(Image credit: Matt
Palmer, Unsplash)
There is upcoming, on Friday November 7th, 2025,
the second reading of a parliamentary private member’s bill. It is titled the
“Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill.” I must say that this is the most tyrannical
and extremist piece of legislation I have yet read.
This article was not intended to be part of a set. Yet, it
follows on directly from my recent essays on “Our Enemy, the UN” [[i]]
and the perversion of the precautionary principle [[ii]].
The bill’s history
The bill was introduced by Sian Berry, Green MP for Brighton
Pavilion. It had previously been brought up in 2022. It had its first reading on
July 1st, 2025: [[iii]].
Its stated purposes are: “To establish the right to breathe clean air. To
require the Secretary of State to achieve and maintain clean air in England. To
make provision about environmental targets and minimum standards in relation to
clean air. To make provision about the powers, duties and functions of public
bodies in England in relation to air pollution. To give the Office for
Environmental Protection additional powers and duties related to clean air. To
require the Secretary of State to comply with the United Nations Convention on
Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution. To require the Secretary of State and
public authorities to apply specified environmental principles in carrying out
their duties under this Act. And for connected purposes.”
Of the 12 presenters of this bill, two are Green MPs, five
Labour, two Lib Dem including Roz Savage (proposer of the Climate and Nature bill
[[iv]]),
one Independent, one SNP and one SDLP. Ten of them are also listed as supporters
of Zero Hour [[v]],
promoters of the Climate and Nature bill. Of the other two, one made her maiden
parliamentary speech on May 1st, 2019 in the debate that ended with
parliament declaring a “climate emergency.” And the other has been a senior
advisor to Sadiq Khan, mayor of London.
Ella’s Law
The bill has the popular title of “Ella’s Law,” after Ella
Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who died in 2013 aged 9. Her mother, suspecting that a cause
of death might have been pollution from traffic on the nearby South Circular
Road, began to campaign for a review of the causes of death. The suspected
pollutants were nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter small
enough to enter the lungs (PM2.5).
In her campaign, she was aided by Professor Stephen Holgate.
Holgate was chair of the UK government’s Committee on Medical Effects of Air
Pollution (COMEAP) from its inception in 1992 until 2001. He was still active
on that committee as late as 2010. He was chair of the 2016 working party that
produced the highly alarmist RCP (Royal College of Physicians) report: “Every
breath we take: the lifelong impact of air pollution.” And in 2021, when UKRI,
“UK Research and Innovation”, instituted a “Clean Air Programme,” he was first
among those appointed as “Clean Air Champions.”
Ella’s mother became a Green Party supporter, and later
candidate. She is now an official World Health Organization (WHO) advocate for
health and air quality. And the coroner, who did the re-examination, decided to
fall in line. He changed the cause of Ella’s death to “asthma contributed to by
excessive air pollution.” He also observed that “there was no dispute at the
inquest that atmospheric air pollution is the cause of many thousand premature
deaths in the UK.” Though, to my knowledge, no other UK death certificate has
ever mentioned air pollution.
There is a website devoted to Ella’s Law. Its major
supporters are listed here: [[vi]].
Sadiq Khan is, unsurprisingly, the figurehead. The RCP is also there, having
written supportively to Baroness Jones, who introduced the bill back in 2022.
But who signed that letter on behalf of the RCP? No less than Professor Stephen
Holgate.
And a Tory peer and former paralympic swimmer enthused:
“continuous improvement… year on year, is built into it.” Ignoring that such
“continuous improvement” means not only ever-mounting costs to us the people,
but also an ever-tightening noose around our necks.
The environmental context
Before I look at what is in the bill, I’ll say something
about the history of air pollution in the UK. DEFRA (Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) publish a yearly report on the levels of many
different pollutants, including NO2 and PM2.5. This
shows, among much else, graphs of the changes in emissions and concentrations,
often going back more than 50 years. The latest report, for 2024, is here: [[vii]].
This shows that NO2 concentrations have gone down
by a factor of almost 3 since the mid-1990s. UK emissions are also less than a
third of what they were in 1990. And “all background locations were within the
limit value.” (The EU limit, set before Brexit).
As to PM2.5, “everywhere in the UK was well
within the annual mean limit value.” Concentrations of PM2.5 have
roughly halved since 2011. Emissions have gone down by a factor of more than 3.
