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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he plans to announce departmental targets for the reduction of PM 2.5 pollutants.

The UK has legally binding targets to reduce the emissions of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) by 2020 and again by 2030 under the National Emissions Ceilings Regulations 2018.

We also have legally binding limits for PM_2.5 concentrations (annual mean of 25μg/m³), with which we are in full compliance nationwide. We are on track to meet the 2020 target (20μg/m³) already.

In our recent Clean Air Strategy, we also set out our ambition to halve the number of people living in areas above the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline level of 10μg/m³ by 2025.

We also committed to setting a new, ambitious, long-term target to reduce people’s exposure to PM_2.5, and we will publish evidence early in 2019 to examine what action would be needed to meet the WHO guideline level of 10μg/m³.

We are the first major economy to set ambitions based on the WHO guidelines for PM_2.5. Our Clean Air Strategy was welcomed by the WHO, who called it “an example for the rest of the world to follow.”