I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Fourth Report of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee of Session 2015-16, Air Quality, HC 479, and the Government response, HC 665.
Thank you for chairing this sitting, Mr Betts. It is lovely to see so many members of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee here today to support our work on tackling air quality and our recent report. We took evidence again two days ago on air quality, so this debate is timely. It is good to see the Under-Secretary of State for Transport in her place.
Tackling Britain’s air quality problem must be at the top of the Government’s agenda. Poor air quality contributes to around 40,000 to 50,000 early deaths every year in the UK. This is 20 to 30 times the number of people who die on our roads in traffic accidents every year. Poor air quality is a silent killer. In any other area of policy, the Government would be moving heaven and earth to get it sorted out as quickly as possible, and that is what we now need to do. The Government have been in court twice, and twice they have lost their case. This is a matter of urgency for the quality of life of all people in this country, but especially for those who live in our inner cities in hotspots of air pollution.
The Committee’s report in April 2016 said that poor air quality is a public health emergency and called for strong measures to tackle the problem, including an overarching Government strategy to tackle it in all sectors, with flexibility for councils to implement their own clean air zones with higher charges for the most polluting vehicles in those areas, a scrappage scheme for the oldest and most polluting vehicles and proper incentives in the low-emission vehicle market. We have an able Minister here today from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but she is not answerable directly to the Department for Transport or the Department for Communities and Local Government. Everybody—the whole Government, including the Treasury, which deals with vehicle taxation, and others—must work to together to deliver a good and urgent response. We want action, not just words.
The Government are in the dock. Having lost their case in the Supreme Court in April 2015 for failing to meet the legal air quality limit, they then lost again on 2 November 2016. The High Court case was brought by the campaign group ClientEarth. The judgment was that the Government had not fully complied with the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling and that their old air quality plan was not up to scratch. DEFRA must now
release a new draft plan for air quality by 24 April 2017 and a final report on 31 July 2017—four months away and seven months away.