Traffic-related Air Pollution

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce exposure to traffic-related air pollution, given its links to a range of health risks including cardiovascular, respiratory, and neurological health conditions.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, air pollution in the UK has reduced significantly since 2010, but the Government recognise that there is more to do to achieve our air quality goals. For this purpose, we have set ambitious emissions-reduction targets for key pollutants by 2030, and have provided generous funding of over £883 million to local authorities to improve air quality.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

The Royal College of Physicians wrote to the noble Lord’s ministry, Defra, requiring targets for a reduction in the amount of PM2.5, the tiny particles that cross the lung barrier and do the most harm. Can he respond to that? Can he also respond to research by the University of Surrey, the University of Warwick, the University of Reading and the Royal Horticultural Society showing that hedges can reduce pollution at breathing height? Their effectiveness has been shown in studies by a policy of planting hedges along main roads, particularly near schools. This is an evidence-based, cheap and effective way to combat serious damage to health by air pollution.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord cites absolutely correct evidence about the power of the natural world to improve our lives, including by cleaning our air, and trying to get more trees and hedgerows planted close to where people live will certainly affect that. He makes an important point about PM2.5, which is most damaging to health. Under our innovative population exposure reduction target, we will drive improvement even where concentration targets have already been achieved. As a result, people’s exposure to PM2.5 will be cut by over a third by 2040, on average, compared to 2018 levels.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government’s own watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection, said that the Government’s proposed PM2.5 air pollution targets are “unambitious” and

“lack sufficient urgency to reflect the scale of change needed”.

What message does that send to the one in five people in the UK living with respiratory conditions?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness will be pleased to know that our ambitious targets under the Environment Act will be set out under the environmental improvement plan, which will include really stretching targets on the most damaging pollutants. There has been a good news story in the last decade about how we have reduced them, but that is not enough, and she is right to say that this still affects the health and life chances of many people, particularly some in deprived areas. This is about making sure that local authorities have the funds necessary to introduce schemes, and about having stretching national targets that will be respected around the world.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, many of the measures to combat dirty air require international collaboration to make them effective on supply chains and measures in areas such as energy and transport. What are the Government doing to encourage international collaboration?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right that pollutants blow in from abroad, and we have to work with our neighbours to ensure that an outcome to that issue is achieved. I have just come back from Montreal, where we have negotiated a landmark international agreement which will, if properly implemented, have effects on people right across the world and improve the ability of nature to protect us and our health.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, one of the options in setting standards for the rest of the world is to enact them here. As the Minister knows, my Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill has just completed its passage through your Lordships’ House and has gone to the other place. Will he recommend it to his Defra colleagues as a much more ambitious and achievable piece of policy on clean air that they could take up immediately?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness’s ambitions in the Bill are understood and supported by the Government, but it needs to be seen in conjunction with what we are doing with our commitment through the 25-year environment plan, how we will implement that through the Environment Act, and the targets that we have announced which will be put in the environmental improvement plan. We are also working with local authorities and trying to get industry to innovate, and we have created stretching targets for our vehicle industry by moving to electric vehicles. That all needs to be brought together in a holistic government action which will improve people’s health.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that trees play an important role in improving environmental health? When might we expect the environmental improvement plan to be published? Ash dieback has had a devasting effect on many ash trees in areas owned by local councils, so has he made an estimate of the cost of removing ash trees damaged by dieback in our hedgerows and grasslands owned by local authorities?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not have a figure with which to answer my noble friend, but she is absolutely right to point out the value of trees. We have stretching targets for new woodland planting, which not only will help to reverse the declines in biodiversity and to lock up more carbon but will improve people’s health through both the air they breathe and the quality of their lives. We want to ensure that this is understood, not just by land managers but by local authorities and government departments which own a large amount of land. We want to ensure that everybody is part of the great national effort to improve our biodiversity and quality of life.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, in June the National Audit Office released a report on tackling local breaches of air quality. One of its conclusions was that the Government publish a lot of air quality data, but not in a way that gives the public accessible information about air quality problems and action in their area. It said:

“There has been little public engagement … and … a lack of transparency”.


What progress have the Government made to address those issues?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We are driving down emissions across all sectors in the economy, including through the nitrogen dioxide plan, which has seen emissions from road transport decrease over 52% in the last decade, and the environmental permitting of agriculture and industry, which has seen sulphur dioxide emissions from energy production decrease 87% over the last decade, and by regulating the most harmful fuels in domestic burning to reduce emissions by 2030. That is what we are achieving. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that we need to help people to make decisions about their lives, so part of our support for local authorities is to help the whole health disparity problem by making sure that people have more information about how they can minimise the impact of poor air quality in their lives. Some people cannot do that—for example, you cannot expect people to move away from traffic hotspots—so the driver is to try to reduce poor air quality and to improve the lives of those people. Trying to ensure that we are limiting those issues is an absolutely core part of the national policy.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister comment on the relationship with the department of health? I am firmly convinced that there would be significant cost efficiency for the health service if air quality was improved more rapidly in inner cities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We are planning to publish a revised national air quality strategy early next year, the key focus of which will be identifying and addressing air pollution disparities, as I have just referred to. We could not do that without working very closely with the Department of Health and Social Care. Addressing air quality-related health disparities will be absolutely key for our levelling-up ambitions, so it is not just an issue for Defra and the department of health but a cross-government initiative.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, the environment targets were published last Friday. The pollution target for PM2.5 of 10 micrograms per cubic metre by 2040 is underwhelming. The World Health Organization guideline for PM2.5 is to reach that target by 2030. The CBI estimates that following the World Health Organization’s guidelines could deliver an annual economic boost of £1.6 billion per annum by reducing deaths and sickness absences caused by air pollution. Why are the Government dragging their feet on that matter?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are not dragging their feet; it is an absolute priority, as the noble Baroness will see when we publish our environmental improvement plan. On the point about World Health Organization guidelines, we have taken significant steps to improve air quality since it originally raised concerns. It said that our 2019 clean air strategy was an example for the rest of the world to follow, so we are heading in the right direction.