Sue Hayman
Labour has always been the party of jobs and social justice—but there can be no social justice without environmental justice. If people cannot breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food, then society is failing us all, wherever we live. That sounds like a given, yet under this Conservative government, which remains hopelessly paralysed by Brexit, environmental and food standards are under enormous threat.
Take air pollution, for example. The Royal College of Physicians estimates that 40,000 deaths a year in the UK are down to outdoor air pollution. What’s more, those deaths are disproportionately higher among poorer people, more of whom tend to live and work in city centres. Hundreds of schools, nurseries, further education centres and after-school clubs are within 150 metres of roads with illegally high levels of nitrogen dioxide. People are being poisoned by the air they breathe.