Foul air that we breathe

Published: 15 April, 2011

• BORIS Johnson and the government need to get to grips urgently with London’s dangerously polluted air.

The European Commission recently held off from taking the UK to court for its failure to meet EU standards on health-damaging particles in the air, caused mainly by diesel engines. But this was only on condition that the Mayor and the government come up by June with a convincing set of measures to show London is actually going to meet those long-standing air quality requirements. There is no future in window-dressing or vague and empty “plans”. 

Liberal Democrats in London are thus proposing concrete and realistic measures such as: fitting the most polluting vehicles with filters; speeding up the modernisation of London’s bus and taxi fleet; extension of the “boiler scrappage” scheme; and making central London a clean air zone in which old diesel engines would be banned. 

BARONESS SARAH LUDFORD
Lib Dem MEP for London