It’s time for action to end scourge of polluted streets

HALF of Glaswegians don’t have access to a car. Yet they are forced to breathe in air so badly polluted by cars that it’s damaging their health. That is manifestly unfair and wrong. Hundreds of thousands of people who gain no benefit from cars risk having their lives blighted by them. It’s a cruel environmental injustice.

As we report today, monitoring by Glasgow City Council shows that there are 17 streets in breach of pollution safety limits. The whole of the city centre has been a designated air-pollution zone since 2004. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the city’s chronic air pollution problem is how little has been done about it. There has been some tinkering at the margins with crackdowns on idling vehicles and efforts to clean up company car fleets, but they haven’t made a real difference.

The city council insists that things are getting better. It may be true that there have been slight reductions in pollution levels in some places, but in others they have increased, or remained stubbornly high. More radical action is needed.

Glasgow City Council leader Frank McAveety, in an interview with this paper today, said he would look at all avenues open to him in an effort to cut pollution but insisted he currently doesn’t have the power to affect the radical changes that we witnessed in London this week. London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s announcement that he is to bring in one of the world’s most stringent toxicity charges for highly polluting vehicles has made everyone sit up and take notice.

And as we report today, the SNP’s Susan Aiken, who is tipped to wrest power in Glasgow from Labour’s McAveety in May’s council elections, has said that the city could introduce a similar toxic vehicle charge to London if SNP plans to bring in a low-emission zone in Glasgow prove to be insufficient to cut pollution.

It is a welcome statement but we must issue a note of caution: general motorists should not be the ones to lose out financially in this drive to cut pollution. Because of flawed data on emissions, many of us bought diesel cars in a Government-funded scrappage scheme started in 2009 – the very same vehicles now vilified as the worst polluters.

With reports of another scrappage scheme being considered in the UK to replace diesel vehicles, we believe it is the manufacturers who produced these polluting vehicles – and who will cash in again if we replace them – and not the hard-pressed public who should foot the bill.