Hansard

I am pleased to speak in the debate, not just because I am a member of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee but because my constituency plays host to Scotland’s largest petrochemical and refinery industries. Air quality is an issue that I take considerable interest in, as do many of my constituents.

We all rely on the quality of Scotland’s air to be as good as it can be. It is therefore vital that we all work together to ensure that we are taking the right, ambitious steps, at the right pace, to safeguard the quality of our air now and for the future.

The Scottish Government’s CAFS strategy is indeed ambitious. However, as the convener alluded to, the committee agreed that the strategy should remain under review to ensure that it continues to be fit for purpose. It is fair to say that “complex” is the simplest description of the changing nature of environmental legislation and advice. Therefore, it is only right therefore that any strategy has enough room to manoeuvre in the face of significant and rapid change.

There is, however, a responsibility on all of us to ensure that we work together to provide the opportunities to realise the ambitions in CAFS. We should ensure that there is always cohesion between national and local policy decisions regarding their impact on air quality and the measures to mitigate that impact. The committee recommended that ministers should consider what more can be done to achieve cohesion and resolve any issues that may be seen as a barrier to that.

In undertaking that approach, there is a strong and important role for the cleaner air for Scotland governance group. I was extremely disappointed about the resignation of Scottish Environment LINK from the governance group. While I can understand, to a degree, Scottish Environment LINK’s frustration and the reasoning behind the resignation, the way forward is to collaborate, not to shout at the Scottish Government from the sidelines. I hope that Scottish Environment LINK has a change of heart and resumes its constructive role in the governance group in the near future.

The easiest way to change things is to change them from within. Now is the time for stakeholders not to walk away from the table but to come together to implement workable and effective solutions. Despite the action of Scottish Environment LINK, I was pleased to hear that the governance group was strengthened recently by specialists in health, environmental science and regulation with, as Colin Beattie referred to, the addition of the British Heart Foundation and the appointment of Professor Campbell GemmelI. That is progress.

I am glad to be able to highlight that in my constituency, and indeed across Falkirk district, measures to improve air quality are already being put in place and achieving results. Of the 39 automatic air quality monitoring sites across Scotland, 12 are in the Falkirk Council area. While there have undoubtedly been air quality issues in Falkirk district in the past, monitoring results for last year confirm that the national air quality standard objectives for NO₂ were met at all seven NO₂ monitoring sites in Falkirk Council’s automatic network. Long-term NO₂ monitoring data also indicates a downward trend in NO₂ concentrations in the Falkirk area, at both background and roadside sites, so progress is being made.

The six automatic sulphur dioxide monitors in the Falkirk network met all three—15-minute, hourly and daily—NAQS objectives in 2016. The 2016 results continue the objective compliance recorded in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Long-term SO₂ trend analysis at the Grangemouth automatic urban and rural network site shows a decline in SO₂ concentrations since the commissioning of the tail gas treatment unit at Ineos Grangemouth—now Petroineos—in 2013.

I know that the mere mention of Ineos can trigger Pavlovian-type reactions from diehard environmentalists, but credit has to be given when it is due. Following significant exceedances and breaches of SO₂ limits in the past, Ineos invested £32 million in the tail gas unit—or the sulphur recovery unit, as it is known locally—which became operational in 2013. However, it is worth noting for the record that the UK has a 15-minute air quality objective for SO₂, which is additional to the EU requirements, so although there were breaches of the UK limits in Grangemouth, the refinery was within the European limits. That aside, the breaches led to the refinery investing £32 million in a tail gas treatment unit five years ahead of the future industrial emissions directive requirement to upgrade by this year, 2018.

That is just one example of how local industry is working hard to improve air quality, and credit is due to Ineos for doing that. There is sustained, long-term progress in reducing Scottish emissions and ensuring improvements to air quality countrywide. It is not all doom and gloom, but of course there is much more to do, both locally and nationally. While domestic and European air quality targets are being met across much of Scotland, poor air quality remains an issue in a number of our towns and cities, and as the ECCLR Committee report states, effective change is needed now so that all of us can breathe clean air and lead healthy lives in the future, but a joint effort is needed to make sure that that happens.