Environmental Audit Committee

14 September 2026

Contents updated on 14 Sept 2026

The Committee opens its air pollution inquiry and takes detailed evidence from the Chief Medical Officer on health impacts, main pollution sources, high‑risk communities, monitoring gaps, and how clinicians and health systems should assess and communicate air quality risks.

Committee Mon, 14 Sept 2026 Actual start 13:45 House of Commons

16:34 - 18:21

Speaker 1

Order, order.

Well, welcome everybody to the latest meeting of the Environmental Audit Committee as part of our look into the issue of air quality. Delighted to say that today we will have two panels that are based on government's response to this very important and multi-government, cross-government issue. We will be hearing shortly from the Department of Health, Dame Diana Johnson and her colleagues. We'll also be hearing from the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Whitty. Welcome to the three of you.

And we will later be hearing from the Department for Transport and the Department for the Environment.

I would say at this point that we did also have been attempting for the last month and more to get a representative here from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and we've been unsuccessful in doing so. Initially we were told that they didn't consider it was a key area of responsibility for them and subsequently that they didn't have anyone available to attend. Now, given that both the issue of planning, the issue of local government monitoring, and that we had heard during evidence that construction was a significant cause of air pollution, we felt that they should have been here. So I put on record this committee's disappointment with that decision. Notwithstanding that, we are delighted to have with us today this excellent panel.

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