Improving Air Quality

Debate between Neil Parish and Mary Creagh

Thursday 28th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not find it extraordinary that the US Department of Justice and the state of California have brought a case against Volkswagen, which has had to pay out more than $4 billion in the United States, with six people having been indicted, yet the UK Government are being brought to the European Court of Justice for our complete inertia in tackling this criminality?

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Lady, a fellow Select Committee Chair, raises a very good point. What I cannot understand is that although the money is not exactly free, it is money we could get from a source separate from British taxpayers, or wherever, to help to clean up a situation created by these vehicles. I urge the Minister today to come forward with ideas about how we can get some money from the car industry, especially Volkswagen; as the hon. Lady says, the Americans seem to be somewhat more effective at that job than we are.

The “polluter pays” fund would mean that the Government could have more money available to improve public transport and speed up the roll-out of infrastructure needed for low-emission vehicles. The emissions scandal showed us that all the manufacturers were prepared to put profit above everything else, including our health, but the Government are shying away from making them pay.

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Environmental Audit Committee, Health and Social Care Committee and Transport Committee

Debate between Neil Parish and Mary Creagh

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Stringer. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, I think for the first time. It is good that you had the benefit of being on the Joint Committee during the inquiry. I assure Members that I will not speak for 10 minutes, so as to allow more time for questions. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating this statement on our recent report, “Improving air quality”.

Before we begin, I am reminded that a year ago my Committee was taking evidence from the Minister when we were called to a Division. The unthinkable happened. We all stand here today because of the unflinching bravery of those on the frontline, in particular the courage of PC Keith Palmer. We carry on our work and we are all here today because we remember the great sacrifices that have been made to enable us to do so.

Clean air is a right and not a privilege. We launched a joint inquiry in October last year to examine the Government’s latest air quality strategy and whether it was adequate. I thank my fellow Select Committee Chairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) from the Health and Social Care Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) from the Transport Committee and the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) from the Environmental Audit Committee. I think we worked remarkably well together. I also thank the Committee staff for all their hard work in bringing it all together.

For too long, the United Kingdom has failed to meet legal air quality limits. That is simply not good enough. It was clear to us that Departments must work together to address this national health emergency. My fellow Chairs and I launched the joint inquiry to show that if we can work together, so can Government. We took evidence from expert witnesses, the Mayor of London, Ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Transport, the Treasury and the Department for Communities and Local Government. It was clear to us that the Departments are not doing enough to protect the public from toxic air.

Poor air quality costs the UK some £20 billion a year, and it is a huge public health risk to all our constituents. Because of the failure to collaborate and to come up with an effective strategy, the Government are letting us down. Car manufacturers have contributed towards poor air quality for too long, and the Government have allowed that to happen and let them—in my opinion—off the hook. From the USA to Germany, car manufacturers have contributed millions of pounds to cleaning up their air. Why have we not had that contribution in this country?

Councils struggling with air quality need more leadership from Government to ensure that they have the resources to tackle the problem effectively. The Government must work more closely with councils to roll out vital infrastructure, especially electric vehicle charging points and fast-charging points. That would also help small and medium-sized enterprises and others if they wanted to convert to electric and hybrid vehicles, so that they had the charging points as well as the drivers.

All that must be included in a new clean air Act, which would concentrate the resources we so desperately need to clean up our air quality. A refusal to act is simply passing the buck. Our children and grandchildren deserve better. The Government should implement our recommendations and give us all the right to breathe cleaner air. I look forward to the Ministers’ responses to our report.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I echo the hon. Gentleman’s sentiments about this being a very solemn day for this place, when we remember the five victims who so tragically and suddenly lost their lives. In particular, we hold in our hearts PC Keith Palmer, who stood his ground, not 50 yards from this room, to defend this place and to defend our Parliament. The debt of gratitude that we owe him and his family can never be repaid.

One of the interesting things that came out of the inquiry was the huge and developing evidence about the impact of air pollution on health and health inequalities. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that a worrying piece of evidence that came out of the inquiry was research from the Royal College of Physicians showing that air pollution could reduce children’s birth weight and damage IQ, and that it was possibly an increasing factor in lung cancer for people who have never smoked?

