Air Pollution
House of Commons · Westminster Hall · 2 Jul 2026 · 34 speeches · Official Report
[Clive Efford in the Chair ]
I beg to move, 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;...
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 NO 2 , we are falling behind on other pollutants. Ammonia, which is highly reactive, forms secondary PM 2.5 . 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-O 3 -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. There are two more categories of particulates that are of growing concern:...
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...
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...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) for leading this debate and, as ever, for his gentle but decisive prose. Members will be pleased, I am sure, to hear that my remarks will be a bit shorter. Toxic air is a public health crisis-it is also an environmental crisis, but the health element, especially for our children, is what concerns me today. Air pollution can stunt the growth of children’s lungs, hamper foetal development and contribute to cancer, heart disease, dementia and even mental health conditions. Our air can become an invisible killer, but sadly, because we do not see it, we do not quite understand it. Every single year, an estimated 30,000 deaths are attributable to long-term exposure to dirty air, and, at one point, in Newham-one of the boroughs I represent-1.7 in every 100 deaths were caused by air pollution. In 2013, one of those 30,000 was a nine-year-old girl. We have already heard her name today: Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah. She died following an asthma attack. Thanks to the tireless campaigning of Ella’s mum, Rosamund, who demanded answers and pushed for justice for her daughter, Ella became the first person in the UK for whom air pollution is listed as an official cause of death. I know Rosamund from my time working for the Mayor of London, so I saw her tireless work at first hand-her advocacy has been incredible. It was a landmark decision: Ella was exposed to excessive...
In London, a large number of individual politicians, including the mayor, had a rough time introducing ULEZ. It is time that we congratulate him on that achievement and on the way in which he courageously faced down the opposition.
I could not agree more with my right hon. Friend. For some Members on the right, particularly those representing outer London suburbs, that issue has become the newest punching bag. This should not be about party politics; it should be about cleaning up our polluted air. In just five years, we have seen the difference here in London thanks to bold leadership from our mayor, Sadiq Khan. Dirty air is deadly, but the future is in our hands. We have shown that progress is possible and that we can turn the tide. This should not be a controversial thing. Breathing clean air should not be a privilege reserved just for children in postcodes in leafy suburbs. We would never expect anyone to drink dirty water, so why are we accepting the breathing of dirty air? That is the simple premise behind Ella’s law, which I am very proud to support as a signatory. That legislation, the Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill, makes one clear claim: every person has the right to breathe clean air. I welcome the fact that the Government have identified clean air as a priority for the 10-year health plan. In that spirit, I urge the Minister to take a fresh look at our national targets and our legal pollution limits, and to commit to introducing Ella’s law to tackle the serious air pollution challenges and cut down the causes of toxic pollution. Everyone has the right to breathe clean air, no matter where they live or who they are. That should be the thing that unites this whole House.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) on securing this important debate. Clean air is not simply an issue about health and the environment, but a moral imperative of our time. It is a challenge that requires urgency, with current legislation and frameworks lagging behind the science, alongside more joined-up thinking and action across agencies, Government Departments and devolved Administrations. I hope that the Minister can say something about the work that his Department is doing with others to take the issue forward. Clean air is an environmental, health and social justice issue. Poor air quality is an environmental challenge. Many of our wild plants and much of our natural environment cannot tolerate high pollution levels, which can devastate grasslands, peatlands and moorlands, leading to a loss of pollinators and significantly harming biodiversity. That matters on a bigger scale, because the ecosystems that we depend on for air, water and a liveable planet are being damaged. Poor air quality is a public health issue. It shortens lives and contributes to between 30,000 and 40,000 premature deaths every year. It increases the risk of diseases such as dementia, lung cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. It affects all of us, but particularly the young, the old, pregnant women and their unborn children. That brings me to air quality as a social justice issue. Clean air is...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I thank the hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) for securing this important debate on the urgency and duty for policymakers to tackle air pollution-the silent killer in our towns and cities. I also thank all the Members who have contributed so passionately and movingly to the debate. Toxic, poisonous air threatens the community spaces that we all love and the people we care most about. It knows no boundaries, reaching our workplaces, homes, schools and other public spaces. As other hon. Members have done, I would like to pay tribute to Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, mum to Ella Roberta. For over a decade, Rosamund has campaigned tirelessly for cleaner air through Ella’s law. I had the privilege to meet Rosamund last month when, as a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, I visited communities to understand the physical and mental health impacts of air pollution on their lives. Ella was a happy, playful and bright child, and she lived not far from the South Circular Road in Lewisham with her family. By the age of seven, she was suffering debilitating asthma attacks, which would see her cough and wheeze so much that she would fall unconscious. A few weeks after her ninth birthday, Ella died. She had suffered a fatal asthma attack. A landmark inquest in 2020 ruled that toxic air from traffic emissions contributed to her death, marking the first time that air pollution was officially recognised as a cause of...