Hansard

Clean air is essential for our health and wellbeing. Overall, Scotland’s air quality is good, but we know that areas of poorer air quality still exist in some of our towns and cities. We also know that some groups in society—the very young and old, and people who have existing respiratory and cardiovascular conditions—are more likely to be affected by poor air quality.

People rightly expect to be able to breathe clean air. The Scottish Government is determined to ensure that we continue to make progress in tackling the issue, and that we achieve our vision of Scotland having the best air quality in Europe.

Low-emission zones are a tool that we can use to manage the impact of vehicle pollution in areas where the air quality is poor. They allow us to put restrictions on the vehicles that can enter designated areas and they help to encourage a move towards cleaner vehicles and greater use of public transport—an ambition that all of us around the chamber share.

In our programme for government, we committed to establishing low-emission zones in each of our four biggest cities by 2020, with the first being put in place by 2018. In October, it was announced that Glasgow will be the location of the first low-emission zone, which will be put in place in 2018.

In addition, by 2023, low-emission zones will have been established in other air quality management areas, where the national low-emission framework has demonstrated the establishment of a zone’s value in improving air quality. The commitment to delivering multiple low-emission zones across Scotland over the next six years is ambitious; it represents the largest-ever programme of transport-based air quality mitigation in Scotland.

The design and implementation of low-emission zones will be led by local councils, but we recognise that delivery of the ambitions will require partnership working across the whole of Scottish Government and a range of public bodies. We have therefore created a low-emission zones leadership group with the four largest cities and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency to support implementation of low-emission zones. That will ensure that low-emission zones are based on robust evidence, and that stakeholders and the public are engaged and involved. The group will share knowledge and identify issues where nationally consistent standards for design and delivery of low-emission zones are required.

We are working collaboratively with Glasgow City Council as part of the multidisciplinary delivery group that it has established to progress design of the low-emission zone for Glasgow. Work is under way with the City of Edinburgh Council, Dundee Council and Aberdeen City Council to support them in developing their plans for progressing low-emission zones.

Decisions on the location and design of low-emission zones will, as I have said, be led by local authorities. We are urging them to be ambitious in their design and scope, with all vehicles being included within the low-emission zones at the appropriate time. The design process will build on assessment of the evidence that has been developed through partnership between local councils, SEPA and Transport Scotland over the past 12 months.

We know that low-emission zones will set an environmental limit on vehicles on designated roads within the specified towns and cities, and will allow access by only the cleanest vehicles. Only when local authorities create the final designs will we know exactly how many vehicles will be affected.

It is intended that low-emission zones will be based on road-access restriction schemes. Such schemes exclude vehicles that do not meet the relevant emissions standard, with a penalty being imposed on non-compliant vehicles when they enter the designated zone. The aim of low-emission zones is to improve air quality, so we want to incentivise compliance and discourage non-compliant vehicles from entering such zones.

It is, of course, for the local authorities to decide the timescales for the phasing in of different vehicle types, but we expect that low-emission zones will have nationally consistent lead-in times. Those lead-in periods will allow people who will be affected—bus and commercial fleet operators and private car owners—time to prepare before full compliance is required.

To support consideration of design, a national consultation on the principles for low-emission zones was launched on 6 September. It closed on 28 November and received more than 900 responses. That was a remarkable response to the consultation, which sought views on issues including emissions criteria, the scope of vehicles to be included, enforcement and penalties, and lead-in times and phasing. That was such a high response rate, and analysis of the responses is under way. The outputs from the process will inform decision making on the standards that will be adopted in the design of low-emission zones.

The consultation responses will also inform finalisation of the national low-emission framework document, which will provide the framework within which low-emission zones will be introduced, and is a key commitment from “Cleaner Air for Scotland: The Road to a Healthier Future”—the strategy that was published in 2015.

I turn now to one or two of the sectors that will, I hope, be positively affected by low-emission zones. The bus sector is integral to helping to manage air quality issues in towns and cities through providing a key alternative to use of private cars. A well used low-emission bus fleet will help to reduce emissions. Engagement with the bus industry on low-emission zones is on-going; operators have expressed understandable concern about securing compliant fleets to allow service levels to be maintained when low-emission zones come into force.

To support that, the programme for government committed to working with the commercial and bus sectors, the Energy Saving Trust and the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership to establish an engine retrofitting centre in Scotland. Discussions are under way with the Energy Saving Trust and the bus sector to establish the bus-emission abatement retrofit programme in Scotland. To support that, we have committed £1.6 million for the first phase of the programme by March 2018. The seventh round of the green bus fund has also been successfully completed, and will in due course introduce another 47 low-emission buses to service.

Low-emission zones should also interact with other transport polices. We will encourage councils to consider wider measures to tackle congestion, for example traffic management and parking arrangements, as part of their consideration of implementing low-emission zones. That approach could help to improve bus journey times, to make car use less attractive and to increase modal shift towards active travel and public transport.

Low-emission zones have the potential to act as a catalyst for reimagined city-centre place making by helping to ensure that our city centres remain vibrant places in which to live, work, shop and socialise. We will encourage councils to consider low-emission zones as a component part of larger projects in their cities. Low-emission zones must also be designed with consideration of the potential for unintended secondary effects—for example, the potential for displacement of air pollution to areas outwith the zones.

Equality issues are central to consideration—especially to the communities around our towns and cities that rely on public transport to move around. We anticipate that local councils will carry out equalities impact assessments as part of the process of designing their low-emission zones.

Low-emission zones are not the only measure that will help us to address issues around vehicle pollution, and to deliver our vision of having the best air quality in Europe. We will continue to drive down vehicle-exhaust emissions through our ambitious target for phasing out the need for new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2032. To support that, we will continue to expand the electric-vehicle charging network through a range of incentives to local authorities, businesses and individuals.

Funding will be crucial; funding to support the design and implementation of low-emission zones to meet the 2020 commitment will be considered as part of the forthcoming spending review. The programme for government also established an air quality fund to support local authorities that have air quality management areas to deliver transport-based mitigation, as identified by the national low-emission framework.

Although we have made considerable progress, air pollution remains a significant public health and social justice issue in some towns and cities. Through the introduction of low-emission zones, we are adopting an approach that will help us to deliver improvements in air quality and public health. Those improvements will, of course, benefit people today, but crucially, they will also create a healthier world for future generations.