Clean Air

The Government’s clean air strategy has many commendable ideas to address this, including action to fund electric vehicle charging roll-out and measures to prohibit the most polluting wood-burning stoves. I see that the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) is in his place. However, the clean air strategy needs to be put on a statutory footing, and this Parliament needs to follow previous Parliaments in passing a Clean Air Act, as we did to great effect in 1956, 1968 and 1993.

We also need to go much further than the measures proposed in the clean air strategy. For example, we should be looking at vehicle idling where cars are left stationary with their engines running. The sight of cars parked with their engines running outside schools is a sight that every parent, including me, finds very worrying. Efforts to stop this on a voluntary basis have not worked, and I think that fines similar to parking tickets will be more effective at stopping this behaviour. Trees absorb huge amounts of pollution, so planting more trees in urban areas will help. Specifically, moss walls had been found to be particularly effective in absorbing airborne heavy metals, with each section absorbing emissions equivalent to 42 diesel cars per month.

Speaking of diesel cars, they play an especially damaging role in air pollution. Governments of both colours and the European Union encouraged diesel cars over the last 20 or 30 years because of their lower CO₂ emissions, but they emit far more particulates and nitrous oxide emissions than petrol cars, which hugely damages air quality on the streets where those cars are driven. It is worrying that sales of new diesel cars went up from 18% of new car sales in 2001 to a peak of 50% in 2015. This is especially problematic because the real-world emissions of diesel cars are six times higher than the emissions made in laboratory conditions. The Volkswagen scandal underscored the problems, when Volkswagen intentionally cheated the emissions testing regime. It is vital that we hold manufacturers such as Volkswagen to account for the damage they have done to our clean air.

Buses and taxis should be a particular focus, because they are often regulated or operated by local authorities. In London, only 155 buses out of 9,000 are fully electric, whereas in China, every single one of the 16,000 buses in the city of Shenzhen is electric. Even Santiago in Chile has more than twice the number of electric buses that London does. I would like to see all our buses and taxis electrically operated. If we do that, it will cut London’s transport emissions by 20%.

There is a great deal more that a Clean Air Act could do, and it is of vital importance to our nation’s health that we have such an Act. If by some great misfortune this private Member’s Bill does not reach the statute book in the three or four days between now and Prorogation—extraordinary though that sounds—I very much hope that a Clean Air Act will feature in a future Queen’s Speech.

There are many issues that divide this House. I expect that we will hear a great deal of discord and disagreement in the coming hours and days, in which I may well participate, but on this issue of clean air I hope that this House may speak as one. I commend the Bill to the House.

That Chris Philp, James Gray, Gillian Keegan, Mrs Maria Miller, Sir Henry Bellingham, Sarah Newton, Ms Harriet Harman, Ellie Reeves, Mr Steve Reed, Sir Edward Davey, Douglas Chapman and Jim Shannon present the Bill.

Chris Philp accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Wednesday 4 September, and to be printed (Bill 432).