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I commend the hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) on securing this important debate. He has spoken about the issue many times in this place, so I know it is one that he cares deeply about. Air pollution is one of the greatest public health and environmental challenges facing our country today: it contributes to thousands of premature deaths every year, worsens respiratory diseases, harms our natural environment and, as was outlined in the contributions of many hon. Members, places an enormous amount of pressure on our NHS. All of that reduces productivity and participation in the workplace, costing the UK economy about £27 billion annually. That is largely due to healthcare costs, productivity losses and reduced quality of life. When wider impacts such as dementia are accounted for, the economic cost of air quality not being addressed may be as high as £50 billion. Air pollution also disproportionately affects the most deprived communities-13% of people in the most deprived neighbourhoods in the United Kingdom live in the 10% of areas with the highest air pollution, compared with only 7% of people in the least deprived neighbourhoods. The health impacts of that are seismic, as exposure to air pollution can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and cancer. It can also cause damage to the reproductive and central nervous systems, as has also been mentioned by several Members. In...
Will the hon. Member give way?
I would like to explore what the Mayor of London is doing for those travelling on the tube-the hon. Member for Stratford and Bow (Uma Kumaran) may be able to indicate this in her intervention, because I know she was involved-because there has been hardly any focus on that in the mayor’s strategy.
The Conservatives in City Hall called the whole of ULEZ “bewildering” and have objected to it at every turn. I read out the statistics earlier: there has been a 40% reduction in nitrogen oxide levels and a huge positive impact in London from ULEZ. The Mayor of London won two decisive elections after its introduction. London has also been recognised as a global leader by the United Nations. The Secretary-General himself invited the Mayor of London to the United Nations to speak about ULEZ and London’s climate action. Should the hon. Member not congratulate London for its climate action and decisive air quality improvements, and actually support that good work?
I will specifically address that point, but I will use one further example before I do. The same approach as the ULEZ has been applied to the Bradford district, in which my constituency sits. A clean air zone has been rolled out in Bradford, but it is a strategy that is again taxing motorists and some of the hardest-working people in our communities-including some of the most deprived communities, who are simply not able to afford the levels of tax imposed on them. Of course there are other ways of doing it, but before I come on to them I want to address the fact that if a resident or someone with a business on the outskirts of Bradford wants to travel into Bradford in a light goods vehicle, it now costs them £9 a day. That has a detrimental impact on business growth. It costs a coach driver, a heavy goods vehicle driver or a bus driver £50 a day to take their vehicle into Bradford. That is also having a huge detrimental impact. Since the scheme was launched in 2023, £26.7 million has been raised. Of that, £9.8 million was raised through entry fees but £16.4 million was raised through penalty charge notices, the vast majority of which were for people who could not afford to pay, and who therefore had to go to court for that money to be extracted from them. My point is that we cannot simply have a strategy that charges people if we want complete buy-in. That is why I use the example of the roll-out in Manchester. It will be interesting to see what the strategy of the right...
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Efford. I congratulate all hon. Members for their thoughtful and wide-ranging contributions. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) for securing this important debate and for speaking with such characteristic passion about this issue. There is clear consensus that air pollution remains one of the most significant environmental risks to public health and I welcome the strength of feeling expressed today on the need to continue to make progress. I also welcome the ongoing inquiry by the Environmental Audit Committee into air pollution. Scrutiny of that kind plays an important role in strengthening our approach and the Government have been keenly following the evidence received by the Committee. We look forward to engaging further with the Committee, and Ministers will give evidence to it in due course. The issue goes beyond environmental policy. As many Members have confirmed, it is about fairness. The dirtiest air sits over the poorest neighbourhoods. Black and minority ethnic communities and those on low incomes are far more likely to be exposed to air pollution while contributing the least to it. That is exactly the kind of injustice the Labour party and this Labour Government exist to tackle. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) rightly mentioned, it is also about the NHS. We are the party that built it and protecting it means preventing illness, not...
