House of Commons committees report calls for bold and properly-resourced action on air quality

UK government action on air quality has been strongly criticised in a joint report published by four House of Commons committees on 15 March, which calls for bold and radical measures to address the issue.

The unprecedented four-committee parliamentary enquiry, launched in October 2017 by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Environmental Audit, Health and Social Care, and Transport Committees, concludes that air pollution is “a national health” emergency that must be prioritised with much greater urgency.

The report, Improving Air Quality, said the transport industry, in particular, must shoulder much of the financial burden of coping with the problem, currently borne by local councils and others.

Neil Parish MP, Chair of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee, said:
“The Government’s latest plan does not present an effective response to the scale of the air quality catastrophe in the UK.”

The committee expressed concern that the Government was “treating air quality as a box-ticking exercise,” and called upon it “to develop a properly resourced support scheme available to all councils struggling with air quality, and to require manufacturers of polluting vehicles to pay their fair share by contributing to an industry-financed clean air fund”.

The report also calls for a new Clean Air Act, echoing a suggestion advanced by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in January.

Dr Jenifer Baxter, Head of Engineering at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, commented: “The House of Commons report suggests that the Government should align its climate change schemes, urban planning, public transport and fiscal incentives with air quality goals to prevent Government policy from working at cross-purposes and we fully support this level of systems thinking.

“In particular, we would like to see the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs work with the Department for Transport to introduce emission monitoring equipment across our transport network (e.g. in streets, underground stations, enclosed railway stations, ports, airports) along with real-time on-vehicle monitoring.

“This will provide us with a complete picture of our baseline pollutants, which would enable us to monitor peaks throughout the day. This new monitoring system will need to record all types of pollution including oxides of nitrogen (NOx), particulate matter (PM) and ultra-fine particles (UFP). These data will provide a baseline for our emissions and enable prioritisation of investment schemes to tackle pollutants in a logical, evidence-based way.”