I thank the Minister; the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell); and the “shadow Minister” from Caithness, the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Dr Monaghan)—I have elevated him, but he is a very good member of the Select Committee. I also thank the four other members of the Select Committee who are present today; I very much welcomed their support.
I also very much welcomed what the Minister said, because we do not want there to be a third court case that the Government lose, so that we perhaps end up being fined by the European Union for not meeting air quality targets. Nobody benefits from that—not our population, not anyone.
In our inner cities especially, there is a real problem. We will really have to work across Government together, we will have to work with local authorities, and we will have to address the situation in our inner cities. The problem is that although the number of electric vehicles is going up, they still make up only about 1% of our vehicles. In Norway, about 25% of vehicles are electric. There are lots and lots of ways to go. We talked about buses and taxis. But we must make sure that we all work together, because in the end when a man, woman or child is walking down our streets in London or across the inner cities of this country, they do not try to work out, “Is it local government, or is it the Government? Who is responsible?” All they want to have is clean air.
We can get there—I am certain we can—but we will have to put more resources in place. We will probably have to use a little more taxation in order to change people’s views on what vehicles they drive. I accept that, as the Minister said, diesel vehicles were promoted by the last Government, as well as this one; but I think we have got to start to put that into reverse—literally. I look forward to seeing the Government come forward
with plans in that regard, because when they present their plans, first in April and then finally in July, we will need some real plans to tackle air quality, so that we are not back in this room, or elsewhere in this Parliament, debating this issue year in, year out, while too many people’s health continues to be affected by very poor air quality.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
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.