That this House has considered Government plans to tackle air pollution.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. There is no safe level of air pollution. I will say that again: there is no safe level of air pollution. Of course, life is not risk-free. Every year, almost 250 people die from knife crime and, rightly, people demand action. Every year, almost 1,600 people die in road traffic accidents and, rightly, people demand action. Every year, approximately 43,000 people die prematurely from air pollution, yet there is silence. Well, no more—the public are finding their voice about this silent, invisible killer. This morning in Parliament Square, doctors, nurses, academics, carers, mothers and babies came together with the Healthy Air Coalition, the National Heart and Lung Foundation, Mums for Lungs, trade unions, and Asthma + Lung UK to demand that Parliament act. Eighty-two of them represented the 82 people whose lives are cut short by air pollution every day.
We have a public health emergency on our hands and the response from successive Governments so far has simply not been adequate. We have no co-ordinated national plan to get key pollutants down to safer levels that are aligned with the World Health Organisation limit values. Sadly, the annual data released this week shows that things are going in the wrong direction. Two days ago, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs published new air quality statistics for 2025; note the words “air quality”—it should be “air pollution” statistics. It found that
“annual mean concentrations of PM2.5 showed an increase of 12 per cent at urban background stations and an increase of 14 per cent for roadside stations compared to 2024.”
It also found that
“annual mean concentrations of PM10 showed an increase of 12 per cent for urban background stations and an increase of 8 per cent for roadside stations compared to 2024”
and that annual mean concentrations of nitrogen dioxide increased by
“3 per cent at urban background stations”
although they did show a 1% decrease at roadside stations.
I hope that everyone notices the irony that DEFRA insists on calling this “air quality” instead of air pollution. Let us be clear about the health impacts of air pollution. Polluted air is linked to up to 43,000 deaths in the UK every year. Let us imagine the reaction if a new covid variant was having such an impact. Imagine if knife crime was linked to hundreds of deaths every week, or if we saw 82 deaths on our roads every single day. Air pollution is the second leading risk factor for death in children under five and it is the largest environmental risk to public health, yet it remains the silent killer—the invisible killer—because it is often masked by other diseases that it has aggravated. We have had just one case where the coroner’s certificate reports air pollution as a cause of death: that of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, where the coroner concluded that Ella had
This week, Nottingham University hospitals NHS trust declared a “critical incident” after prolonged extreme heat led to increased demand, with more patients suffering dehydration and heat-related illnesses. As my hon. Friend will know, hot spells often go hand in hand with poor air quality. Does he agree that there is an imperative to address poor air quality, and that that imperative is growing as a result of the changing climate?
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and he is absolutely right. The heat dome that we have been experiencing interacts with pollution and gives us extra ozone and causes huge health problems. I do not know—perhaps the Minister can tell us, if his officials are on the ball on this—just when the number of excess deaths caused by last week’s high temperatures will be known at a disaggregated level; it would be extremely interesting to get those.
I did not want to interrupt the flow of my hon. Friend’s speech, but now that he has been interrupted, I might as well. He too is a west London MP, so he is aware that Heathrow, in my constituency, is one of the most persistent air pollution hotspots. In the previous Government’s assessment, any expansion at Heathrow would have a significant impact on air quality. The latest airports national policy statement says it will have “significant negative effects” on air quality. We are one of the worst areas for nitrogen dioxide pollution, so does my hon. Friend agree that Heathrow expansion cannot go ahead?
How did I know that my right hon. Friend would be introducing that subject? I excised it from my speech because I knew he would. He is absolutely right, and he will have seen the assessment that came out just 10 days ago, which said everything he and I have been saying about the pollution caused by the third runway expansion at Heathrow. Whatever we think about the economy—as he knows, the assessment was not too hot on that either—it is a disaster for public health.
I do not decry the real progress on nitrogen dioxide that has resulted from the ultra low emission zone expansion. What the mayor has done has been really significant; the correlated reduction in admissions to hospital has been huge, and we really welcome that. But air pollution action must be targeted at hotspots. Even if the hotspots dipped below the 40 microgram legal limit, that would still be four times the World Health Organisation guidelines.
My hon. Friend mentions the Mayor of London, who has made substantial strides, but I refer him to the matter of emissions from buses and the only partial electrification of the fleet in London and elsewhere. Pollutants from diesel buses are a continuing problem, especially when buses are allowed to idle at bus stands close to residential property. That is of particular concern to my constituent Kate Hollis, whose 12-year-old son, Jack, tragically died from bone cancer, the spread of which the family believes was caused by pollutants from a bus terminus next to their house in my constituency. Does my hon. Friend, who knows a great deal about these issues and who, like me, is a London MP, share my and the Hollis family’s concern that electrification is going too slowly, with potentially dangerous consequences?
