May 18, 2012 
Caroline Lucas: the Government must get a grip on the air quality crisis
Brighton Pavilion MP, Caroline Lucas, spoke out yesterday about the Government’s need to address the invisible health crisis caused by air pollution in the UK.
Commenting ahead of today’s (6th July 2011) Environmental Audit Committee hearing, Ms Lucas said that the UK must be brought in line with EU air quality laws.
In today’s hearing, the Department for Environmental Farming and Rural Affairs Minister, Lord Henley, will be grilled on the UK’s failure to reduce pollution.
Caroline said: “Thanks to the inability of Ministers to get a grip on the air quality crisis – which could be contributing to as many as 50,000 deaths every year in the UK (2) - we are now in direct breach of the EU’s air quality laws and face expensive legal action from the European Commission.
“Despite significant new evidence of the scale of the health risk from poor air quality and the impact of invisible particles of nitrogen dioxide, the Government has done very little to communicate the risk to the public.
“And the fact that it has been forced to apply for more time to meet its EU deadlines indicates a total policy failure.”
Despite Brighton & Hove’s aspirations of being the UK’s greenest city, Caroline pointed out that standards for nitrogen dioxide are regularly exceeded at 20 sites across the city.
With much of this pollution being caused by traffic, Caroline urged the importance of long-term co-operational measures as opposed to short-term cheats.
Caroline said: “Instead of trying to water down the current EU laws and wasting money on short term cosmetic fixes, such as sticking pollution to the roads or cleaning the areas around air quality monitors – as we have seen in London, for example – the Government should be creating an urgent cross departmental strategy to reduce pollution.
“We also need to see far more alignment between climate change policy and action on air quality, in order to maximise ‘win-win’ benefits and minimise any potential conflicts between the two areas.
“On the 55th anniversary of the Clean Air Act, the Government must stop shirking its responsibilities and come up with a coherent strategy to tackle this public health crisis.”
Brighton’s Green led council want to reduce city speed limits from 30mph to 20mph.
Driving at 20 instead of 30 *increases* the emissions of pollutants for any given trip/distance.
A bit of Green joined up thinking would be nice.