Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-08
Topic: Environment
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): My Lords, I have taken a lot of notes from today’s debate, and it is always difficult to reply to everybody, but I will do my best to do so outside the Chamber. I see a lot of meetings in my future—including with the Minister, I hope I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate, which I thought was incredibly positive; many mentioned things that I did not think about mentioning. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for example, said that he had no doubt that Rosamund Kissi-Debrah was going to get the law changed and I think he is absolutely right. It seems like an awful lot of Members here in your Lordships’ House will help her to do just that. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for talking about the impact on children and, of course, her personal story. It always makes everything very relevant when one hears a personal story. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, also told us a personal story about her daughter and twins, and she raised the danger of biomass and of labelling other fuels environmentally friendly when, in fact, they are not. The noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, talked about targets not being specific and told her personal story about her mother—I understand that that is clearly a concern The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, talked about hidden emissions, and he gave us his legal wisdom on this. My own paternal grandfather was killed in a coal mine in the 1913 mining disaster in Senghenydd, so I have a history of understanding about coal mining. The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, talked about the mental health impact, which I had omitted to mention so I thank her very much for that—it was quite unpleasant to hear. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, wants me to make this Bill even bigger and I thank him for that. I really thought I was being ambitious here, but he has inspired me to be perhaps more ambitious in the future. I also liked his comment about the polluter pays, which is a principle for which I have advocated for a very long time The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, talked about intangible and invisible pollutants and that is a part of the problem: the smog was so visible and so unpleasant that people felt quite justified in bringing in a Bill, whereas at the moment all these pollutants are difficult to see, so it is harder to push the whole concept. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, talked about my being witty and gracious—you know, I love compliments, though I do not think of myself as gracious. I am glad he welcomes the principles and I would be very happy to meet with him—in fact, I would be happy to meet any noble Lord who wants to comment further—but I have accepted the points made by the Delegated Powers Committee that were part of what he talked about. Also, he said that the Bill is limited to England and Wales; that is out of courtesy to the other countries. Obviously, I would like to make it global but that is beyond the powers of this Parliament. My feeling is that Brexit allows us to do our own thing, so it is absolutely perfect to do it for England and Wales The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, seemed to suggest quite a few more amendments—if we can avoid those, I would be grateful. There are always other opportunities with the Bill. But her idea to stop burning things is just so simple—that is exactly what we have to do. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, talked about unfinished business and Labour’s own clean air Act. I am a proud Green and have been for decades so it is very hard for me to share credit, but here I want to say that I have been incredibly touched by the Labour Party’s support for this Bill. I will freely give up all my credit if Labour would like to take my Bill and enact it. The same goes for the Lib Dems, I would be happy to support any way I can get these issues through The Minister raised a lot of issues and said things such as, "The Government are on the case", "The Government have these targets" and "We are doing our best", but this Bill will improve things for people and the planet. It will improve what the Government are doing, and I give it to them freely; it is oven-ready in the sense that I understand it and not, perhaps, as the Government understand it. It is actually ready to go. It will be, I think, something that the Government could be proud of The Office for Environmental Protection is such a good idea, but it is so weak—we can do better than that. The Minister mentioned all these monitoring sites and I do not know whether he has ever visited any of them, but the one at Edgeware Road has its intake pipe eight feet high. That means it cannot take in all the pollution at exhaust pipe level, so perhaps he could fix that In closing, this Bill is not just down to me; Rosamund and I are the tip of the volcano. Hundreds and thousands of people are supporting this Bill and have supported writing it, so I want to thank the team. I also thank Sadiq Khan, who has been fantastic about supporting this when he really did not have to. I would like to keep all the credit but I cannot. I thank the Government very much for allowing this debate to go forward; I hope they will accept the Bill.