Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the potential health benefits of bringing forward the end to the sale of new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars and vans from 2040 to 2035.

Poor air quality is the largest environmental risk to public health, with long-term exposure to man-made pollution in the United Kingdom estimated to contribute towards 28,000 to 36,000 deaths each year. In May 2018, Public Health England estimated that there would be over 2.4 million new cases of disease attributable to air pollution by 2035. Further information on this is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/air-pollution-a-tool-to-estimate-healthcare-costs

The Government’s Clean Air Strategy aims to reduce emissions from transport. The phase out of new conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans, will make an important contribution to reducing the levels of particulate matter and consequently the numbers of new disease cases such as asthma, coronary heart disease and lung cancer caused by air pollution.