Air Pollution (London)

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) on initiating this crucial debate.

The great smog of 1952 killed some 3,500 people directly and many more indirectly. The public outcry led to the hugely successful and almost revolutionary Clean Air Act 1956. Next year will be its 60th anniversary, as has been said, and air pollution is very much back as a significant public health issue. I will not go through all the bad news, because it has already been relayed, but I make one point: more than 1 million Londoners live in areas that exceed legal limits on nitrogen dioxide, and that should be enough to highlight the importance of the issue.

As London expands—its population is expected to hit 10 million by 2030—the problem will inevitably grow, and tackling it will require the same level of energy that stopped the 1950s smog. Despite some of the things that have been said, I think we have seen leadership from the Mayor. For example, no other city in the world has a congestion charge and a low emissions zone, or plans for an ultra-low emission zone; I accept that there is a strong case for bringing forward the establishment of the ultra-low emission zone and for the zone to be bigger.

We have seen record investment in cycling over recent years in London and take-up has radically increased, but given that we cannot invent more roads, we will need that trend to ramp up massively if we want to avoid absolute gridlock on our streets. For the same reason, we should be investing in infrastructure to make far greater use of the river to carry freight and, for that matter, people. The numbers have improved in recent years, but they need to be ramped up dramatically.

London is growing by the equivalent of two extra tube trains a week—the equivalent of one bus every two hours—so it is hard to exaggerate the case for expanding our rail and tube network. We also need a revolution in electric car ownership. It is extraordinary that, despite falling costs, the fact that getting around in electric cars is dramatically cheaper than conventional alternatives and the installation of 1,400 new charging points in the past three years—a consequence of the Mayor’s intervention—that revolution simply has not happened. It will inevitably happen; the market dictates that it will, but the market needs a boost. The economics are already such that there is no reason why new minicabs should not all be electric or zero-emissions, or why companies with big fleets, such as delivery companies, are not automatically replacing their old vehicles with electric alternatives. The maths already stacks up, but somewhere along the line we need a powerful nudge.

London has the largest electric hybrid bus fleet in Europe, but the vast majority of London buses are still diesel. Many cities, including New York and Rome, have introduced whole fleets of electric buses. We have to ask how long will it be before all our buses in London are electric—or at least zero-emissions in other forms. I only learned this recently, but construction equipment, such as diggers, accounts for a staggering 14% of particulate emissions in London. Surely contracts should be awarded only to construction companies that have retrofitted the engines or have vehicles that are new and clean.

There is masses that we can do in London—I do not have time to go through the full list—but central Government must play a role. Denmark and France have introduced highly successful feebate schemes; a new tax is placed at the point of purchase on the dirtiest cars, with all the proceeds being used to bring down the cost of the cleanest alternatives. It is revenue-neutral, it is not retrospective, it is popular and it works.

While I am on the subject of central Government and without wanting to repeat too much of what has already been said—although I am loving the consensus—I want to emphasise that if we are serious about air quality, the Government simply have to rule out Heathrow expansion. Heathrow is already in breach of legally binding air quality limits, and any expansion would make that far worse. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has just produced data showing that Heathrow is likely to be the second most polluted part of London by 2030, irrespective of whether it is expanded.

It is worth noting that one extra runway would lead to 25 million extra road passenger journeys, and, according to Transport for London, the cost of accommodating that by adapting our road networks is £15 billion more than Heathrow bosses have admitted. To put the issue in context, Heathrow expansion is incompatible with any prospect of meeting any legal air quality standards. It needs to be removed from the agenda once and for all. I thank you, Mr Crausby, for your indulgence.