Air Quality

Paul Monaghan Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Paul Monaghan (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (SNP)]

This inquiry was conducted by the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, led by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). As a member of the Committee, I was pleased to participate. We published our report on 20 April 2016, after close scrutiny of 56 items of published evidence and four evidence-gathering sessions.

The Committee framed a number of recommendations, offered the UK Government additional advice and commented formally on a number of vital matters. We also endorsed the UK Government’s approach to certain aspects of new road transport technologies. In developing our recommendations, the Select Committee considered 12 important themes relating to UK Government policy and air quality in England. The themes included: the integration and reinvigoration of UK Government actions and policy; Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs air quality strategy and analysis of cost relative to benefit; DEFRA nitrogen dioxide plans; how best to fund local action; EU emissions tests and the impact of test inaccuracies on DEFRA plans; the use of so-called defeat devices in software by Volkswagen; new road transport technologies; and emissions from ships, agricultural and greenhouse gases.

Despite mounting evidence of the health and environmental impacts of air pollution, the Committee found little evidence of a cohesive cross-Government plan to tackle emissions and improve the quality of the air that people breathe in England. In part, the Government’s narrow focus appeared to relate to a failure by the Cabinet Office to establish clear duties and policy responsibilities for each Department. Furthermore, we observed that Ministers must begin to develop more open and transparent communication strategies in order to engage with the public. In that regard, we were unimpressed by the Cabinet Office’s role in co-ordinating policy development and found the work of the inter-ministerial group on clean growth to be opaque.

Disappointingly, DEFRA policies aim to cut air pollution to the legal limits, although it is known that actual threats to health and the environment are evident at much lower levels. DEFRA policies therefore lack ambition, making little attempt to calculate whether cost-effective means can be developed to meet real-life demands representing much tougher targets. Such calculations could be based on robust evidence about the benefits of cleaner air against the costs of policies needed to achieve it, such as imposing constraints on polluting industries.

The Committee demonstrated that enhanced information flows are required within DEFRA if the contribution and value of clean air to society is to be identified and acted on. We also identified that DEFRA policies must begin to incentivise voluntary action rather than regulation. Mandating lower pollution is clearly not the most cost-effective method of encouraging a general focus, and it typically results in a compliance-focused approach by industry in relation to specific activities, rather than the development of a more generalised approach that seeks to accrue benefits associated with a more positive state of affairs. The Committee found DEFRA’s overall approach to reducing pollution likely to result in a compliance culture.

Emission reduction targets should be based on scientific evidence and strategies for pollution reduction based on effective cost-benefit analyses. Ministers must set out with absolute clarity the actions required across Government if the public are to be reassured that the Government are committed to improving air quality substantially. It is worth noting that parts of London, such as Oxford Street, now represent the most polluted environments in the world. The scale of the challenge facing the UK Government in England on emissions is immense, but the public will be interested to know that the UK Government are largely not addressing it.

In particular, the Committee was told that DEFRA’s plans for clean air zones will impose a one-size-fits-all category D model on cities from Southampton to Leeds. In London, there are also plans for an ultra-low emission zone, but our evidence demonstrated that few in power appear to understand what that means. We also heard evidence suggesting that the UK Government must give local authorities greater control to implement policy flexibly, in order to tailor measures better to local circumstances. For example, we took evidence suggesting that cities would find it more effective to limit vehicle access at certain times of day or target specific bus routes rather than to implement less considered blanket bans on access.

It was therefore remarkable for us to find that the UK Government have planning powers to levy charges discouraging the use of vehicles in specific areas only for the five cities with the highest levels of pollution, although it is known that dozens of identifiable areas breach current EU pollution limits. That finding sits at odds with many developing nations, and indeed with policies being implemented now to address pollution in cities such as Athens, Paris, Rome and Madrid. If the UK Government are to avoid having their air quality policies left in tatters, DEFRA and the Department for Communities and Local Government must fund wider programmes such as those supported by the local sustainable transport fund, which has demonstrated that it delivers benefits cost-effectively.

We also looked at specific measures to reduce emissions from shipping, agriculture, the building industry, public transport and cars. We endorsed the UK Government’s support for a wide range of technologies, including the provision of fiscal incentives such as lower fuel duty rates for cleaner fuels. We viewed positively new technologies such as gas-powered or hybrid vehicles and fully electric vehicles that can offer solutions for different transport needs. Sadly, however, the UK Government appear to be taking a technologically passive approach that is inhibiting support for the necessary research, development and implementation of low-emission technologies.

Indeed, the UK Government’s response to our inquiry has been disappointing, if not lamentable. Not only have they failed to address the Committee’s recommendations, but they recently lost two cases in the High Court in respect of their failures to implement appropriate measures to limit pollution. On 8 December, the European Union initiated legal proceedings against the UK Government for their failure to apply penalties against Volkswagen and, more worryingly, for failing to disclose full information to the EU Commission. Those failures and omissions are instructive. They are also a damming indictment of ineffectiveness—all the more so since the Minister herself told the Committee only this week that air quality was her “top priority”.

We have found that DEFRA’s approach is based on predictive assumptions that are too cautious. A history of failure to translate theoretical standards into cleaner air means that it must keep its assumptions under review. At the current rate of change, it will be many, many years before ultra-low emission vehicles replace all the types of vehicles and heavy plant currently causing pollution. Faster progress could be made if further measures were introduced to encourage people to buy newer, perhaps unfamiliar and in many cases more costly, technologies. The UK Government must rise to that challenge or face the prospect of losing further credibility in the courts.