I agree passionately that we need a new clean air Act. The Environmental Audit Committee has been looking at the accountability mechanisms. We need an environmental protection Act to set up an accountable body so that that mechanism is still in place if and when we leave the EU. The clock is ticking loudly on that. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government need to speed up their activity in that area?

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to adopt the World Health Organisation’s targets for all air pollutants, not just nitrogen dioxide, and to set out clear milestones for meeting them? It is all very well saying that it will happen in 10 or 15 years’ time, but if we do not have milestones, they will not be met.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government need to do much more on central Government procurement? They have said that 25% of Departments’ car fleets will be ultra low emission vehicles by 2022. We have just completed an audit of the Ministry of Justice. Of 1,500 vehicles, just two are ultra low emission. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has only two electric vehicles in its fleet. The Government need go much further and much faster, and to extend that target to outside agencies, including the NHS, because its carbon footprint is huge.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the cheapest and simplest method is to label vehicle emissions on new cars so that when a person goes into a car showroom, they know exactly what they are purchasing? That would mean that they could future-proof themselves against any action that might be taken by their local authority or by the Government, so they were not buying something that may lose its value in two or five years’ time.

[Neil Parish]

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions and, again, for her co-operation in putting the Joint Committee together. She will not be surprised to know that I very much agree with her points.

On the clean air Act, that is something we need the Government to come forward with, because it would concentrate not only resource but political drive on cleaning up our air. On the World Health Organisation’s targets, we need to be more ambitious than the Government are at the moment. On an environmental protection agency, we need to know more from the Government about how that would come about, how it would take on the role that the European Commission has had, and who could take the Government to court to hold them to account.

The car fleet is an interesting one. I expect that the hon. Lady, like me, has often come through Speaker’s Court and seen interesting vehicles waiting for Secretaries of State. The vehicles are all quite large, and as far as I can see very few have anything hybrid about them, so perhaps the Government could lead by example. It will be interesting to see what they do. This is a serious point, because as we get our new fleet of vehicles across all Departments, we need a series of electric vehicles and hybrids. For some places, all-electric will work. If people have to go longer distances, hybrids are essential. We look forward to working with all the other Select Committees to ensure that we deliver cleaner air.

Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

Debate between Neil Parish and Mary Creagh

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

Does the hon. Lady think that the £50 a year for which the Bill provides until the end of the spending review period is adequate compensation for her constituents? It will undoubtedly be eaten up by the next two years-worth of price increases in cash terms.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that this coalition Government have done more in 13 months than the Labour Government did in 13 years? We have 3% of the population in the south-west and 30% of the beaches, and that is why we have got these extreme costs. This Government have faced up to their responsibilities and delivered real cash to water bill payers, rather than just talking about it like the previous Government.

[Mary Creagh]

I am disappointed at the hon. Gentleman’s tone, because he is ignoring the fact that we commissioned the Walker report when we were in government. He is also ignoring the action we took, not least to prevent customers from being disconnected. I am sure that many of his constituents were affected in the early days of water privatisation when hundreds of thousands of customers were cut off—disconnected—from their water supply for non-payment of bills. We changed that. We changed the law and effectively instigated a right to water, which we think is a basic human right and is required for basic dignity and decency. I am sure that affected many people in the south-west.

The Bill is welcome because it lays down powers exercised by the Secretary of State to provide finance for the huge infrastructure investment that is needed to clean up the Thames, which has had very little investment since the great sewer drilled by Bazalgette 150 years ago. However, there are a number of questions that the Secretary of State must answer. First, why is the Bill so short? We are in a time of drought not seen in this country since 1976, so why is she focusing on the little picture rather than the big picture? Why was the water White Paper that was due in spring 2011 not published until December 2011? Her colleague the Minister with responsibility for water is now promising a draft water Bill this spring, so can she confirm that there will not be a full water Bill to take forward the other measures in Anna Walker’s report in the Queen’s Speech this May—yes or no?