And the only spike during 2024 was due to Bonfire Night.
Leaf through the document, and you will see similar patterns
for many pollutants (except ozone, whose chemistry is strange). A steep drop in
emissions and concentrations in the 1990s, as relatively easy reduction measures
were rolled out (such as installing scrubbers on coal-fired power stations).
Followed by a continuing, but slower, drop since 2000, or for a few of the
pollutants a levelling-off of concentrations. Haven’t we done well?
What is in the bill?
The “right” to breathe “clean air”
The bill opens: “Everyone has the right to breathe clean
air.” Then goes on to declare that this “right” is to be treated as if it was named
in the European Convention on Human Rights.
This raises two sets of questions. First, just how clean is
“clean?” And, given the huge reductions in pollution over decades as documented
in the DEFRA report, is the air in the UK not already clean enough? It is several
orders of magnitude less polluted than it was in the 1890s. Or in 1952, when
the “Great Smog of London” took place. Or even in 1990. Where is the evidence
that all these reductions have not been sufficient to make the air truly clean?
And second, how can anything be a human right, if it is not
possible to identify an obligation or set of obligations which, if everyone
kept to them, would guarantee respect for that right? A lot of air pollutants
in the UK, for example sulphur dioxide, come mainly from sources beyond human
control, like volcanoes. And the biggest particulate matter episode in 2024 was
the result of air that had come all the way from Russia. Good luck to anyone
who tries to defend such a “human right” against Viking volcanoes! Or even Voivode
Vladimir.
The timeframe
The bill, as written, dates from 2022. It therefore sets
targets which are unachievable, and in some cases already past. Will anyone in
the parliament notice?
NO2 and PM2.5
From the start, this bill shows up its promoters’ and
supporters’ obsession with tightening the screws on us the people. They seek to
force on us their malign culture of arbitrary, collective, ever tightening
targets and limits on what we may do. And, as I showed in earlier essays, that
culture is driven along by a mad craving for “safety at any cost,” regardless
of how much harm is caused to the people they are supposed to represent and
serve.
Clause 2 shows up obviously who are the bill’s main targets for
demonization: drivers of diesel cars. For earlier assessments, including one by
COMEAP as recently as 2022, had concentrated mainly on levels of PM2.5,
with NO2 considered only as an “other pollutant,” the health
benefits of reducing which “should not be overlooked.” Yet this bill seeks to
focus on NO2, which is emitted significantly by diesel engines but far
less by petrol engines, as the primary target for draconian reductions. Even
though COMEAP, in their last major report on the issue back in 2018, could not
agree among themselves on how toxic PM2.5 and NO2 are together
compared with PM2.5 alone.
The CCCA
The promoters of the bill want to set up a new organization
they call the CCCA (citizens’ commission for clean air). It will be required to
review annually both the pollutants covered by the bill, and the limits set on
them. It must make use of advice from the WHO, the UK Health Security Agency
(HSA), United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and “scientists”
(unspecified). The EU’s European Environment Agency (EEA) is to be involved. And
the CCCA must apply the precautionary principle.
These organizations are hardly politically neutral ones. This
is, very clearly, an attempt to force even harder on to us the UN and globalist
agenda, which I described in my essay on over-precaution as “ever more, and
ever tightening, government overreach, without any need for them ever to have
to prove anyone guilty of anything.” The CCCA will have the power to add
pollutants to the schedules, or to lower limits, at their pleasure.
For greenhouse gases, the CCC (Committee for Climate Change)
will be given powers very much comparable to the CCCA for pollutants. And the
UN’s IPCC must be used as advisors.
The CCCA will have extensive powers to institute or
intervene in legal proceedings. It will have powers to force compliance with
the “duties imposed by this Act.” And as to clause 20, which specifies the
“environmental principles” it must apply, I suggest you read it yourself (but
take a sick-bowl with you).
As to its constitution and workings, it appears that the secretary
of state cannot dismiss the chief executive of the CCCA, even if they are
“unable, unfit or unwilling to perform their functions.” Furthermore, the CCCA
can appoint anyone it pleases to any of its advisory committees. This looks to
me like a commission that will quickly go out of control, into tyrannical extremism;
just as the CCC has done.
