A liveable neighbourhood pilot is just about to start in my constituency. It is important to engage the local community, to explain how it will work for them and to listen when they say how it might cause problems in certain areas. Although there has been some opposition, groups such as St George Breathing Better—which was founded by a group of parents whose children are suffering because of the city’s air pollution—are very much behind the pilot.
I return to the Secretary of State’s disappointing remarks about 15-minute cities. As well as bigger measures, such as ULEZ to address Greater London’s transport problems, we need to consider local solutions such as liveable neighbourhoods and school street schemes to encourage people to walk to school and work, and to make it as easy as possible for people to get around without resorting to their car. This should be about giving elected politicians the right to implement such solutions in consultation with the people they represent.
]]>Again, I am going to say something nice: we have had confirmation today that First Bus has received funding under the next wave of the zero-emission bus regional areas scheme to turn all of our buses into electric vehicles. We have been experimenting with biogas, but that funding will do an awful lot. We do have some clean biogas buses, and my right hon. and learned Friend the leader of the Labour party got to drive one on one of his previous visits to the city. He was like a little boy with a new toy, it has to be said—I think he greatly enjoyed it.
]]>My right hon. Friend is entirely right. I used to hold the shadow green transport brief, and e-bikes are hugely important in allowing people to do those longer journeys. I could not make it up the hills in Bristol without a bit of extra help from an e-bike, but when it comes to delivery vehicles, one of the issues is deliveries inside the areas covered by zones. If we can have hubs outside the city centres and electric vans or e-cargo bikes making those deliveries, that could have a huge impact. Obviously, everybody making food deliveries and similar things really ought to be using clean modes of transport.
I am conscious of time, so I will finish my point about the Bristol scheme. There were concerns that it would lead people to take diversions and increase pollution outside the clean air zone, but air pollution outside the zone has also been measured as down: it has reduced by 7.8%, because the CAZ has encouraged a modal shift among people. I appreciate that people cannot always afford to make that shift in vehicles, but it has happened.
Another concern raised by opponents was that the CAZ would harm the local economy and communities by discouraging people from coming into the city centre. In fact, the opposite happened: retail footfall across four major retail hotspots in central Bristol actually rose from the previous year. There was also an argument that people would become isolated and stuck at home because they could not afford to pay the £9 charge, but again, that was not the case: the number of journeys into or through the CAZ per month was higher at the end of the year than at the start of the scheme, and the percentage of compliant journeys rose every single month. That is what we want to achieve.
It is the same with the landfill tax, for example. That tax is not about raising money because lots of people are sending stuff to landfill. If a landfill tax is effective, the revenues go down and down, year on year. There is actually an issue with the fact that the tax is not keeping pace with inflation at the moment, but assuming it is effective, the revenues will dwindle—it is the behaviour change that we want to make happen. As I said, ideally we would not have introduced a clean air zone, but we have made it work. It is also worth noting that the Government take £2 from every £9 CAZ charge, which we would very much like to be able to spend in Bristol instead.
]]>It is relevant to talk about the Bristol scheme because it shows what can be achieved by similar measures in London. The scheme came into effect in November 2022, and in January this year we had the first annual report on its effectiveness. It was judged to have been highly successful. The headline figure was that air pollution across all measured sites had declined by 9.7%. The success of the CAZ is measured by whether it lowers nitrogen dioxide levels below the legal limit of 40 micrograms per cubic metre. In November 2022, when the scheme was introduced, there were 18 sites across Bristol above the legal limit. Just 12 months later, that was down to just six zones. The scheme was particularly effective outside the Bristol Royal Infirmary and the Bristol Children’s Hospital, which are bang in the middle of the city centre. Air pollution was down by an incredible 26.9%. I defy anyone to tell me that such big improvements in air quality in areas where there are very sick and vulnerable people, including sick children, is a bad thing. It has been really successful.
]]>As I said earlier, the Government were forced to act on air pollution after being taken to court by ClientEarth, to which I pay tribute for its continuing efforts through the legal system to hold the Government to account in respect of their environmental targets. As a result of that court case, Bristol was asked to act. I have already made the point about the irony, perhaps, of demanding local autonomy in some cases and demanding not to be told what to do by the Mayor of London, but in Bristol the Secretary of State told us we had to do that.
]]>I want to challenge
The hon. Member, who has left the Chamber now, may not feel that ULEZ is an air pollution issue, but I very much feel that it is because low emissions are a public health issue. In my role as shadow Climate Change Minister, people often come and talk to me about air pollution as though it is primarily a net zero issue, and we have seen some depressing attempts to make net zero part of the anti-woke culture wars by saying that net zero comes at a cost. We saw the Secretary of State for Transport buy into the whole conspiracy theory about 15-minute cities at party conference, which is incredibly depressing. Reducing emissions from transport is obviously very much part of our ambition to meet net zero, but the immediate driver is the need to clean up our air.
We have heard mention of the switch to electric vehicles. It is obviously the long-term objective that we want to ensure that all the vehicles on our roads reach safe emission standards. It was therefore disappointing that the Government rowed back the 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles. The signal that that sent to the market and consumers was entirely counterproductive. Although initially there was some resistance to a 2030 target—rather than a 2035 target—within the car manufacturing trade, the trade then got with the programme and was critical of the Government for that row-back, because it affected sales. It had made the switch and was producing EVs; it is still bound by zero emission vehicle mandate, so it is making the new electric vehicles.
The most important thing we can do—this goes to the points about people not being able to afford cleaner vehicles that are compliant with the ULEZ—is to develop a second-hand electric vehicle market as quickly as possible. We do that by increasing new EV sales. The figure has gone down a bit, but it was the case that of new EV sales, 80-something per cent were fleet vehicles. We know that they then come on to the second-hand market pretty quickly. We have to bring down the cost of buying EVs—I can see
We also need action on EV charging infrastructure. I will say thank you to the Government for providing some new money for charging infrastructure in the west of England—I think that Bristol is the best place outside London in this regard—but what is lacking is a national strategy to put the infrastructure into places where the market will not meet the need because there is not the necessary footfall, or whatever the driving equivalent is, particularly in our rural areas that depend on tourism. Those travelling down to Devon and Cornwall can use Exeter services, but after that it is pretty difficult to find somewhere to charge a car.
As I have an EV and cannot charge it at home because I live in a block of flats, I welcome the public charging points in Bristol. I spend far too much time sitting in car parks doing Duolingo and practising my very bad Russian while charging my car. It is quite sad when constituents spot me doing that. Although we need more charging points in our cities, including London, this is national infrastructure and we must roll it out to other parts of the country.
As I have said, I believe that the immediate imperative is not reducing transport emissions with the aim of reaching net zero but dealing with air pollution, which we know has a significant impact on people’s health and on children’s health in particular. When I was at school there was just one girl in my class with asthma, but nowadays the majority of kids in any inner-city primary school probably have it. Children are more vulnerable in this regard because their airways are smaller and still developing, because they are closer to traffic fumes because they are small, and because they breathe more rapidly. They are also more likely to develop more serious lung conditions in later life—although of course asthma can be very serious.
Moreover, air pollution affects the lung development of foetuses in utero, and increases the chance of miscarriage. If a mother is exposed to a large volume of air pollution during pregnancy the baby is more likely to be born prematurely and with a lower birth weight, which is correlated with the development of certain health problems as a child grows up. I pay tribute to groups such as Asthma + Lung UK and Mums for Lungs, which has been doing some very good campaigning in my constituency, while St George Breathing Better has been pushing for school street schemes to restrict the entry of high-emitting vehicles, especially when children are going in and out of schools.
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