Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Official Report 1001KB pdf

Committee Announcement (Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee)

The next item of business is an announcement by the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee on the report on the Scottish Government’s air quality improvement plan and wider air quality issues. I call Edward Mountain, the convener of the committee, to make the announcement.

I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, to share our assessment of the Scottish Government’s air quality improvement plan.

As a committee, we agreed that requesting an announcement was important because it sets a strong precedent that improvement plans should be looked at differently from a typical affirmative instrument.

To give a bit of context, the plan is the first to be considered under the new post-Brexit arrangements for environmental law in Scotland, and it follows an improvement report issued by Scotland’s new environmental watchdog, Environmental Standards Scotland. The focus of ESS’s investigation was how nitrogen dioxide levels were being managed by local authorities within the current system of local air quality management and how they were being monitored.

ESS recommended a number of steps that the Scottish Government should take to speed up the tackling of air quality at a local level. The improvement plan has looked to address ESS’s recommendations through making guidance to councils and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency more robust.

We are broadly satisfied that those actions represent a step forward and hope that the guidance provides local authorities with the clarity that they need in undertaking their stewardship of air quality. However, we also have a number of concerns.

If we expect local authorities to deliver the necessary improvements to air quality, the Scottish Government must ensure that they are funded accordingly. A lack of resources means that councils may continue to struggle, which risks hindering realisation of the improvement plan’s aims.

Councils also face unprecedented staffing challenges. Without enough planning or environmental health officers, the Scottish Government will not be able to achieve its ambitions on air quality. Our report calls on the Scottish Government to set out how it will increase uptake of those professions.

We are also not convinced that updated policy guidance will ensure that SEPA delivers the desired approach to the monitoring and enforcement of local air quality standards, and we are unclear whether the agency has the relevant powers and resources to undertake its additional oversight role to full effect.

The committee also chose to take the opportunity to consider wider air quality issues. I would like to set out briefly some of our key findings.

First, we assessed the effectiveness of the Scottish Government’s cleaner air for Scotland 2 strategy. We found that, although the strategy has ambition, there has been a lack of progress in implementing some of its key promises to mainstream air quality across policy agendas and deliver a modal shift towards sustainable forms of transport.

We also looked at low-emission zones. We found that LEZs were a significant development in tackling air pollution in our urban spaces but that they were not a silver bullet on their own. Instead, a wider package of interventions must be looked at to combat air pollution, particularly in more rural areas, where LEZs were unlikely to provide a solution.

Finally, we looked at best practice in tackling air quality. We were encouraged by the idea of establishing a programme of continuous improvement to make incremental progress towards achieving the challenging 2021 World Health Organization guidelines. Our report calls on the Scottish Government to set out those pathways as part of its upcoming review of the cleaner air for Scotland 2 strategy.

In conclusion, Presiding Officer, the air that we breathe is essential to our wellbeing. By tackling air pollution, Scottish people can enjoy a better quality of life with reduced health risks. We hope that the implementation of the Scottish Government’s air improvement plan will help to achieve that aim. It is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. We therefore recommend that it be approved by the Scottish Parliament.