and we need it quickly. However, I know this is a complex issue and the solution cannot be delivered overnight. It is one thing to set a target, but it is another thing to meet and deliver that target. Reducing overall air pollution needs a dramatic reduction in emissions from transport, homes and farming. I have no doubt that it will be difficult to do and that a proper, well-thought-out strategy is needed, but I know the Government are not afraid of setting ambitious targets.

Setting an ambitious air pollution target can also help to drive action to meet the Government’s commitment to net zero by 2050. Pollution from road transport, as well as from domestic and industrial burning, is also a cause of greenhouse gas emissions. We have an opportunity to tackle both climate change and air pollution at the same time, and we can help the planet and protect people’s health. I support a binding commitment to publishing a target after a full consultation, but I make it clear that this is an urgent issue and I will continue to hold the Government to account. October 2022 must be the absolute last point at which we set a proper target on reducing PM_2.5 in law.