Requirements on organizations and individuals
Clause 5 requires owners of workplaces, of new and
refurbished residential developments, and of other buildings used by the
public, to report indoor air pollution against WHO guidelines. And it will
require UK based organizations of all sizes to report their greenhouse gas
pollutants. (Hint: CO2 isn’t a pollutant! But our enemies think it
is.)
It will require daily information about ambient pollutant
concentrations to be provided to the public. And if a limit is forecast to be,
or is actually, exceeded, “necessary steps must be taken to inform members of
the public by means of radio, television, newspapers or the Internet.” Their
idea of how to solve a putative pollution problem, so it seems, is to adulterate
our airwaves with alarums!
When a threat to current or future public health or to the
environment is suspected, clause 6 enables the secretary of state to “restrain
any person or persons responsible for causing or contributing to the alleged
pollution.” Without any proof, or any due process of law at all!
Clause 6 also says, “regulations must restrict the sale or
use of combustion appliances that emit pollutants to the air.” It looks as if
these will include domestic gas and solid fuel boilers.
Requirements on other parts of government
Clauses 7 to 15 direct the Environment Agency, the CCC,
local authorities, the Office for Environmental Protection, the Civil Aviation Authority,
National Highways, Historic England, Natural England and Network Rail to
“achieve and maintain clean air,” or similar.
The controlled pollutants and their limits
The schedules 1 to 4 show, it would appear, that someone has
spent a lot of time pulling together scare stories about just about every air
pollutant in the universe, and trying to work out just how low a limit for each
they think they can get away with setting.
I checked NO2 and PM2.5, and a couple
of others, and in these cases the limits tally with the WHO’s latest (2021) set
of guidelines: [[viii]].
But there are a lot more pollutants covered by the bill, than those the WHO
issues guidelines, or even good practice statements, for. Some of those are
reported on annually by DEFRA: but some don’t even make it there.
For example, what the heck is radon doing in there? Radon is
a radioactive noble gas, which as far as I know isn’t produced by any human
activities. How, then, can it ever be reasonable to try to regulate it? And
there are also “biological pollutants,” dampness and mould, with a limit of
zero! How, could any old church, or other building more than 100 or so years
old, be completely free from these?
The WHO’s guidelines
By the way, if you skim-read the WHO’s guidelines, you can
see how they have been setting out to tighten the screws, again and again.
Every so often, they set a new “AQG target” guideline figure, often an order of
magnitude below previous targets. And then the previous target shifts and
becomes an “interim target,” while earlier interim targets themselves get re-numbered
to match.
There is a lot of discussion of “systematic reviews” of
earlier scientific literature. But one thing that is signally lacking is
analysis of actual mortality data before and after pollution reductions of the
past. You would have thought that the WHO would want to show proof positive
that their ever-decreasing targets and limits have in the past led to clear
reductions in mortality. Yet I see no such thing.
Furthermore, I have severe doubts as to whether the quoted
mortality risk factors for some, if not all, of the pollutants actually reflect
reality. I do not have space to address that here, but I will look in future to
put together a summary of the history of air pollution toxicology for the UK. And
the parts played by the WHO, the EU, COMEAP and others in this process.
Costs
I will close with a rather strange statement from clause 22
of the bill. “Nothing in this Act shall impose any charge on the people or on
public funds.” This seems to contradict clause 9, “The Secretary of State must
provide money to local authorities from central funds sufficient to enable them
to carry out their duties under this Act.” This is typical of the attitude of
environmentalists to the costs of their wild ideas; they simply don’t care a
damn about costs to the people, nor do they bother to do any proper
cost-benefit analysis.
To sum up
“Tyrannical and extremist” is how I described the bill in my
first paragraph. That is no under-statement. This bill, if implemented, will
hand all but absolute power to a commission of petty despot “experts,” to set
ever tightening, and ultimately unfeasible, air pollution rules that, like
“nett zero,” will hugely reduce our freedoms and our quality of life.
Of course, this is “only” a private member’s bill, so there is a decent chance it will be kicked into the long grass for now, just as the “climate and nature bill” was back in July. But no-one in their right minds should fail to oppose it with everything they have, or to see its proponents and supporters for what they are – enemies of human civilization and of humanity.
[[i]] https://reformpartygodalmingash.uk/our-enemy-the-un-by-neil-lock/
[[iii]] https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-07-01/debates/4A1F4AE9-2DF1-437E-87A3-8EBD1017E5FC/CleanAir(HumanRights)
No comments:
Post a Comment