Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the impact of toxic air pollution on the health and wellbeing of people from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds living in urban communities in England.

The Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP), an expert committee of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), published advice on the health evidence relevant to setting PM2.5 targets in 2021. It concluded that there is evidence to suggest that people from minority ethnic backgrounds are more highly exposed to air pollution, such as fine particulates (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) was recently involved in a review of the association between air quality around schools and inequalities in England, finding that schools in areas with the highest background levels of PM2.5 had a significantly higher ethnic minority pupil proportion compared to schools in areas with the lowest background PM2.5, and were more likely to be near major roads.