Air Pollution (London)

Tom Brake Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Ms Abbott]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. When I think about the number of primary schools in Stoke Newington alongside heavily used main roads, I wonder about the health of children who have to attend those schools. Young people in our city are particularly vulnerable to the effects of air pollution. Children growing up, or attending primary school, near the noxious fumes of busy roads have been clinically proven to develop smaller lung capacity and increased susceptibility to respiratory infections. Everyday exposure to air pollution, which is what children get when they walk to and from school daily, has been found to contribute to increased inflammation of the airways in healthy children, not to mention children already suffering from asthma. These chronically debilitating issues lead to serious medical problems that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

We have a duty of care to children, because adults can make choices about whether they drive, cycle or walk to work. Given the particularly damaging impact of air pollution on children’s lungs, why are the Government not doing more to support the production and dissemination of accurate, practical advice to help schools reduce the impact that pollution is having on the health and wellbeing of children in London and further afield? Awareness is key, and the Government are failing in their duty to raise awareness. Those with respiratory and cardiovascular disease are at greater risk of worsening their conditions due to the adverse effects of air pollution. As a whole, London has very high rates of respiratory and cardiovascular disease, not least in Hackney. Our most vulnerable people are at risk, and not enough is being done to protect them.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

The hon. Lady has referred to the action that the Government need to take, but does not Transport for London have a very large communications budget? TfL could and should use that budget much more effectively to publicise concerns about air quality and incidences of air quality issues in London.

[Ms Abbott]

When I refer to the role of the Mayor, I am of course referring to the entire Greater London Authority family over which the Mayor sits, which includes TfL, the Metropolitan police and the fire brigade. Now is the time for action. It is completely unacceptable that London’s air is the filthiest of any European capital. The air pollution on Oxford Street ensures that it has the unwelcome honour of ranking among the most polluted streets in the entire world.

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[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I will do my best, Mr Crausby.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) on securing this important debate. I also congratulate my friend Stephen Knight, a London Assembly member for the Lib Dems, who has focused on the issue of air quality around schools. He did a survey that found, for example, that only 2% of teachers in schools were aware of a service call airText, which provides updates to people if air quality is poor. I understand that the Mayor’s target is to sign up 250,000 people to the service and that the number currently stands at 7,000, so he clearly has a long way to go. I hope he gets there, because people need the information.

Only 5% of teachers were aware of the Cleaner Air 4 Schools initiative, supported by the Mayor. As I said in an intervention, the Mayor should be doing a lot more in relation to information about air quality. There are often adverts for TfL on LBC, Metro or in tube stations. TfL is a huge organisation with a large budget that ought to be doing much more to prioritise communication on air pollution, and it can do that through its websites, emails and paid commercials. Given that the Greater London Assembly website has 200,000 hits a month and the TfL website no fewer than 20 million per month, there are lots of opportunities for the Mayor to communicate.

I welcome what the Mayor is doing on the ultra-low emission zone. However, I wonder whether doing it by 2020, as the Supreme Court has ordered, will be quick enough. We need incentives to encourage taxi firms to switch to cleaner vehicles. The Mayor first announced in 2008 that those would be available—but we are still waiting, seven years on.

One area where the Government and the Mayor can play an important role is with the Euro 6-standard lorries that are already available. I have been talking to a local constituency firm, Steve Frieze Removals, which has to rely on second-hand vehicles. Its worry is that there will not be enough appropriate second-hand vehicles on the market to purchase in advance of 2020, when its vehicles will have to meet the standard.

I turn briefly to the slightly different issue of air quality in Beddington Lane in my constituency. There is a proposal from Viridor to build an energy recovery facility on a site there. There is lots of opposition locally, but the opponents do not seem to be articulating an alternative solution, other than possibly trucking the waste much, much further than it currently goes. Do the Government intend to support a methodology that would allow the Environment Agency to control the total emissions from a range of sources, rather than simply linking the extra emissions associated with one site with the background pollution levels? My understanding is that that is how the Environment Agency has to handle things currently, but lots of facilities are emitting in Beddington Lane, and it is the totality of what is happening there that needs to be addressed.

