Air Quality: London

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I must declare an interest: I have just recently become chairman of the British Lung Foundation, of whose board of trustees the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, was a member for a long time. Since that charity has done a great deal of valuable work in trying to promote better air quality not only in London but in the UK generally, I thought it right that on my third day as chair of the trust I should speak on this subject, although I am no expert on it.

I want to begin by discussing the public health dimensions of the crisis that we face in air quality in our big cities, especially in London. No one can any longer be complacent about this and assume that it is a problem faced only by cities such as Delhi, Beijing or Shanghai. I will not go into all the details of the scientific evidence—the noble Lord provided the House with an excellent summary of these issues—but want to pick up one point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, in mentioning the EU. The EU has done an extraordinarily important job in tackling how we measure pollution in our cities as well as producing a scheme to try to regulate it.

It is a sad reflection of the situation here that the people of London are exposed to pollution which far exceeds EU limits. Around an eighth of the total area of London is above the legal limit for nitrogen dioxide. According to the WHO’s definition of safe levels of particulate matter, air in 90% of the city is considered toxic to breathe. Moreover, Defra’s own modelling shows that not just London but as many as 40 urban areas in the UK will have toxic and illegal air by 2020. This crisis urgently needs to be dealt with.

The implications for public health are enormous. First, air pollution contributes to the development of lung conditions. Incidentally, lung disease is already the UK’s third-largest killer after cardiovascular disease and cancer. Too few of us are aware of this fact. Toxic air is a major contributor to developing a lung condition. Children are particularly vulnerable as their lungs are still developing, and those growing up in high-pollution areas are four times more likely to have poor lung development. Many suffer from chronic asthma, and their lungs may well be damaged for the rest of their lives. How can we expose vulnerable children to suffering of this sort which is wholly preventable? Moreover, those children and adults in deprived areas—as the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, said—are more likely to be exposed to poor-quality air.

Secondly, toxic air exacerbates the suffering of those who already have a lung condition. The symptoms of those with COPD—which, again, the noble Lord referred to; an extremely unpleasant long-term chronic disease—or asthma become worse, sometimes leading to hospitalisation, just because they breathed air outside. Why should they spend their lives inside? Those with cardiovascular disease are also at risk of suffering from coronary attacks which can lead to hospitalisation due to exposure to high levels of traffic-related air pollution. The Department of Health and NHS England say that public health and the prevention of disease is a high priority. Here we have an area of ill-health that is preventable, yet the Government have done far too little about it.

The cost of this is enormous. Estimates suggest that around 40,000 deaths per annum across the country are attributable to toxic air, and in London it contributes to 9,400 early deaths per annum. The direct costs to the NHS in London are extremely high, given the several thousand hospital admissions caused by air pollution every year. The overall economic cost could be as high as £3.7 billion, according to a recent study by King’s College London.

I turn now to the challenge this poses for the Government and will ask the Minister a number of questions. Before doing so, I salute the work of Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, for deciding to attach very high priority to improving air quality. He has already announced a number of measures for tackling the problem. However, he cannot do this alone. The Government must play their part and not simply pass on responsibility to local authorities, either in London or elsewhere in the UK. As my noble friend Lord Whitty said, solutions require national as well as local policies.

My first question is: why were there no provisions for a new clean air Act in the Queen’s Speech? We heard a little about the history of the earlier Clean Air Act and I think it was in the Conservatives’ manifesto, so why are the Government going through a two-year Parliament with no such Bill? This is urgent. Moreover, it would attract cross-party agreement. I hope the Minister will not say when he replies that there is no room for anything other than Brexit-related legislation, when we are told that currently the Government are struggling to find enough business to fill parliamentary time.

A clean air Act should help to promote greater understanding of the need for clean transport, including more walking and cycling. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, was a bit unfair to cyclists. I accept that there are some dangerous cyclists, but many are far from dangerous and are doing the right thing in cycling to work or to meet friends rather than getting in their cars. While I am attacking the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, he was also a bit hard on Gordon Brown—the “socialist politician”, as he described him. It is fair to say that, when government advice was given that it would be better to buy a diesel car rather than a petrol car, that was based on what was the scientific consensus at the time. I am sure he regrets that now, as many other people do who were involved in giving that advice, but the Prime Minister alone cannot be taken to task for it.

A clean air Act ought also to establish new legal limits on pollution, based on the WHO’s standards. It could also introduce a targeted diesel scrappage scheme—to which the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, and my noble friend Lord Whitty already referred—to help local authorities get the most-polluting vehicles off the road. What do the Government plan to do in this respect? This seems a really important, burning issue. There is also a need for new fiscal incentives. Vehicle excise duty and company car tax should be further adjusted to encourage people to purchase the lowest-polluting vehicles, to deal with all three of the main sources of pollution: CO₂, NO₂ and PM emissions. Following the Vauxhall scandal, already referred to, the regulation of vehicle manufacture may also need some tightening up. Electric cars surely need to be introduced more quickly, with greatly increased numbers of charging points than exist at present. Again, I would be grateful if the Minister could address these issues in his reply.

Finally, we need more charging clean air zones or ultra clean air zones, especially around schools. Many children in London go to schools massively affected by pollution because they are located on main roads. Should we not introduce fines for those who selfishly run their car engines when they are stationary—in all clean air zones but especially outside schools?

There will not be enormous public resistance to any changes. According to a survey commissioned by London Councils, 76% of Londoners believe that tackling air pollution should be a priority, and nearly half of them said that poor air quality had affected their health. Many also said they would accept that changes are required in their own behaviour in order to improve the air that we breathe. Please will the Government get on with it—research, yes, but some action as well—and move on from the rather pathetic response they gave to the High Court’s ruling that they should publish a plan on how they will deal with non-compliance with EU laws on air quality? Will they confirm that, after Brexit, UK courts will be able to enforce the relevant legislation?

As a Londoner, I am proud of this great city, but I do not want to be ashamed of it in respect of this most basic of human rights: that the air we breathe should be clean.