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The Impact of British Domestic Air Pollution Legislation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Howard A. Scarrow
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Extract

Fifteen years have elapsed since the British Parliament enacted legislation designed to curb air pollution. The 1956 Clean Air Act appeared seven years in advance of comparable American legislation and well before the quality of the environment became a matter of world-wide concern. In view of the fact that Queen Elizabeth I had complained about smoke pollution in London, or that nineteenth-century novelists had penned vivid portraits of London's smoke and fog, the 1956 Act should perhaps be viewed as being at least a century late in appearing. Nevertheless, the Act did mark a distinctive policy innovation, particularly with regard to those provisions relating to smoke pollution from domestic sources. An analysis of the impact of those provisions will be the subject of this paper.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , July 1972 , pp. 261 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

1 The report estimated 45 per cent. Subsequent estimates put the figure at 55 per cent. See Committee on Air Pollution, Report (London: HMSO, Cmnd 9011,1953), p. 7.Google Scholar

2 The 1936 Public Health Act specifically prevented local authorities from subjecting the domestic chimney to prosecution for nuisance.

3 The current manifestation of this traditional posture of central government is the minimizing by its spokesmen of the dangers of sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and fumes from diesel trucks. In contrast, the National Society for Clean Air, local public health officials, and local councillors (through the Association of Municipal Corporations) are on the side of stricter controls. For a fuller discussion of this feature of central-local government relationships see the author's ‘Policy Pressures by British Local Government: The Case of Regulation in the Public Interest’, Comparative Politics IV (1971), 1–28.Google Scholar

4 Since all black areas are located in England, this paper is restricted to English data.

5 This approach is similar to that subsequently adopted by the United States Congress. Rather than establish emission standards, as urged by the Johnson Administration and others, the aim has been to guarantee minimum standards of air quality. Thus a factory or generating plant emitting pollutants goes uncontrolled if its location is such that overall air quality in the area remains satisfactory. Due to the reorganization of Greater London and the exclusion of Wales (see p. 269), the number of black area local authorities came to be reduced to 230.

6 The percentage of acreage covered has clear limitations as a measurement of progress, since open spaces may not be relevant to the calculation. However, this is the measurement index which has been adopted by the National Society for Clean Air, whose annual year books are the source for the data. Figures on premises covered are given for each region, but not for each individual local authority. Because of the imprecision of the data, the statistical measures used in the discussion which follows are those which minimize the significance of differences in smoke control progress of authorities with broadly similar records.

7 Another example of central government refusal to force local authorities to adopt a course of action is the case of fluoridation of water supplies. Even for the ideological question of grammar versus comprehensive schools, the Wilson Labour Government's bill (never passed) to require local authorities to switch to comprehensive schools spoke only of requiring plans to be submitted. Something of the flavor of central-local relationships can be gleaned from quotations on both sides. When the Minister of Housing and Local Government sent a letter to the ‘delinquent’ authorities in 1966 stating that ‘I am to request that the authority will inform the Department not later than 31 March, 1966, of the results of their consideration of this matter,’ and that ‘In light of the response. the Minister will be able to decide whether he should seek an opportunity of asking Parliament to make smoke control a statutory duty’, the language was considered to be unusually severe. For his part, the leader of one of the ‘delinquent’ local councils told a newspaper reporter that ‘I am sure that the Minister will come down on us soon and make us do something. But I told my public health inspector to write and tell them we were giving the matter urgent consideration. This is one way of putting them off’. See Smokeless Air, the publication of the National Society for Clean Air, Spring, 1966, pp. 175–6Google Scholar; and ‘The Polluters’, The Times, 25 03 1970, p. 12.Google Scholar

8 Omitted from the calculations are local authorities which do not border on another black area authority.

9 Thus 25 per cent of county boroughs, 29 per cent of boroughs, and 23 per cent of urban districts in the black areas are represented in the group of ‘most progressive’ authorities.

10 This argument is advanced in the specific context of smoke controls by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in its testimony before the Royal Commission on Local Government in England, Written Evidence of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (London: HMSO, 1967), pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

11 The median per capita rateable valuation (rounded off) in the black areas were: county boroughs, £42; boroughs, £33; urban districts, £31.

12 Including the City of London.

13 Thus for the ten county boroughs the median per capita rateable valuation (rounded off) was £56; for twenty-six boroughs it was £46; and for thirty urban districts it was £47.

14 Where the local authority is the landlord, its share is 60 per cent. About one-quarter of all housing in Britain is local authority owned.

