Recommendation 10

Government and the public sector at all levels must lead by example on air quality if they are asking businesses and individuals to make changes. There are numerous examples of that already happening in the NHS, local government and other sectors, with some public bodies, for instance seeking to minimise emissions from their own vehicle fleets and their suppliers. This should become standard across the public sector. This would contribute to the Government’s drive to support a Green Recovery discussed in Chapter 5. The Clean Air Strategy should be updated to included measures to reduce air quality impacts from central and local government and other public bodies (directly and from procurement and supply chains). Given the other pressures on budgets, where necessary, extra Government funding should be made available to facilitate this. The Government should also update the Government Buying Standards (GBS) to extend the mandatory requirement to procure only zero tailpipe emissions vehicles, except in exceptional circumstances, across the whole of the public sector by 2025. The Government should also set out in their response to this report how many organisations covered by the existing GBS have used the exemption for exceptional circumstances and why. The Committee looks to HM Treasury to incentivise sustainable public and private transport.

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