On the issue of messaging, I wonder whether the Minister could take a message back from this debate with regard to Heathrow: perhaps Ministers could read their own report on the health impact of airport expansion. I am particularly concerned about loss of life in my constituency. The Government’s own paper says that vulnerable groups in our area will suffer significant major adverse impacts from the expansion of Heathrow, which means that more of my constituents will die. The scheme will make things worse and therefore the message is: think again.
My right hon. Friend will know that the Government have launched a consultation on the draft Heathrow expansion national policy statement, which includes the requirement that the development consent must meet measures on climate change and air quality. Likewise, the Government have been clear that any expansion proposals must meet strict environmental requirements on air quality. I will certainly take his concerns back to my Department. In May, we launched the first iteration of a new alert system, allowing people to sign up for notifications when air pollution is forecast or measured to be high in their local community. A number of Members, including the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), have made points about cross-Government working. Air pollution is not an issue any one department can solve in isolation. It requires co-ordinated action across transport, energy, planning, agriculture and health, and we are working closely with colleagues across Government to ensure that our approach is aligned, evidence-led and deliverable. I can assure all Members that we recognise the importance of cross-Government working, working with our devolved Governments and in partnership with local authorities on these matters. On a clean air Act, the Government have no plans to implement new primary legislation at this stage, but we are committed to ensuring that there is cleaner air for everyone, backed by a strong legal framework that already holds...
The Minister is very brave to say that there will be no new clean air Act. I understand why he says that, but when the Clean Air Act was introduced, it saved thousands of lives; why would we not amend and update that Act?
My understanding is that there is already a legal framework to deliver on the targets that we are committed to achieving. I welcome the scrutiny from this House and the Environmental Audit Committee. I know that the Minister responsible for air quality in DEFRA has been watching the debate and looks forward to contributing to future discussions, so that we can all work together to deliver cleaner air for communities across our country.
It has been a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Efford. Thank you for giving me the nod earlier to curtail my remarks. It only goes to prove that we do not need to say everything: often, we think-at least I do-that we need to get everything in, but what was lovely about this debate was that I did not manage to get in everything that I wanted to say, but then all my hon. Friends did it for me. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who mentioned the £27 billion impact that this clean air Act could achieve, which would have come later in my speech. That is a huge impact on our economy. He talked about public awareness. The Royal College of Physicians did a poll with YouGov in which 95% of people did not know there was a link between air pollution and diabetes, and 85% of people did not know about the link between air pollution and stroke, heart disease or poor foetal health. The hon. Member was absolutely right to raise the importance of public awareness; it was an important contribution to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) spoke with deep knowledge from her days as a shadow Minister and as a medical practitioner, as she told us. She stressed the social inequality that toxic air brings, and the need for a new clean air Act with a national framework. That is really important-that it is a national framework for appropriate support to be delivered to local authorities. The point that she stressed was reinforced...
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Can I give way in a winding-up speech?
Order. Obviously, this is meant to be a brief summing up by the hon. Gentleman-
I just thought I had a wee bit of time.
There is certainly not scope for giving way in his couple of minutes for summing up.
Okay. I will be very brief, and I will not give way. I really enjoyed it when the shadow Minister was on the Environmental Audit Committee with us. He made a very valuable contribution then, but he lost his way when he went over to the Front Bench. How can he at the same time extol the £27 billion that will be brought into the economy and then say, “But actually we can’t afford to do it”? He talked about a 35% reduction in population exposure-great, but he had no baseline when he did that, so he did not know what he was reducing by 35%. I thank the Minister very much for standing in. The Secretary of State “may have failed, and be continuing to fail, to comply with relevant duties under the” air quality standards regulations “to ensure that such plans are drawn up and implemented.” That is not me, but the Office for Environmental Protection in January. What is not to like? Clean air, less congested, safer, quieter roads, more active travel, better public transport, better insulated, less mouldy homes that run on cheaper energy, healthier workplaces, less cost to the NHS and £27 billion to the economy-for God’s sake, let’s just do it. Question put and agreed to . Resolved, That this House has considered Government plans to tackle air pollution.
Sitting adjourned .