The quality of the air

Children answering the country s questions The quality of the air A Report of Children s Views to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs January 2015

Introduction 1. Pupils 2 Parliament is a new project, which gives pupils at school a say in decisions being made by Parliament, the Government and other national bodies. It works with schools to help pupils take part in public consultations, when these organisations ask what people think about decisions they are going to make for our country. Permission has been given by the Clerks of both Houses of Parliament for us to use the word Parliament in our name. 2. Our reports set out what pupils have said, and nothing else. We don t leave out any views pupils gave us. We don t add anything, and we don t make comments on what the pupils have said. This report is pupil views and nothing but pupil views. 3. We know, from talking with children over many years, that pupils can and do think for themselves through the issues that go into major decisions. They come up with valuable challenges and ideas. Pupils bring the value of their own fresh thinking to problems. For the children themselves, we aim to give the experience of taking a real part in democracy by feeding their views and ideas into real decisions. What pupils say through our reports can make a real difference. 4. The Pupils 2 Parliament project started in July 2014. This is our twelfth report. Our earlier reports gave children s views on the future rules for nurses, on the future of motoring, on rules for using driverless cars on the road, on the future use of biometric data like fingerprints and eye scanning, on the government s Heroism Bill, on the UK Space Plan, on the design of the new 1 coin, on the Government s plans to get more people cycling and walking, on the Regulations for those working or travelling on buses, on the idea of a New Magna Carta, and on keeping records of people s messages. About this report 5. The government is asking for people s views on changes it is thinking of making to the way local councils check for chemicals in the air that are bad for us (pollutants). This report is a formal submission to the consultation on the Review of Local Air Quality Management being carried out by the Government s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. 6. This report gives the views and ideas of 24 pupils aged 9 and 10 from the fifth year of Peters Hill Primary School, Brierley Hill, West Midlands. The school had been put forward by the UNICEF organisation of the United Nations as part of their work on their Rights Respecting Schools awards. 7. We held a discussion and voting session with the pupils at school, lasting an hour and a half. One person from Pupils 2 Parliament asked pupils for their views and votes on questions about checking on pollutants in the air. Their teacher took notes

of what they said for this report. Pupils voted for or against each proposed change using voting tokens. 8. We didn t suggest any answers, and took care not to lead the pupils towards any particular views. We put the questions for the pupils to vote on as even-handedly as we could, and the pupils teacher was asked to check that P2P had fairly put both sides of each question. We used the information in the government s consultation document to explain the issues and each question to the pupils. 9. We explained to the pupils that there are nowadays some pollutants of different sorts in the air which are bad for us, and which come from places like factories and vehicle exhausts. The government sets laws and rules about how local councils must check how much there is of each of these pollutants in the air in their parts of the country. There are rules about how much of each sort of pollutant is allowed. Some of these cover all the countries in Europe, some are just for this country. If a council finds more than is allowed of one of these pollutants, they have to say so and make a plan to do something about it. Councils have to write different sorts of reports about the quality of the air and the checks they have done. 10. We explained that the government wants to change some of the rules about checking the air for pollutants, for two reasons. Firstly to make sure they are telling councils to check the pollutants they really need to check on, and secondly to get rid of too much red tape (making councils spending time and money on paperwork and checking things that no longer really need to be checked on). 11. All the points made by the pupils are in this report. As we find with all our Pupils 2 Parliament discussions, their views were sensible and thoughtful, there were no silly comments, the discussion kept going for the whole session, and nothing was raised which wasn t to do with the subject. 12. I am grateful to the staff of Peters Hill Primary School for the chance to hold this discussion with their pupils. I am specially grateful to the teacher who worked very hard taking detailed notes of the children s views. And I am very grateful to each of the pupils for their thinking, votes and views. Stopping councils checking the butadiene, carbon monoxide and lead in the air 13. We told the pupils (using the information in the government s consultation document) that there is one pollutant chemical, called sulphur dioxide, that is at the moment more than the allowed amount in a number of places in the country. So the government has decided that local councils must keep checking and reporting on how much suphur dioxide there is.

14. But there are three more pollutants, called butadeine, carbon monoxide and lead, that councils have to check, and in the last 10 years they have never found more than the allowed amount of any of these three, anywhere in the country. 15. We asked the pupils to vote for or against the government s proposal that it is now OK for councils to stop checking for these three pollutants. 16. On balance, by 13 votes to 11, the pupils voted for the government s proposal to tell councils they can stop checking for these three pollutants. 17. We asked the pupils to give their reasons for voting for or against this proposal. Many supported the proposal because they agreed that ten years is long enough to be sure that there isn t a problem with the levels of these pollutants in the air any more. 18. Some said that stopping checking for pollutants that haven t been found over the limit for ten years would save money that could be spent on other important things. The most usual suggestion was to spend the money saved on health work, hospitals and fighting diseases. Some said that councils need to stop wasting time and money checking something that had been OK for the last ten years. 19. The most usual reason for voting against the proposal, and wanting councils to carry on checking on these three pollutants, was that one day there could be more in the air again. If councils had stopped checking the levels, nobody would know. People would then be breathing in air they thought was nice and clean, but it might make them ill. 20. Some said that even if the levels had not been more than is allowed for the last ten years, nobody could say they wouldn t be more than is allowed some time in the next ten years. If they came back at high levels, people could even die. So checking them should carry on. As one pupil summed it up; they could come back and some that they think have gone could come back - you never know. 21. There was also the view that chemicals that were bad for you should be banned including cigarette smoke which was a pollutant too. Stopping councils checking the benzene in the air 22. We told the pupils, from the government s document, that there is another pollutant called benzene, and that in the last ten years there was just one place in the country where, once, more benzene than is allowed was found, and that was over five years ago. Council checks haven t found more benzene than is allowed anywhere in the country in the last five years.

