Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department plans to bring forward legislative proposals to replace existing clean air EU directives with equivalent UK legislation.
Answered by Thérèse Coffey
I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith on 8 September 2016 to Question 44855.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much funding the Local Air Quality Management team in her Department awarded to local authorities for monitoring air quality in the last year.
Answered by Thérèse Coffey
Defra monitors, models and reports on air quality at a national level in accordance with the requirements of EU and international legislation. There are 272 air quality monitoring stations in Defra’s UK national monitoring networks. Local authorities in England fund and operate approximately 720 monitoring stations, of which 59 are affiliated to the Defra networks.
Local authorities are responsible for reviewing and assessing local air quality, including decisions on local air quality monitoring. Their local knowledge and interaction with the communities that they serve mean that they know the issues on the ground in detail and the solutions that are best suited to local circumstances.
In 2015/16, Defra’s air quality grant scheme awarded £0.5m to eight local authorities to support a range of air quality related projects, including installation of pollutant monitoring stations.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if the Government will take steps to work with local authorities to install air pollution monitoring facilities outside primary and secondary schools in (a) London and (b) England.
Answered by Thérèse Coffey
Defra monitors, models and reports air quality at a national level in accordance with the requirements of EU and international legislation. There are 272 monitoring stations in the UK national monitoring network, of which 21 are in Greater London and 83 in England.
Local authorities are responsible for reviewing and assessing local air quality, including decisions on local air quality monitoring. Their local knowledge and interaction with the communities that they serve mean that they know the issues on the ground in detail and the solutions that are best suited to local circumstances.
Defra provides guidance, including helpdesk advice to local authorities on the appropriate type of monitoring to install. Where local authorities conduct air quality monitoring, they are expected to site monitors in accordance with local and national priorities, which may include schools and other locations where there is high risk of public exposure.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps the Government is taking to reduce (a) plastic packaging consumer waste and (b) other forms of pollution in the River Thames.
Answered by Rory Stewart
The Government has taken a number of steps to reduce the amount of consumer plastic packaging waste ending up in the natural environment, including in the River Thames, by reducing the amount of plastic packaging placed on the market, increasing the amount that is recycled, and reducing litter.
These include the UK’s Packaging Waste Regulations, which both put an obligation on producers to ensure that a proportion of the packaging they handle is recovered and recycled and require that packaging should not exceed what is needed to ensure that products are safe, hygienic and acceptable to the consumer.
Working with the Waste and Resources Action Programme, a number of activities support recyclability and reducing packaging waste. The industry led Plastics Industry Recycling Action Plan also identified actions across the whole supply chain to increase the amount of plastic packaging waste recycled sustainably.
The Government’s Litter Strategy for England will also help to improve the way we all tackle the scourge of litter. To develop the Litter Strategy we are working with a range of interested stakeholders, including representatives from the Marine Conversation Society, Thames21 and the Canals and Rivers Trust.
In terms of other forms of pollution, the Environment Agency controls pollution from discharges of treated sewage, industrial effluent and storm sewage overflows into the River Thames using environmental permits under the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2010. The Environment Agency also leads the development of River Basin Management Plans setting statutory environmental objectives for all our waters, including the River Thames, which were revised last year.
Finally, the Thames Tideway Tunnel will significantly reduce the current high volumes of untreated sewage that regularly overflow into the River Thames through London at times of even moderate rainfall.