I give my condolences to the Hollis family for the tragedy they have suffered. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the electrification of the bus system must go further and faster, but it is not just a London problem, as he knows: it affects areas across the country. It is absolutely vital that we roll out the electrification of vehicles. He knows—I will come to this later—that it is not simply the exhaust that is the problem with those large vehicles; it is also the particulate matter that heavier vehicles produce on the roads.
Although the focus is often on particulate matter and NO2, we are falling behind on other pollutants. Ammonia, which is highly reactive, forms secondary PM2.5. The UK is not projected to meet its 2030 reduction targets until at least 2035. We have made essentially no progress in ammonia reduction in 20 years. In the Netherlands, regulatory controls on agricultural ammonia contributed to a 64% reduction in ammonia emissions between 1990 and 2016. This is possible—other people are doing it— so the question is: why are we not?
Ozone—O3—levels continue to be higher in rural and suburban areas, with long-term objectives remaining off track. Alongside particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide, ozone is the biggest contributor to outdoor air pollution, with higher concentrations on hot summer days. Achieving long-term objectives for ozone is not even legally mandatory.
I want to bring in the Front Benchers at 3.58 pm, so Members can work out for themselves that it is roughly seven minutes for each Back Bencher who is on their feet.
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I say a big thank you to the hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) for raising this issue and, as always, for his passion for it—well done. As the Democratic Unionist party’s health spokesperson, I am most interested in it, due to the serious and too often fatal effects that air pollution has on public health. It is great to see the Minister in his place. He was here last night in the fishing debate, and he is here again today, so well done. We thank him for his perseverance and his energetic commitment.
Air pollution is associated with 30,000 deaths a year across the UK. The question that we are all asking, and that the hon. Member for Brent West asked when he set the focus for the debate, is, what are we doing to prevent those deaths? The United Kingdom Government and the World Health Organisation have acknowledged that air pollution is the largest environmental threat to our health. Of course, its effects do not just stop at the lungs; the pollutants go on to be absorbed into the bloodstream and have the potential to harm every organ in the body. The harm is greater than just the breath we breathe; it can manifest itself as heart disease, cancer, dementia, stroke or diabetes—I declare an interest as a diabetic—and has even been linked to mental health conditions. In addition to the devastating human cost, treating the effects of air pollution is likely costing the NHS billions. The Royal College of Physicians estimates the cost at as much as an eye-watering £27 billion annually.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Efford. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) for bringing forward this debate and for his powerful and passionate speech.
We know the effects of air pollution. In the previous Parliament, I was proud to serve my party as the shadow Minister responsible for air quality. As a consequence, I remain extremely passionate about this. Also, in a previous life—in my youthful life before this place—I was a physiotherapist, and I treated people with breathing conditions. I treated miners with pneumoconiosis and silicosis, people young and old with asthma, and patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Those are very real symptoms of the environments that we live in today.
Scientific studies have shown that air pollution is a major cause of disease and premature death. Those exposed to dirty air face an increased risk of heart disease, respiratory deterioration and even dementia. Fine particles can enter deep into the lungs, affecting blood vessels and respiratory function. The link between air pollution and poor respiratory health was laid out by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West in relation to Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who died back in 2013 aged just nine. I was privileged to meet her mum Rosamund a couple of days ago—again, after a long break. It was really good to see her, and I pay tribute to her for all her campaigning to get this silent killer back on the agenda—it is really important that that happens.
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“died of asthma contributed to by exposure to excessive air pollution.”
He said it “made a material contribution” to her death. I pay tribute to Ella’s mother, Rosamund, and to all those who have campaigned for clean air as a human right. Rosamund was in Parliament Square this morning with all those campaigners. The work that she has done to bring this matter to public consciousness should be respected by everyone in Parliament.
Scientists have found links between air pollution, almost every organ system in the body and the major diseases that affect them. That includes the brain, lungs, cardiovascular system, kidneys, liver, gastrointestinal tract, bones, skin, reproductive system and even the central nervous system, where air pollution increases the chance of developing dementia. The current health evidence, based on more than 60,000 studies, links air pollution to more than 700 illnesses.
Although the scientific evidence base grows every year, we know more than enough to realise that current efforts fall far short of what is needed. Indeed, here is what we know about the state of air pollution in the UK: air quality targets and the legal air pollution limits are not sufficient to protect public health. There is no Government-wide action plan to bring down levels of air pollution to below World Health Organisation guidelines. Funding and resources for local authorities to deliver air quality programmes are inadequate, and public awareness of outdoor and indoor air pollution is far too low.
