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Civil Aviation Bill

My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. It is nice to hear her taking up my banner. Air pollution is a very important factor in human health, and increasingly we are finding that lower and lower levels of air pollution—sometimes we are talking about parts per million and trillion—are affecting particularly young children, whose immune systems are hardly formed. I was very interested to learn that cattle and sheep are born with their immune systems fully intact. It takes six days for the immune systems of mice to be intact; it takes six months for the immune systems of children even to begin to be intact. It takes quite a long time after that for the central nervous system to be intact. So we need to ensure the safety of our children and safeguard them from chemicals, the properties of which we simply do not know. This is a good case for the precautionary principle to be brought in, so I support the noble Baroness.