Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the President of COP26's oral contribution of 1 December 2021, Official Report, column 907, if he will publish (a) the scientific data in support of his statement that air pollution has reduced significantly since 2010 and (b) a breakdown of that data by levels of (i) nitrogen dioxide, (b) coarse particulate matter and (c) fine particulate matter.

Emissions of key air pollutants are compiled and reported by Defra on an annual basis through the National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory and the data for nitrogen oxides and both coarse and fine particulate matter is available to view at https://naei.beis.gov.uk/data. The data for 2010 and all years up to 2019 is available from this website.

The National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory is also used as the basis for the National Statistics report ‘Emissions of air pollutants in the UK’ which describes the trends in emissions of air pollutants over time. The latest report, published February 2021, is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/emissions-of-air-pollutants.