Seventy years ago this month, when the UK published the Clean Air Act 1956—the first Act of its kind—we really were a world leader in tackling air pollution. We can no longer make that claim. After the great smog that killed 4,000 people in a week—with a total death count estimated at 10,000 to 12,000 in the penumbra—the Government passed the 1956 Act. Politicians then rose to the challenge. Today, they must do so again. Other jurisdictions are moving ahead with more ambition and urgency. Before we consider doing that, we should distinguish between a target and a limit value.
The Government are fond of setting targets. A target is something that is aimed for. A limit value is a threshold that should not be crossed. In 2021, the WHO updated its guidance for one of the key pollutants: PM2.5. Its guidance is a level of no more than 5 micrograms per cubic metre. The UK’s legal limit value was set in the Air Quality Standards Regulations 2010; it remains four times higher than the WHO value, at 20 micrograms per cubic metre—that is the legal limit.
The recent environmental improvement plan introduced a new date to achieve a target of 10 micrograms per metre cubed: 2030—it had been 2040. That sounds like good news, a target that will be achieved 10 years earlier, but do not be fooled. The target for PM2.5—that is, the aspiration rather than the legal limit—is still double the WHO guideline. It actually represents no progress at all. In DEFRA’s 2024 monitoring data, all but one monitoring site just met the 10 microgram target. Those are the sort of targets that DEFRA loves: ones where nothing has to be done to achieve them and everything can be left as bad as it has always been, but it looks as though action is being taken.
We need not a target, but a legally binding limit value that is the same as the WHO’s guideline of 5 micrograms per metre cubed. We need a wider plan to get PM2.5 exposure down across the UK to below WHO guidelines in the near future. The same and more can be said of the nitrogen dioxide target. On that, the WHO guidelines are 10 micrograms per cubic metre, but the UK lags behind with a legal limit value set in 2010 at an annual exposure of 40 micrograms. When it comes to nitrogen dioxide, the Environment Act 2021 did not even set a long-term target, so action on that key pollutant is not included in the Act’s delivery plan.
It makes no sense for the Government to treat nitrogen dioxide any differently from PM2.5. We should have a far tighter limit value and a far more ambitious plan for driving nitrogen dioxide levels down to below WHO guidelines. On our current trajectory, some parts of the UK will not be compliant with the current inadequate limit value of 40 micrograms until 2045. My right hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) will be aware that the latest DEFRA figures show that Manchester has the worst nitrogen dioxide pollution in the country, with a level of 55 micrograms per cubic metre—more than five times the WHO guidelines. As a result, it is thought that air pollution contributes to one in 20 deaths in the region each year.
Moreover, national-level statistics can mask local authority-level data, as exposed by the work of Asthma + Lung UK. Its research found that local authorities are breaching the legal limits of nitrogen dioxide, even when national Government have determined them to be under such limits. That is because of the disjointed approach we currently take to air pollution, in which national data weirdly excludes local authority monitors despite local authorities being mandated by the Government to collect data.
So we have situations such as the one in my Brent West constituency, where three local authority monitors accurately record illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide despite the Government saying that Brent, and London as a whole, supposedly meet legal limits for nitrogen dioxide. At the corner of Wembley High Road and London Road, the annual mean for nitrogen dioxide was 40.92 micrograms per cubic metre; at the corner of Wembley High Road and Ealing Road, it was 41.76; at the junction of Forty Lane and Kings Drive, it was 43.5. Each of those is more than four times the WHO guidelines, and each is right next to or in walking distance of a school. This is toxic, illegal air pollution that my constituents are exposed to, yet if they read what the Government say, they would not even realise it.
There are two more categories of particulates that are of growing concern: ultrafine particulate matter—UFP—which comprises 90% of airborne particles, and black carbon, or soot, formed from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass. There are currently no regulations on safe levels of UFPs, despite research linking them with an even wider array of health problems than PM2.5 and PM10.
The current official advice from the UK Health Security Agency that the health effects of UFPs are “adequately covered” by the particulate matter air quality standards is simply outdated. Black carbon is a major contributor to climate change and poses a significant health risk as a universal carrier for a wide range of toxic chemicals that find their way into our bloodstreams. We need a comprehensive monitoring system and specific targets for UFPs and black carbon as the evidence of their severe health impacts grows.