I would have loved to have talked about Heathrow as well, Mr Crausby, but I think you are encouraging me to sit down.

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[Rory Stewart]

Specifically on Horn Lane, I am afraid that I disagree slightly with the hon. Lady. Without wishing to be too controversial, I think that the local authority could have done a little more. For example, Government grants were available for road-sweeping equipment—I personally would have liked the council to apply for that money—and there could have been more imagination and flexibility on using bus lanes for road-sweeping equipment. However, I am happy to take the matter up in more detail with her. Similarly, I would be delighted to meet the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and his constituents to talk through the specific issues related to plants in his constituency.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster gave a fantastic speech that put London in context: it was the first city of the world in the 19th century, the first city to industrialise and the first post-industrial city. Colleagues in the Department for Transport will be interested in his specific proposals about taxis, and I am happy to talk to him about those. Speed bumps are also important and worth looking at. I join him in paying tribute to his constituent who has led the campaign by Clean Air in London.

The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) gave striking statistics about awareness in schools and put forward some good ideas about how we can work towards better communication on the issue. He asked whether total ambient emissions are reflected in permits. My understanding from my officials is that they are. If he or his constituents have discovered a specific case in which they are not, he may by all means come back to me so that we can follow that up, but the guidance should address total ambient emissions.

[Tom Brake]

My understanding is that when the Environment Agency looks at extra emissions from a particular plant it can do so only against the background level and cannot take into account the totality of emissions from a number of plants in an area, which might exceed permitted levels of pollution.

[Rory Stewart]

I am happy to follow that up in more detail. It is possible there is a distinction here between the responsibilities of the Environment Agency, which focuses on industrial plants, and those of DEFRA, which focuses on air quality in general.

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) raised a number of important issues. I liked his striking example of two extra tube trains a week representing the population growth in London. He emphasised the need to increase the use of the river, although there are issues around pollutants even from river-borne vehicles, which account for a substantial percentage of nitrogen dioxide emissions in London.

Electric cars must be central, because if there is a single technology that can address many of these issues—air pollutants, public health and carbon emissions—it is them. The Government have introduced a number of quite striking measures, ranging from working with Formula E, to providing incentives to electric car manufacturers to locate in the west midlands and looking at charging points, including motorway charging points, for electric vehicles. I agree that electric vehicles are the most exciting area, and it would be fantastic to work with my hon. Friend to push us harder and to challenge us to do more.

That brings us to the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), who mentioned the Mogden sewage works and, in particular, the quantity and covering of the storm tanks. Again, I would be delighted to take up the request to meet her and her constituents. If we are lucky enough to get the Thames tideway tunnel through, it may be able to deal with some of those factors—

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[Rory Stewart]

The responsibility of DEFRA—I am slightly evading the issue, because I am not going to take a grand stance on Heathrow—is indeed to police air quality and air pollution in London. We will continue to exercise our responsibilities—says he, evading the issue.

I was particularly struck by the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park focused on non-road mobile machinery and the potential there to reduce emissions by up to 40%. It is worth looking at that. There is also the issue of domestic and industrial boilers. We have focused a lot on vehicle movements, but there is potential in other areas.

I agree with the hon. Member for Brent North that Europe has done a great deal, but I am disappointed that, three weeks ago, we were not able to get other European member states to address the fact that the Euro 6 engines are not performing outside a laboratory. If we could get agreement on that, it would make a huge difference.

Although some progress has been made, each new step is becoming more and more difficult. We are not dealing simply with one issue, such as diesel cars, but with a dozen different issues, all of which contribute almost equally to diesel emissions.

[Tom Brake]

I hope I did not miss this, and I hope the Minister is not being evasive, but when will the Government publish their air quality strategy?

[Rory Stewart]

I do not have an answer for the right hon. Gentleman, but I am happy to sit down and talk through the details. We are certainly bringing together an air quality strategy, but I do not have a date for him.

To conclude, there are dozens of measures we need to take. This is a highly complex issue. However, I am very open to ideas from anybody in the room on how we can make improvements on this extraordinarily important matter. We face enormous challenges of scientific prediction. As London addresses these issues, we should be certain to share best practice with other countries—

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).