Government fails to commit to diesel scrappage scheme in UK clean air plan

The government’s new plan to tackle the UK’s toxic air crisis does not commit to a scrappage scheme for dirty diesel cars and places the largest burden for solving the problem on to local authorities.

These could impose charges on older diesel cars to keep them out of polluted areas, but the government said other measures should be considered first.

Ministers were forced to act after a series of humiliating defeats in the courts, which ruled earlier plans illegal. ClientEarth, the environmental law firm which sued the government, is now examining the new proposals and could go back to court again if it decides the measures will not reduce illegal levels of air pollution in the “shortest possible time”, as the law demands.

Levels of nitrogen dioxide, emitted mostly by diesel vehicles, have been above legal limits in almost 90% of urban areas in the UK since 2010. The fumes are estimated to cause 23,500 early deaths a year and the problem was declared a public health emergency by a cross-party committee of MPs in April 2016.

The government first lost to ClientEarth over the adequacy of its strategy in April 2015 and was ordered to come up with a new plan. The release of these proposals was buried on the September Saturday in 2015 when Jeremy Corbyn was first elected Labour leader, while the final plan was published on “take out the trash day” in December that year, along with dozens of other ministerial statements and many hundreds of government documents.

However, the plan included just six clean air zones (CAZs) – Birmingham, Leeds, Nottingham, Derby, Southampton and London – where some polluting diesel vehicles would be charged to enter city centres. ClientEarth, believing this to be inadequate, went back to court and won again in November 2016.

Court documents revealed that the Treasury, then run by George Osborne, had blocked proposals from other government departments for 16 CAZs in towns and cities blighted by air pollution, due to concern about the political impact of angering motorists. Both the environment and transport departments also recommended changes to vehicle excise duty to encourage the purchase of low-pollution vehicles. But the Treasury also rejected that idea, along with a scrappage scheme for older diesels.

The government continued to delay action, asking the court for 10 months to develop another new strategy, but lost again, with the judge ordering a new draft plan by 24 April and a final plan by 31 July.

However, ministers then argued that the tradition of “purdah” before elections, when no official announcements are made, should allow the postponement of the strategy until after the general election on 8 June. This was again rejected, with Mr Justice Garnham saying: “The continued failure of the government to comply with directives and regulations constitutes a significant threat to public health.”

Conservative ministers have sought to blame previous Labour governments for giving tax breaks for diesel cars, which produce less climate-warming carbon dioxide. But experts say all governments since the 1990s have done this.

Furthermore, government officials at the time were aware that diesel cars produce high levels of NO2 but they expected tightening EU emissions regulations to curb the problem.

However, car manufacturers found ways to circumvent the rules and across the industry produced vehicles that emit far more NO2 on the road than in the official lab-based tests. Transport campaigners argue that, as in Germany and France, car makers should be forced to pay for upgrades to their vehicles to cut pollution.

“The real villains here are the car companies who cheated tests, and lied to everyone about the pollution coming from their diesel vehicles,” said Greenpeace’s Areeba Hamid. “Drivers are right to feel conned, but what we can’t do is carry on letting these dodgy diesel cars pollute our towns and cities with toxic air.”

Government fails to commit to diesel scrappage scheme in UK clean air plan

End UK tax incentives for diesel vehicles, ministers are urged

Ministers are coming under growing pressure to remove tax incentives for diesel cars and offer compensation to motorists so they can swap to more environmentally friendly vehicles.

A group of medical professionals, environmental campaigners and lawyers has written to the chancellor ahead of the budget to demand a change to the vehicle excise duty that they say subsidises diesel cars.

Separately, senior Labour and Tory politicians have called for a comprehensive vehicle scrappage scheme to help people with diesel cars change to greener alternatives.

The letter from campaigners, including the British Lung Foundation, Greenpeace and doctors’ groups, says toxic air poses a daily risk to people’s health – particularly the young and those suffering from lung problems.

“Air pollution has … been shown to stunt children’s lung growth, which could leave them with health problems in later life,” it states. “We all deserve to breathe clean air.”

On Saturday the Guardian revealed that thousands of children and young people at more than 800 nurseries, schools and colleges in London faced dangerous and illegal levels of toxic air, much of it from diesel cars.

The transport secretary, Chris Grayling, indicated the government may bow to pressure, saying motorists should be wary of buying diesel cars, adding: “We’re going to have to really migrate our car fleet, and our vehicle fleet more generally, to cleaner technology.” However, he said that diesel “was not going to disappear”.

