Britain’s only Green MP has criticised the Mayor of Bristol for failing to act on pollution in the city after the most recent delay to the start of Bristol’s Clean Air Zone.
But Marvin Rees has hit back at Caroline Lucas, saying that if the Green Party were in power, many more people in Bristol would have been left disadvantaged by them starting the Clean Air Zone too soon. The political row came as Lucas, an MP in Brighton, visited Bristol to support the Green Party’s co-leader and city councillor Carla Denyer in her bid to become the party’s second MP at the next General Election.
Caroline Lucas directly challenged Marvin Rees, accusing him of talking a good game on climate change and air pollution, but failing to act on it. She said she visited Bristol in 2016 to call for the Labour Mayor to implement a Clean Air Zone for the city, because of illegal levels of air pollution, but six years on and there’s still no start date - and the CAZ has been delayed again.
Read more: Bristol Clean Air Zone will now be starting 'towards the end of the year'
“It’s quite something to see the Mayor sign a letter calling for tougher action on air pollution just days after he has delayed the launch of Bristol’s Clean Air Zone yet again,” she said.
“Nobody would accept six years of failure to act if polluted tap water was leading to hundreds of deaths per year – and quite rightly. Greens are calling for local and national government to go much further to protect our health. My colleague in Parliament, Baroness Jenny Jones, has tabled a Clean Air Bill, known as Ella’s Law, which if passed could protect thousands of unnecessary early deaths from air pollution every year,” she added.
“Ella’s Law would force the Government to act to bring air quality in every community up to minimum World Health Organization (WHO) standards. This would mean people no longer have to breathe air that seriously damages their health. The law would establish the right to breathe clean air as a basic human right,” she said.
Carla Denyer is standing again in Bristol West at the next general election, and since the last election in 2019 has been named co-leader of the Green Party. She said hundreds of people are dying because of a failure to act in Bristol over the air quality in the city.
“This isn’t your typical politicians ‘dither and delay’, it has terrible, real-life consequences,” she said. “Estimates are that 300 lives are cut short every year in Bristol due to this city’s toxic air quality – and some of the city’s poorer areas are the most affected, with as many as 10 per cent of deaths linked to air pollution.
“While it is encouraging that the mayor is signing up to targets to clean up our air by 2030, a pledge does not make the air clean. If the administration is taking this new air quality commitment seriously we expect to see urgent action to achieve it and a change in direction on transport. Without firm action this is just more hot air,” she added.
Bristol’s Clean Air Zone will see a fraction of vehicles - between a fifth and a quarter of mainly diesel cars, vans and lorries - have to pay a charge for driving in a zone stretching from the Cumberland Basin in the west to the city centre.
The move has been criticised for being to geographically restricted - with South Bristol effectively cut off from the rest of the city - but has also been criticised for not going far enough in both geographic size but also in only targeting nitrogen dioxide from diesel vehicles, when a lot of air pollution is caused by smaller particulates like PM2.5, which come from almost all vehicles and also log burners in people’s homes and dust from construction sites.
Cllr Denyer said the Green Party in Bristol has called for a stronger Clean Air Zone which ‘goes beyond a short term fix and legal compliance’.
“Genuinely clean air will take more than just charging old petrol and diesel cars – even vehicles compliant with clean air zones produce dangerous particulate pollution,” she said. “That’s why Greens are calling for a major upgrade of Bristol’s transport, with safe connected cycling routes, a joined up and efficient bus network, and a levy on corporate parking to raise funds for more improvements.”
“When done right, clean air measures don’t only save lives, they can also support the local economy, improve quality of life and make it easier for all of us to get around our cities,” she added.
But last night the Mayor of Bristol hit back, slating the Green Party’s only MP and co-leader of ‘point scoring’, and not understanding the realities of balancing helping people cope with the transition to a greener city.
“Whereas they may once have put the environment first, the Green Party has become a political party that ignores the complexities of the actual world and instead push political “calls” and catchphrases in the name of political point scoring,” said a spokesperson for Marvin Rees.
“We have worked closely with government and their Joint Air Quality Unit to get Bristol’s clean air zone fit for purpose. If we had rushed in like the Green party called for, many of our more disadvantaged citizens would have been hit hard.
“They would be paying more and we would not have secured the £42m we now have to help companies get cleaner, and help business and individuals change their vehicle travel habits. As we have publicised the clean air zone, so people's behaviours have already changed and now three of every four cars are already compliant.
“The start date may change but the compliance dates stay the same and we remain on track to reach compliance in 2023 - a date we brought down from 2027. Both Caroline Lucas and Carla Denyer are fond of saying ‘all it takes is political will’, as if the world we live in bends to our will.
“That’s their pathway to claiming no one but themselves care. If they were ever in power, they would discover you have to take people with you which means supporting them - the most vulnerable in particular - through change.
“They would discover you also need adequate government funding and infrastructure to deliver something as complex as the clean air zone. And government infrastructure has been held back.
“We continue to work towards a cleaner Bristol and the Mayor has rightly called for more powers and a stronger approach to other pollutants such as wood burners and machinery.
“We remain open to working with people whose commitment to tackling our climate and ecological emergencies are held alongside an understanding of the need for a just transition; have an understanding of the scale of finance needed to enable them all; and who put building the pro-environment alliances the world needs ahead of the temptation to secure cheap headlines to service a political campaign,” he added.
Read Next:
- Clean Air Zone test cameras in Bristol start going up as council reveals locations
- Bristol’s Clean Air Zone launch date faces delay due to ‘national issue with bus lanes’
- Bristol Clean Air Zone will now be starting 'towards the end of the year'
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