However, it is not just what we pollute; it is where we pollute. The focus to date has largely been on outdoor pollution, yet we spend 80% of our time indoors—in our homes, offices and schools, or commuting between them. Indoor air pollution is poorly regulated, with no legally binding national standards, and its key sources, such as wood burning, are woefully under-addressed. Indoor air pollution is absent from the recently updated environmental improvement plan, and we lack a comprehensive estimate of the health burden from indoor air pollution. Poor housing conditions that create damp and mould are deadly, as we know from the tragic death of Awaab Ishak. Far too many children experience prolonged exposure to black mould, and that can kill.
In some cases, concentrations of certain pollutants indoors exceed those outdoors. For example, biological aerosols, carbon monoxide and many volatile organic compounds are often present at significantly higher concentrations indoors. NO2 levels can spike in homes because of gas cookers and poor ventilation. Approximately 36 million people in the UK are exposed to dangerous indoor air pollution from gas hobs and ovens that exceeds limits of pollutants permitted outdoors.
Around half of all homes in the UK still use gas hobs for cooking, which for most people will be the biggest source of NO2 pollution in their home. Yet gas cookers and hobs have been left out of home decarbonisation policy, and are totally ignored in the warm homes plan. If we want to protect people’s health from air pollution in the home and fully remove their reliance on fossil fuels, we need a policy pathway to transition to electric cooking in the home, such as the one developed by Global Action Plan and CLASP in partnership with experts and academics.
Pollutants such as radon gas are linked to 1,000 lung cancer deaths annually. In not only our homes but our workplaces, we are exposed to dangerous levels of pollution, some of us much more than others. As it stands, the Health and Safety Executive’s workplace exposure limit for inhalable dust, which includes PM10, is 10,000 micrograms per cubic metre for an eight-hour exposure. The WHO guidelines for PM10 are 45 micrograms—not for an eight-hour exposure, but for a 24-hour exposure. The Health and Safety Executive limit is more than 650 times higher than the WHO guidelines.
This is a matter of not just public health, but inequality. Let us be honest: who lives on the busiest, most polluted streets? Who works in the dirtiest factories? Who lives in poor-quality housing? The answer is those who have no choice. They are trapped. Air pollution is an issue for this Labour Government because people who are poor are much more likely to die from it as they do not have the means of escape. It is a fundamental breach of their human right to breathe clean air.
Tackling air pollution is not just a DEFRA issue; it should span every aspect of our Government and every aspect of our lives, as air pollution does our homes, our schools, our travel and our work. We need a co-ordinated national action plan. At present, action on air pollution is structurally skewed towards urban NO2 sites, because those are where the Government have faced the strongest legal pressure. That means that progress on other pollutants, as well as indoor air pollution, has stalled.
We must bring forward legislative proposals on clean air that unify and update existing laws in a new clean air Act. That was recommendation 34 of the joint report, “Improving Air Quality”, by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the Environmental Audit Committee, the Health Committee and the Transport Committee. That report published nine years ago, in 2017. All those Committees made that recommendation—in 2017. If it had been taken on, imagine how much further on we could be in tackling this issue and how much more progress we could have made.
That recommendation stands today, in the year that marks the 70th anniversary of the very first Clean Air Act. Just as we have the Climate Change Act 2008, under which the Government produce and can be challenged on legally binding carbon budgets, we need a clean air Act under which the Government set out detailed, thorough and demonstrably achievable plans to bring down the levels of pollutants. With legally binding pollutant budgets, the Government could set a graduated timeline by which the UK would have to meet the WHO guidelines for a comprehensive list of pollutants, building on the 2030 targets and with limit values for perhaps 2035 and 2040.
The Clean Air Fund suggested to the Select Committees that our target for meeting WHO guideline levels for most pollutants should be 2040. I do not know whether that is the best target; I would like to see it brought forward. However, if we set that as the goal, just as we have set net zero by 2050 as the goal, we could at least be making progress towards it. Co-ordinating a national action plan on air pollution under a new clean air Act would ensure that air pollution is no longer relegated to being just a DEFRA issue. In reality, it affects, and is affected by, every single Government Department.
Mr Efford, there is so much more in my notes that I could say, but I am getting exhausted and I can see that others in the Chamber wish to contribute. I welcome the fact that the Minister has stepped in for the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy); she has spoken to me, so I know she was unable to be with us today for her own very good reasons, and I accept that. I am grateful to the Minister for stepping in for her today, but will he please go back to the Department with this message? I know he is a new Minister in the Department, but new Ministers come in with new ideas. They can come in and say to the boss, “For God’s sake, I’ve just been in Westminster Hall, and I can’t believe what it is that we are doing.” Will the Minister try to make the case for us and for the 43,000 people in our country whose lives are being cut short every year? Let us do something imaginative, something bold and something worth doing: let us pass a clean air Act.