15 The truism is summed up in the adage ‘We pay our taxes in sorrow, but our rates in anger’. Of course, in terms of absolute expenditure the cost of the smoke control program is minimal. Thus figures for London show that another environmental service, sewage disposal, has an annual cost almost thirty times greater than the annual cost of the smoke control program up.through 1968. (As shown below, however, London's cost has been exceptionally low.)

16 Since the survey was not confined to the black areas, the figures are not precisely comparable with other figures given in this paper. See National Society for Clean Air, Clean Air Conference, Harrogate, 1960Google Scholar; Pre-Prints of Papers, p. 23. Concessionary coal makes up a significant proportion of all coal consumed in northern areas. Thus in the area roughly equivalent to the Northern Region its proportion is 25 per cent. In Yorkshire the figure is 17 per cent. Figures are based on data in Ministry of Power, Statistical Digest, 1966.Google Scholar

17 Per capita coal consumption has always been higher in the north (as defined in Table 1). Thus in 1956, counting only coal sold by merchants and thus excluding concessionary coal, northern consumption was 0.72 tons per head, while for the south the figure was only 0.43. As would be expected, the gap has widened since then. By 1966 the figures stood at 0.52 and 0.18. Observers contend that the differences cannot be explained simply by colder northern temperatures. (Footnote continued on next page.)

18 A study which confirms that ‘individuals who are highly dependent economically on a source of air pollution… tended to be much less concerned with a local air pollution problem… than did comparably non-dependent persons in the same community’ is Creer, Ralph N. et al. , ‘Differential Responses to Air Pollution as an Environmental Health Problem’, Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association (1970), pp. 814–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

19 Deaths from bronchitis are not recorded for boroughs or urban districts. Figures taken from The Registrar General's Decennial Supplement, England and Wales, 1961, Area Mortality Tables (London: HMSO, 1967).Google ScholarThe relationship between air pollution levels and bronchial complaints has been demonstrated empirically. See Waller, E. E. et al. , ‘Clean Air and Health in London’, National Society for Clean Air, Clean Air Conference, Eastbourne, 1969; Part I, Pre-Prints of Papers, pp. 75–7.Google Scholar

20 The high correlation suggests that the magnitude of the job in terms of premises to be covered by control orders is not an insurmountable barrier to rapid progress, at least where resources are large and the perceived need is great. The progress for London, stated in terms of the percent of premises covered by control orders, is taken from the mimeographed document The Progress and Effects of Smoke Control in London prepared for the London Boroughs Association by the Greater London Council's Research and Intelligence Unit, 1970. Progress shown is as of 1968.

21 Because of the 1966 re-organization of London, the analysis is confined to local authorities outside of London. The remainder of local authorities had no firm majorities during the period, or information for them was not available in the annual Municipal Year Book.

22 A 1970 opinion survey showed Conservative voters (44 per cent) more concerned than Labour voters (38 per cent) with air pollution as a matter ‘most important for the future welfare of this country’. Similar results were obtained for other environmental concerns. See National Opinion Polls Ltd., NOP Political Bulletin (December, 1970), No. 93.

23 All figures on coal consumption are absolute. Since during this period national population increased 9 per cent, the progress made in smoke reduction was even greater than the percentages suggest.

The regional figures refer only to coal sold by merchants, and hence omit concessionary coal and certain other categories. They are calculated from figures in Ministry of Power, Statistical Digest, 1966, Table 55. The national figure of 38 per cent refers to all domestic coal, and is taken from Laboratory, Warren Spring, Report for 1968 (London: HMSO, 1970), p. 26.Google Scholar The national figure for ‘merchants’ coal’ is 33 per cent.

Despite this progress, during the period the domestic chimney became a proportionately greater fouler of the air. Due to the greater declines in emissions from industry and railways, the domestic contribution to total smoke pollution increased from 56 per cent to 86 per cent. (These figures are estimates calculated by the Warren Spring Laboratory, using separate estimates of ratios of smoke emissions per ton of coal burned for domestic, railway, and industrial equipment.) See Rear Admiral Sharp, P. G., ‘Towards Cleaner Air’, Smokeless Air (Winter, 1970), P. 293.Google Scholar

24 The figure for railways is calculated from data presented in Sharp, , ‘Towards Cleaner Air ‘, p. 293.Google Scholar The other two figures are from Warren Spring Laboratory, Report for 1968, p. 26.Google Scholar

25 Sheffield data taken from Report of the Sheffield and District Clean Air Committee for the Year Ending 31st December, 1970 (Sheffield); London data from The Progress and Effects of Smoke Control in London.

26 Unless otherwise noted, the following discussion is based on data presented in The Progress and Effects of Smoke Control in London.