Air pollution causes 40,000 early deaths in the UK and costs the country £27.5bn a year, according to a government estimate. MPs have called it a public health emergency.

The letter adds: “We know diesel vehicles, in particular diesel cars, are a major source of pollution in towns and cities … yet vehicle excise duty (VED) not only fails to recognise this, but is still incentivising them. We are therefore asking for a revision of the VED first-year rate in your upcoming budget statement.”

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has added his voice to calls for a change in vehicle excise duty for diesel cars. He also said the government should introduce a comprehensive clean air act and a diesel scrappage scheme to compensate those motorists who bought diesel cars after being told they were more environmentally friendly.

“A number of years ago Londoners and others around the country were encouraged to buy diesel cars, businessmen and women, charities, families were all encouraged to buy diesel.

“We are saying to the government you need to choose a national diesel scrappage fund to help people move away from diesel … and we would target this to the poorest families.”

Judges told ministers last November they must cut the illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) in dozens of towns and cities in the shortest possible time after ruling that their plans to improve air quality were so poor they were unlawful.

The government has until April to come up with proposals to bring before the court.

Last year the environment, food and rural affairs select committee described the situation as a public health emergency and recommended the government introduce a diesel scrappage scheme.

Its chair, Neil Parish, told the Guardian he was disappointed that the advice had been ignored and called on the government to change course.

Parish said: “Defra has lost again in the courts on its failure to tackle air pollution. The option of a scrappage scheme should be back on the table to help get the dirtiest diesels off our roads quickly.”

He said it was vital any scrappage scheme was “focused and does not merely become a subsidy for the middle classes. Cash from the scheme should either promote ULEVs [ultra-low-emission vehicle] or incentivise public transport use.”

Legal NGO ClientEarth brought the case against the government and was one of the groups to sign Sunday’s letter to the chancellor.

Its chief executive, James Thornton, said: “The high court has ordered the government to take immediate action now to deal with illegal levels of pollution and prevent tens of thousands of additional early deaths in the UK.

“The government needs to recognise that diesel is the primary cause of the problem, and to promote a shift to alternatives. It’s perverse that our tax system encourages people to buy dirty vehicles.”

End UK tax incentives for diesel vehicles, ministers are urged

Diesel cars are 10 times more toxic than trucks and buses, data shows

Modern diesel cars produce 10 times more toxic air pollution than heavy trucks and buses, new European data has revealed.

The stark difference in emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) is due to the much stricter testing applied to large vehicles in the EU, according to the researchers behind a new report. They say the same strict measures must be applied to cars.

NOx pollution is responsible for tens of thousands of early deaths across Europe, with the UK suffering a particularly high toll. Much of the pollution is produced by diesel cars, which on the road emit about six times more than allowed in the official lab-based tests. Following the Volkswagen “dieselgate” scandal, the car tests are due to be toughened, but campaigners say the reforms do not go far enough.

The new report from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a research group that played a key role in exposing Volkswagen’s cheating, compared the emissions from trucks and buses in realistic driving conditions with those of cars.

It found that heavy-duty vehicles tested in Germany and Finland emitted about 210mg NOx per kilometre driven, less than half the 500mg/km pumped out by modern diesel cars that meet the highest “Euro 6” standard. However, the buses and trucks have larger engines and burn more diesel per kilometre, meaning that cars produce 10 times more NOx per litre of fuel.

The ICCT analysis showed that manufacturers were able to ensure that heavy duty vehicles kept below pollution limits when on the road, but that emissions from cars soar once in the real world.

Official EU tests for cars are currently limited to laboratory measurements of prototype vehicles. “In contrast, for measurement of NOx emissions from trucks and buses, mobile testing devices became mandatory in 2013. As a consequence, randomly selected vehicles can be tested under real-world driving conditions,” said Peter Mock, managing director of ICCT in Europe.

Changes to the car testing regime in the EU are due to start in September, with mobile devices, called portable emissions measurement systems (PEMS), attached to vehicles as they drive on real roads.

But Mock warned: “Manufacturers will still be allowed to carefully select special prototype cars for emissions testing. Instead, it would be much better to measure the emissions of ordinary mass-production vehicles, obtained from customers who have had been driving them in an ordinary way.”

Such a system is used in the US where the dieselgate scandal first emerged. It will also be put forward for discussion by the European commission on 17 January in Brussels, but the ICCT said it faces resistance from some vehicle manufacturers and EU member states.