Cars and vans remain among the largest sources of harmful air pollution, but we must also recognise the impact of indoor air pollution. Poor ventilation, damp, mould and emissions from domestic heating all contribute to poor health and can be particularly damaging for children, older people and those with existing and complex health conditions.
Alongside efforts to reduce emissions, targeted support should be provided to the most affected communities. It is often those living in the most deprived areas who experience the highest levels of air pollution, as the hon. Member for Brent West said. They are more likely to live close to busy roads or industrial sites, and, as a result, they face a greater risk of ill health. Clean air is not just an environmental issue; it is also one of health inequality. Quite clearly, across this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, there is much inequality.
As the Member of Parliament for Strangford, a largely rural constituency, I must raise concerns about the effects of ammonia, a major emission from agricultural production. Although we can reduce emissions, we must accept that they are often a by-product of farming and food production. It is essential that the farming community works with the Department to reduce emissions in a sustainable way. I ask the Minister whether there have been discussions with the farming community on reducing ammonia emissions in some way so that everyone in this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland can reap the benefits.
Evidence demonstrates that taking action can make a difference. In London, deaths linked to air pollution fell by an estimated 40% over five years from 2019. I put on record my thanks to the Government and the Mayor of London for that massive reduction over those five years—or seven years as it is now—which correlates with the introduction of the ultra low emission zone.
There is no safe level of air pollution, of course, but every improvement in air quality has the potential to reduce illness, relieve pressure on our health service and save lives. The hon. Member for Brent West set that out very clearly. The objective is to save lives; we are all greatly perturbed by the loss of life each and every year.
I know that the Minister will agree that more should be done to tackle air pollution, and particular attention paid to communities in the most deprived areas, whose health is at greater risk simply because of where they live—where pollution is particularly high, indoors and outdoors—and the houses they live in. This must be done hand in hand with the farming industry, not with a boot on its neck. There is work to be done, from industry and farming to individuals in their homes. Together, I believe that we must do the best we can to be good stewards of the world we live in.
I appreciate that the Minister is standing in today. We know a lot about water pollution—a great deal is made about it, and that is fine—but it does not kill thousands, as air pollution does. Air quality is a key social justice issue, because it is not uniform; its impacts are often felt most among those who are already vulnerable. It is our most deprived communities, who already suffer from the worst social determinants of health, who experience the worst air quality.
If this Government are to be defined by their breaking down of barriers to opportunity, tackling social determinants of health, such as poor air quality, must be a priority. We know that poorer people live near dual carriageways and busy main roads, which contribute to poorer health—the evidence is clear. Certainly, as a shadow Minister, I went on a number of walkabouts with a personal air monitor on. I could see the results there and then, and they were stark. I am not even going to mention the tube; it was very frightening. However, we do need to know where pollution hotspots are, because then we can do something about tackling them.
The clear, detrimental health impacts of continued exposure to air pollution led the World Health Organisation to revise its guidance in 2021, to state that there are no safe levels of air pollution. That is a fact: there are no safe levels. That updated guidance now means that UK air pollution limits, first adopted in 2010, are significantly out of date, with targets for nitrous oxides and PM2.5 emissions being four times those now adopted by the WHO. I therefore ask the Minister what consideration the Department has given the updated WHO guidelines, and what steps it is taking to align UK regulations with those standards.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the UK’s Clean Air Act 1956. Given the ongoing and pressing health emergency posed by air pollution, there is a clear need to update it. We need a new clean air Act that is fit for the present day. We know that local authorities play a critical role in delivering local improvements in air quality, but they need the funding, enforcement powers and clear national backing to do so effectively. A new clean air Act would really help them in their challenges. I pay tribute to one of my local councils, Newport city council, for its fleet of electric buses. It is doing its bit, but it needs help to do even more.
What steps has the Department taken to update the Clean Air Act, drawing on national and international best practice? Will the Minister outline what conversations the Department has had with the Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on greater financial support for local authorities to take action to tackle air pollution hotspots?
This Labour Government are committed to protecting our environment, rebuilding our NHS and breaking down barriers to opportunity, but we cannot deliver on those targets if we continue to overlook the significant impact of poor air quality on people’s health, particularly the poor and the young. Tackling air pollution is an investment in the next generation. We cannot let our children continue to pay the price for continued inaction. We need a new clean air Act and we need it now. I look forward to hearing the Minister outline a timetable for its introduction.