23. We asked pupils to vote for or against the government s proposal that it is therefore now OK for councils to stop checking for benzene. 24. This time, the pupils voted against the government s proposal to tell councils they can stop checking for benzene in the air, by 21 votes to 2. 25. The main reason for voting against the government s proposal that councils can stop checking for benzene was that five years isn t long enough to be sure that it can t come back at levels that are more than are allowed. Even though many thought ten years clear was long enough, five years wasn t. 26. Some thought that if too much benzene had been found in one place, it could come back in other places. One thought was that pollutants could spread and there could be problems if they were ever able to go underground and get spread in different directions in water. 27. One pupil thought that councils need to be responsible for the people in their areas, and part of them being responsible was keeping checking for things that could harm them. 28. One proposal made by one pupil and supported and developed by others, was that instead of asking every council to keep checking for benzene, just the council where high levels of it had last been found should be asked to spend money and time checking for it. That was a likely place for it to come back. If they ever found more benzene there than is allowed, then other councils should be asked to start checking it again. It could of course come back at high levels in other places and not in the same place where too much was last found, but this would be a fair way to save money and time but still look for benzene where it was most likely. Asking councils to try to reduce the amount of PM 2.5 in the air 29. We explained that there is a pollutant called PM 2.5 which is the name for lots of tiny bits in the air. The 2.5 is a measurement to say how tiny they are. There is only one place, London, where there is more of this than there should be at the moment. But PM 2.5 is so bad for us that the government thinks that even the amount that is allowed is probably too much. There is also the problem that PM 2.5 blows about a lot in the air, so it might be found a long way away from where it started out. So making councils have plans to make it less if they find too much of it in their part of the country might not work very well, because often it may have come from somewhere else.

30. We asked pupils to vote for or against the government s proposal that councils everywhere in the country should be asked to do what they can to make PM 2.5 get less and less. 31. The pupils voted strongly for the government s proposal to ask councils everywhere in the country to do what they can to make PM 2.5 get less and less. The vote was 22 for, with 1 against. 32. Most pupils thought it is important to try to have less PM 2.5 in the air if it is very bad for us to breathe in. Not doing this would be like letting people die. They need to spend the money. It won t be a waste, it is bad and might spread. 33. Most also agreed that all councils should try to reduce it, because it blows around. 34. One thought that to save spending money on this everywhere, just the councils in London and bordering London should be asked to work on reducing the amount of PM 2.5 in the air. Others supported this idea, as there are lots of people who might be affected in London, this includes lots of visitors to London, and London can probably afford to take action more than other areas. 35. One pupil thought that because PM 2.5 can spread widely, every country should be checking on it and trying to reduce it. 36. A pupil also said it was a pity there wasn t a consumer person for PM 2.5 to keep an eye on its levels in the air and how councils were trying to reduce it. Asking councils to write fewer reports about the quality of air 37. As part of trying to have less red tape, the government is proposing to ask councils to write fewer reports about the quality of the air in their parts of the country. They would rather they spend more time and money on doing things like trying to reduce the amount of PM 2.5 in the air across the country. We put both sides of the argument as even handedly as we could. Then we asked the pupils to vote for or against the government s proposal that instead of writing quite a lot of special reports, councils should only have to write just one report about the quality of air each year. 38. By 20 votes to 3 the pupils voted for the government s proposal to reduce the number of reports each council has to write about the quality of the air to just one each year.

Last thoughts 39. We asked pupils to give us any last thoughts they wanted to send to the government through this report. 40. One last thought on checking for pollutants in the air was that while it is good to check for chemicals that are there, scientists could work to discover good chemicals to put in the air to get rid of the bad pollutants. 41. Another was that people should not be allowed to get away so easily with putting bad things out and that wasn t just about pollutants in the air, but included things like fly tipping too. 42. They also gave us some thoughts for the government about asking children for their views about important decisions before they are made. They said that children should always be asked and get a say because adults don t actually think about things any better than children do, and children have good ideas. It s good that kids get a say. Dr Roger Morgan OBE Pupils 2 Parliament 29 January 2015