Environment Bill

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies [V]]

Thank you so much, Madam Deputy Speaker.

New clause 6 is a necessary condition of delivering World Health Organisation air quality limits, or indeed any targets that the Government choose to set by 2022, as they plan. DEFRA alone simply cannot deliver the clean air targets that the Government want without the support of all other Departments. The new clause would create a duty for all Departments to work together to do that.

When I met the Environment Secretary, the Environment Minister and Rosamund, Ella’s mother, the Environment Secretary said that he had not ruled out WHO air quality limits and needed to understand how he would get to any such targets. I agree with that, but it requires a duty on all Government bodies and Departments to work together. DEFRA would work with Transport when Transport needs to deliver an integrated, electrified public transport system. Clearly, we would need a Treasury fiscal statutory mechanism to facilitate that with the right duties, incentives, scrappage schemes and investment. We would need a housing and planning scheme built into that so that we build around stations, not motorways. We would need Health at the centre of it, because 64,000 people a year are dying prematurely. We need an education system that allows people to walk to school safely, and a local government system so that people can take account of things and possibly reduce the speed of motorway traffic near urban centres. This all needs to be by joined-up design, rather than hope for the best.

The second part of the amendment is about indoor air quality. I thank the Government for belatedly including indoor air quality in the Bill. I thank the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health for their “Inside Story” report, which acknowledged that 90% of the time we are indoors we are subjected to all sorts of dangerous chemicals—formaldehyde and all sorts of other things—in our furniture. Professor Stephen Holgate, one of the architects of the report, mentioned that we will not get limits unless we have an interdisciplinary approach with academics, clinicians, industry and government working together. Indeed, the professor of environmental law at University College London, Eloise Scotford, mentioned that joined-up governance is critical in law to push ahead with progress.

As we approach COP26, we have an opportunity to present a template of an integrated approach to help combat air pollution, which is killing 7 million people across the globe every year. I give my thanks to the Health Secretary and other members of the Government who are working together, but the point of the amendment is to provide a duty, so that we are required to work together to deliver cleaner air and save thousands of lives.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) [V]]

We Liberal Democrats have a clear plan to cut most carbon emissions by 2030 and to get to net zero by 2045. In the context of the Bill, waste is a big carbon emitter, particularly plastic waste, and we must address the problem immediately. The Waste and Resources Action Programme’s new Plastic Pact, funded by DEFRA, is an important initiative which will create a circular economy for plastics. It is based on building a stronger recycling system, taking more responsibility for our own waste and ensuring that plastic packaging can be effectively recycled and re-used.

Last year, I tabled an amendment to the Bill. It would have perfectly fitted WRAP’s initiative, but sadly it is not in the Bill. My amendment aimed to make the reporting of the end destination of household and business waste mandatory for councils. Transparency is a great driver of change and one of the sad features of the Bill is the absence of transparency and accountability. No targets set within the Bill will be legally binding until 2037. By then, the climate crisis will be massively worse. Acting now is imperative. Climate change delay is hardly better than climate change denial.

We are proud in Bath to be one of the first councils to introduce a clean air zone. Air pollution is a big killer and hits the disadvantaged much harder due to poor housing, high-density living, proximity to main roads and fewer options to avoid higher-risk areas. What my council now needs is a separate clean air Act, which also includes new powers and funding to local authorities to effectively monitor air pollution. For instance, in Bath, residents are asking for real-time data to be made available, so that residents can make informed choices for their city and on what forms of transport they want to use.

I am ambitious for my city and for my country to show clear leadership on clean, healthy urban environments for the future. There is so much we can achieve with the right political will.