The Guardian view on air pollution: moral pusillanimity, political ineptitude | Editorial

Michael Gove, the environment secretary, has willed the ends to tackle air pollution but he's unable to will the meansBritain needs to do more to clean up its dirty air as it is a "major public health scandal". So says the environment secretary Michael Gove. He's right. The government has been taken to court and lost three times; we finally have a minister committing to a clean air strategy that restricts diesel use "to ensure our air is properly breathable". These words won't be easy to walk back from. Neither should they be. The UK has been unlawfully breaching nitrogen dioxide limit values since 2010. Pollution cuts short an estimated 40,000 lives each year, and affects neurodevelopment and foetal growth. Ill-health caused by foul air costs Britain more than ?20bn annually. Yet Mr Gove only spoke out after an unprecedented joint inquiry by four parliamentary committees found it was "unacceptable" not to protect the public from poisonous air.Until Thursday the cabinet minister appeared unwilling to do much about it. Mr Gove was unmoved by the admonitions of the UN when it said Britain was flouting its duty to protect citizens from pollution. Mr Gove, a Brexiter, no doubt did not care that the European Union is preparing legal action against Britain for breaching air-quality laws. It was under the European acquis that the high court said the government's clean air plan was "unlawful". In Mr Gove's view, foreign courts should not hold ministers of the crown to account and their influence should end at our shores. In Brexit Britain it will not be judges but voters, whose lives are being shortened by breathing in filth, who will hold ministers to account. Continue reading...