27 Related to the increase in sunshine and decrease in fog, visibility increased threefold from 1958 to 1968.

28 See Waller, et al. , ‘Clean Air and Health in London’, p. 73.Google Scholar

29 Source: Waller, et al. , ‘Clean Air and Health in London’, pp. 73–5.Google Scholar

30 See Warren Spring Laboratory, The Investigation of Atmospheric Pollution 1958–1966, 32nd Report (London: HMSO, 1967), pp. 40–2.Google Scholar

31 See Smokeless Air (Spring, 1963), p. 200.

32 A number of strains in political science literature stress this sort of question. To what extent can behavior be regulated (e.g., the prohibition ‘experiment’, Supreme Court decisions on school segregation and school prayers)? Does the Supreme Court follow public opinion? Do elected leaders ‘lead’ or ‘follow'? Do institutional arrangements (e.g., election methods) make any difference, and if so are they themselves the product of social forces?

33 Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Homes for Tomorrow (London: HMSO, 1961).Google Scholar

34 Reflecting the fact that new homes were assumed to be equipped with smokeless appliances—as well as to assure that they would be — the regulations of the 1956 Clean Air Act stipulated that conversion grants could be given only for houses built prior to 1956. The date was later moved up to 1964.

35 See Ministry of Power, Fuel Polity (London: HMSO, Cmnd 3438,1967).Google Scholar

36 Gas Council, 1966–1967 Report (London), p. 136.Google Scholar

37 By 1964, 58 per cent of new council housing incorporated total building heating; by 1969 the figure was over 90 per cent. North West Economic Planning Council, Smoke Control (Manchester, 1970).Google Scholar

38 Figures from Department of the Environment, Housing Statistics, Great Britain (No. 20, 02, 1971).Google Scholar The comparison is only approximate, since one set of figures is for ‘houses’ demolished, and the other set refers to ‘premises’ (including commercial premises).

39 See ‘Inquiry into the Working of the Clean Air Act’, pp. 5–7. In response to pressure by local authorities, the 1968 Clean Air Act contained a provision which made illegal the selling of regular coal in smoke control areas.

40 See the paper by Clegg, B. G. H., ‘The Viewpoint of the Fuel Industries — Gas’, in the printed proceedings of the National Society for Clean Air, Southport Conference, 1970, pp. 86–91.Google Scholar

41 The impending fuel shortage and its ramifications are explained in the white paper Domestic Fuel Supplies and the Clean Air Policy (London: HMSO, Cmnd 2231, 1963).Google Scholar

42 The record is gleefully reviewed by the new Conservative spokesman in his speech before the National Society for Clean Air. See Griffiths, Eldon, ‘Opening Address,’ Southport Conference, 1970, pp. 469–77.Google Scholar The Labour Government's steps to remedy the shortage included ordering government departments to switch to plentiful fuels, asking local authorities and hospitals to do likewise, importing 75,000 tons of briquetts from France, and issuing appropriate directives to the Gas Council and the Coal Board.

43 National Society for Clean Air, Clean Air Conference, 1960, p. 5.Google Scholar In addition to prior conversions, the figure could possibly reflect cases where householders failed to collect the reimbursement grant due them, or their willingness to use the old grates to burn the expensive grade of coke which could be used in them.

44 See Smokeless Air (Spring, 1964), p. 215.

45 The figures are estimates. The urban district figure is taken from The Times, 25 March 1970, P. 12; the other figures are based on the author's discussions with local officials.

46 The regions used by the Gas Council do not coincide with the standard economic planning regions normally used, as in this paper. Hence gas space heater sales shown for Greater London are those reported by the Gas Council for the North Thames and South Eastern Regions, an area which extends as far south as the coast, and hence which includes many voluntarily smokeless premises. Thus the contrast which is shown in the table is one between two broad areas, one which contains Greater London and hence a large number of smoke controlled premises, and the other which contains very few controlled premises.

47 This estimate was provided to the author by a spokesman for the Coal Merchants Federation.

48 See Mix, David D., ‘The Misdemeanor Approach to Pollution Control’, Arizona Law Review (Summer 1968), 90–6Google Scholar; and New York Times, 28 January 1971, p. 6.

49 See National Society for Clean Air, Clean Air Conference, 1960, p. 24.Google Scholar

50 Author's discussions with local officials.

51 For hardship cases, local authorities are allowed to pay the full cost of new heating appliances. However, there is no hardship subsidy for fuel.

52 National Society for Clean Air, Proceedings of the Clean Air Conference 1967, Blackpool, p. 159.Google Scholar

53 As evidence of the non-coercive pollution control measures at the industrial level, the central government Alkali Inspectorate, which has jurisdiction over most of the major industrial processes, prosecuted only three cases during the period 1920 to 1967.