Government loses legal case on poor urban air quality

A second government defeat in the courts over its efforts to tackle air quality issues in London and other cities has led to suggestions that it is time to move towards ending access to the city by vehicles with diesel engines.

In November, environmental law firm ClientEarth won a High Court case against the government over what it called the failure to tackle illegal air pollution across the UK. Mr Justice Garnham agreed with ClientEarth that the Environment Secretary had failed to take measures that would bring the UK into compliance with the law ‘as soon as possible’ and said that ministers knew that over-optimistic pollution modelling was being used.

The case is the second in two years the government has lost on its failure to clean up air pollution. In April 2015, ClientEarth won a Supreme Court ruling against the government which ordered ministers to come up with a plan to bring air pollution down within legal limits as soon as possible. Those plans were so poor that ClientEarth took the government back to the High Court in a Judicial Review.

In this latest judgment, the judge ruled that the government’s 2015 Air Quality Plan failed to comply with the Supreme Court ruling or relevant EU Directives, and said that the government had erred in law by fixing compliance dates based on over-optimistic modelling of pollution levels.

During evidence, the court heard that Defra’s (Department for Environment Food & Rural Affarirs) original plans for a more extensive network of Clean Air Zones in more than a dozen UK cities had been watered down, on cost grounds, to just five, in addition to London.

ClientEarth air quality lawyer Alan Andrews said: ‘We need a national network of clean air zones to be in place by 2018 in cities across the UK, not just in a handful of cities. The government also needs to stop these inaccurate modelling forecasts. Future projections of compliance need to be based on what is really coming out of the exhausts of diesel cars when driving on the road, not just the results of discredited laboratory tests.’

Think tank IPPR set out its plan to help the Mayor of London and government radically cut air pollution. Building on measures previously proposed by the Mayor for his current term, IPPR argues that London will also need a radical plan for after 2020 to comply with legal limits. IPPR proposes that the Mayor of London should:

• phase out diesel cars in inner London by the end of the next mayoral term;
• consider a charge on all non-zero emissions cars in inner London by 2025, with action on buses, vans and lorries as well;
• phase out diesel taxis by 2025; and
• make sure the revenues raised by road charging are reinvested into the public transport network, car sharing, cycling, walking and other sustainable options.

Such measures would need to be complemented with action by Whitehall, adds IPPR, including a new Clean Air Act that targets air pollution; a diesel scrappage scheme to make the phase-out affordable; and reform of road tax so that diesel vehicles are not promoted over petrol.

Air pollution in London is a health emergency; the second most significant social factor in someone’s health after smoking, according to the IPPR. It says that air pollution levels in London exceed legal and World Health Organisation (WHO) limits for oxides of nitrogen, and WHO limits for particulate matter. In 2010, for example, these pollutants caused a range of health problems in the capital that are estimated to have shortened lives by over 140,000 years – the equivalent of up to 9,400 deaths.

The principal driver of air pollution in London is road transport and, within that, diesel vehicles, says the IPPR. Nearly 40% of all NOx emissions within London come from diesel vehicles, and unless this is explicitly tackled it will be impossible to clean London’s air.