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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she plans to bring forward legislative proposals to improve air quality.

The national air quality plan for nitrogen dioxide, published in December last year, set out a range of measures that we are implementing to improve air quality. In the plan the Government announced that we will be mandating the introduction of Clean Air Zones in five key cities (Birmingham, Derby, Leeds, Nottingham and Southampton). We will be consulting later this year on a Clean Air Zone framework, to provide consistency and certainty, together with draft secondary legislation to mandate the implementation of Clean Air Zones.

Later this year, Defra will also consult on proposals to reduce pollution from electricity generating plants with high nitrogen oxide emissions that are not currently regulated. The proposals would extend set emission limit values on relevant air pollutants, with a view to having legislation in force no later than January 2019, and possibly sooner.