The mother of a nine-year-old girl who became the first person in the UK to have air pollution cited on their death certificate has said she wants an official apology for her daughter’s suffering as her high court claim against the government heads to trial.
Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah is suing three government departments for compensation for personal injury arising from the illness and premature death of her daughter Ella, who had a fatal asthma attack in 2013 after being exposed to excessive air pollution.
At a preliminary hearing in London on Monday, lawyers discussed issues in the case in advance of an estimated 10-day trial at a later date.
Adoo-Kissi-Debrahsaid her legal challenge against ministers would be about “holding their feet to the fire” and establishing a “legal right to clean air”. But she said she wanted “an apology, first and foremost … for what Ella went through … We got it from the London mayor, we expect the same from the government.”
Adoo-Kissi-Debrah said her daughter had “suffered greatly” and that the family’s former lawyer and new attorney general, Richard Hermer KC, had “equated Ella’s suffering to torture”.
The family lived approximately 25 metres from the South Circular, in Lewisham, south-east London and Ella regularly walked by it on her way to and from school. She developed asthma shortly before her seventh birthday and over the next two years was admitted to hospital 27 times after repeated seizures.
Speaking the day after the Euro 2024 final, Adoo-Kissi-Debrah said: “Yesterday we thought about how much she would have enjoyed the football.
“It’s very sad how much she has genuinely missed out on. It was a life truly cut short. That will never go away.”
She said very little had happened since a coroner’s prevention of future deaths report, which she said had warned that “unless the government clean up the air, children like Ella are going to continue to die”.
Adoo-Kissi-Debrah noted the former Conservative government’s target of cutting exposure to harmful air pollutants by 2040, but said: “A child born today would not get clean air until they are 16, which is a long way off.”
She said that although it was difficult to comment on the new government’s approach, there was “disappointment” over the lack of a clean air act in Labour’s election manifesto. “You can be the best campaigner in the world but unless you have legislation I don’t think it’s going to amount to much,” she said.
Her lawyers previously told the court that the personal injury case – “the first claim of its kind” – is not about money but focused about seeking vindication for Ella’s death.
They estimate the case to be worth £293,156 in potential damages, but lawyers for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Transport and the Department of Health and Social Care, which all dispute the claim, believes it is worth £30,000 if successful.
They previously denied its actions “amount to a breach of human rights” and denied that any such alleged breach, if proven, would be “causative of Ella’s injuries and death”.
A government spokesperson said: “Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s death was a tragedy and our thoughts remain with her friends and family.”