In December, the European commission started legal action against the UK and six other EU states for failing to act against car emissions cheating in the wake of the dieselgate scandal. But later the same month, a draft European parliament inquiry found the European commission itself guilty of maladministration for failing to act quickly enough on evidence that defeat devices were being used to game emissions tests.

Evidence that some diesel cars emitted up to four times more NOx pollution than a bus was revealed in 2015. Catherine Bearder, a Liberal Democrat MEP and a lead negotiator on the EU’s air quality law, said “It is disgraceful that car manufacturers have failed to reduce deadly emissions when the technology to do so is affordable and readily available. The dramatic reduction in NOx emissions from heavier vehicles is a result of far stricter EU tests, in place since 2011, that reflect real-world driving conditions. If buses and trucks can comply with these limits, there’s no reason cars can’t as well.”

Diesel cars are 10 times more toxic than trucks and buses, data shows

Diesel vehicles face charges after UK government loses air pollution case

Drivers of polluting diesel vehicles could soon be charged to enter many city centres across Britain, after the government accepted in the high court on Wednesday that its current plans to tackle the nation’s air pollution crisis were so poor they broke the law.

The humiliating legal defeat is the second in 18 months and ends years of inadequate action and delays to tackle the problem which causes 50,000 early deaths every year.

Ministers are now bound to implement new measures to cut toxic air quickly and the prime minister, Theresa May, indicated the government would this time respond positively: “There is more to do and we will do it.”

The most likely measure is using charges to deter polluting diesel vehicles from “clean air zones” in urban centres, which could be in place next year in London and in 2018 in Birmingham and other cities. Nitrogen dioxide, the pollutant at the heart of the legal case, has been at illegal levels in 90% of the country’s air quality zones since 2010 and largely stems from diesel vehicles.

EU law requires the government to cut the illegal pollution in the “shortest possible time” but legal NGO ClientEarth, which brought the cases, argued the government’s plans ignored many measures that could help achieve this.

In the high court on Wednesday, Mr Justice Garnham agreed. He said it was “remarkable” that ministers knew they were using over-optimistic pollution modelling, based on flawed lab tests of diesel vehicles rather than actual emissions on the road, but proceeded anyway. He also said the law required the protection of health to come above the costs of measures: “I reject any suggestion that the state can have any regard to cost.”

The government said it would not appeal against the decision and agreed in court to discuss with ClientEarth a new timetable for more realistic pollution modelling and the steps needed to bring pollution levels down to legal levels. The parties will return to court in a week but if agreement cannot be reached, the judge could impose a timetable upon the government.

At prime minister’s questions, May said: “We now recognise that Defra [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] has to look at the judgment made by the courts and we now have to look again at the proposals we will bring forward. Nobody in this house doubts the importance of the issue of air quality.”

The government’s own estimates show air pollution causes at least £27.5bn a year and in April MPs called the issue a “public health emergency”.

ClientEarth lawyers said they looked forward to working with Defra ministers to make a genuine attempt to rapidly cut pollution to legal limits throughout the UK, including a national network of clean air zones by 2018. “The government will have to be tougher on diesel,” said James Thornton, CEO of ClientEarth. “If you put in clean air zones, it works overnight.”

“Today’s ruling lays the blame at the door of the government for its complacency in failing to tackle the problem quickly and credibly,” said the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who took part in the case. “In so doing they have let down millions of people the length and breadth of the country.” Khan aims to have pollution charging in place in central London by 2017 and across the area within the north and south circular roads by 2019.

The government said it would not appeal against the decision and agreed in court to discuss with ClientEarth a new timetable for more realistic pollution modelling and the steps needed to bring pollution levels down to legal levels. Photograph: Philip Toscano/PA

ClientEarth defeated the government on the same issue at the supreme court in April 2015. Ministers were then ordered to draw up a new action plan, but on Wednesday that new plan was also found to be illegal. The UK’s duty to cut illegal air pollution as quickly as possible derives from EU laws but the action required following the high court defeat will be taken well before Brexit takes place. The government has said it will transfer all EU rules into UK law but, post-Brexit, the government could revise air pollution legislation.

The court defeat is also a blow for the new runway at Heathrow the government has backed. Its approval depended on the effectiveness of the government’s national air pollution plan to meet legal requirements on air quality. The Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, said: “This ruling deals a huge blow to May’s reckless Heathrow expansion plans. The government has already illegally delayed meeting EU pollution limits until 2025 – building a third runway would make the situation even worse.”

Documents revealed during the high court case showed the Treasury had blocked initial government plans to charge polluting diesel vehicles for entering towns and cities blighted by air pollution, due to concern about the political impact of angering motorists.

