Push for diesel cars has had lasting effect on health, admits Minister

A Labour MP has admitted that their previous government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown was wrong to urge motorists to switch to diesel.

Shadow Environment Minister Barry Gardiner has conceded that the tax breaks on diesel cars, put in place when Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer, had lead to a “massive problem for public health.”

Speaking in a Dispatches documentary for Chanel 4’s, Gardiner said that the push for more diesel cars was the “right move away from those vehicles who were pushing out CO2 emissions,” but admits that; “the impact of that decision has been a massive problem for public health in this country.

Diesel was encouraged over petrol due to lower CO2 emissions, but what was less clear at the time is that they release a greater amount of dangerous pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide. According to Professor Roy Harrison, professor of environmental health at the University of Birmingham, those in power were warned of the danger over twenty years ago.

Professor Harrison said; “I chaired an advisory committee in 1993 who was advising government on urban air quality issues and we recognized that there might be future problems associated with the increasing uptake of diesel passenger cars.”

It is believed that air quality is now so bad in parts of London that the lung development of children is being stunted.

Professor Chris Griffiths, of Queen Mary University Hospital London, added; “When we look at the lung development of children who have been exposed to the highest levels of pollution compared with the lowest levels of pollution they are developing smaller stunted lungs, and that’s a big concern.”

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