Air Pollution (London)

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered air pollution in London.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I congratulate those Members who have turned up at this early hour for a debate on a vital subject for the people of London.

I urge the House to take notice of the unseen, silent killer stalking London’s streets—a killer unknowingly encountered by every single Londoner every single day. It is present when people drop their children off at school. It is present when they make their journey to and from work. It follows them throughout their weekends in the city. That malign presence is the noxious fumes that pollute the air we breathe. Specifically, the killer is made up of two components: particulate matter, comprising solid and liquid particles, and gases such as nitrogen dioxide. In London, the primary culprit for those killer chemicals is road traffic. Although industry is the biggest source of pollution nationwide, in urban environments such as London, where the accumulation of pollution and the related health impact is greatest, road traffic is responsible for up to 70% of all air pollution. Londoners are dying as a result. In 2008, across the capital, more than 4,000 premature deaths directly resulted from deadly levels of air pollution. In every year since then, thousands of Londoners have lost their lives early, and they continue to do so, simply because the air they breathe is slowly poisoning them.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Given that the stretch of the A406 through my constituency has one of the highest levels of nitrogen dioxide in the city, surpassed only by central London, and that Public Health England has linked air pollution to 7% of deaths in the London borough of Redbridge, does she agree that more needs to be done to address the problem, and particularly the congestion around Charlie Brown’s roundabout and Redbridge roundabout, as a matter of urgency?

[Ms Abbott]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I will come on to how Boris—the current Mayor—and the Government have failed Londoners, including his constituents, on the important matter of air pollution.