Both the environment and transport departments recommended changes to vehicle excise duty rates to encourage the purchase of low-pollution vehicles. But the Treasury also rejected that idea, along with a scrappage scheme for older diesels, which ClientEarth supports.

The government’s draft plan had envisaged 16 clean air zones, but in the final plan the number was cut, on the grounds of costs to business, to just five outside London: Birmingham, Leeds, Nottingham, Derby and Southampton. The further cities and towns that now need to introduce clean air zones will be determined by the more realistic pollution modelling ordered by the court on Wednesday.

Keith Taylor, Green party MEP, said: “The failure highlighted by the judge today is as much moral as it is legal: ministers have displayed an extremely concerning attitude of indifference towards their duty to safeguard the health of British citizens.”

NO2 exceedance

Diesel vehicles face charges after UK government loses air pollution case

Diesel engine pollution linked to early deaths and fees NHS billions

Diesel lorries and cars on the A40 in west London. Air pollution experts warn of the website link amongst diesel engines and premature death. Photograph: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images

Diesel engines in buses, vans, autos and trains may possibly be accountable for thousands of premature deaths a 12 months and expense the NHS billions of lbs, say air pollution well being experts.

With government figures for 2008 displaying 29,000 men and women dying prematurely from air pollution each 12 months, diesel fuel burned in vehicles could be accountable for about one particular in four of all air pollution deaths, mentioned Frank Kelly, professor of environmental health at King’s College, London.

“We have walked blindly into a scenario the place we have a high percentage of diesels in the transport sector. All taxis and buses are diesel. From a single in 10 personal autos being diesel in 2000 it is now practically half right now. A great deal of the minute particulate matter [emitted from exhausts] comes from diesels in cities. It is estimated that 50% of the particulate matter in London is from transport and that diesel can make up about half of all the transport,” he mentioned.

The new estimate follows preliminary analysis of the quite high air pollution ranges recorded this month across considerably of southern Britain when fine dust blown up from the Sahara desert mixed with heavily polluted air from British and mainland European cities to generate a dangerous smog.

Researchers at King’s College London have recommended about 70% of the minute particles of dust in the air could have come from outside Britain, with about twenty% composed of Saharan dust. “But this pollution episode was not a organic phenomenon as was advised in some media. The bulk of the pollution was guy-created, stated Martin Williams, professor of air good quality analysis at King’s.

Diesel automobiles have been well-known with motorists and encouraged by government because they do much better mileage and cut CO2 emissions, but the scale of the air pollution well being dilemma they present is only now becoming clear as new investigation exhibits how their exhaust emissions are linked to cancers, and heart and lung diseases.

Air pollution can be compared to cigarette smoking and might worsen symptoms of heart failure, mentioned Jeremy Langrish, lecturer in cardiology at the University of Edinburgh. “The predominate lead to of death associated with air pollution appears to be cardiovascular disease. It’s clear from some function that was done that acute publicity to large ranges of air pollution might truly be in a position to trigger acute cardiac events in individuals that are at risk of such, so it may carry forward the onset of a heart attack.

“From a heart stage of view it is hard not to draw a correlation with the comparable effects that we see with cigarette smoke and on an organ-level these effects are extremely equivalent to the results of smoking cigarettes, which we all recognise are negative for us,” he mentioned.

Kids are specifically at chance from air pollution, said Jonathan Grigg, professor of paediatric respiratory and environmental medicine at Queen Mary University of London. “The danger comes not just from peaks in pollution, like we noticed earlier this month, but also from prolonged-phrase exposure. Britain has some of the highest levels of this kind of pollutants in Europe. There is already powerful proof for diesel pollutants having an effect on cognitive perform in kids.

Grigg, who performs in London’s East Finish the place air pollution is some of the worst in Britain, said air pollution was now a key international threat to children. “Long-phrase publicity to air pollution suppresses lung perform and leads to vulnerability through lifestyle. It truly is a key concern. We are setting up youngsters to sub optimal circumstances in later lifestyle.”

“Folks in big cities have decrease lifestyle expectancy since of pollution. It seemed far fetched twenty many years ago but now it is clear that the air we breathe has an effect on life expectancy. Air pollution alone does not destroy you. But we feel up to 200,000 individuals are having their overall health affected by PM2.5s [particulates with a diameter of 2.5 microns],” mentioned Frank Kelly.

Diesel engine pollution linked to early deaths and fees NHS billions