Harrow Council’s Conservative administration spent years attacking the Mayor of London over the Ultra Low Emission Zone. New scientific evidence should now prompt an uncomfortable question: was political opposition allowed to overshadow one of the most important public-health arguments for cleaner air, protecting children’s lungs?
A major five-year study involving more than 3,400 primary-school children in London and Luton, reported by the BBC, has found striking improvements in lung development following the introduction of ULEZ. Before the scheme began in 2019, London children had significantly smaller lung capacity than comparable children in Luton. As pollution fell, their lung development accelerated until the two groups became broadly comparable. Researchers describe the findings as some of the strongest evidence yet that clean-air zones can help reduce pollution-related harm to children.
For Harrow, this evidence deserves particular attention. The Conservative administration did not merely express reservations about the impact of ULEZ on motorists. Harrow was one of four Conservative-controlled London boroughs (alongside Bexley, Bromley and Hillingdon) which, together with Surrey County Council, pursued a judicial review challenging the Mayor’s expansion of ULEZ across London.
The challenge was dismissed on all grounds. The eventual cost attributed to each of the four London boroughs included £147,853.20 for Harrow.
Harrow Monitoring Group subsequently highlighted another uncomfortable contradiction in the Council’s own 2025–29 Air Quality Action Plan. Road transport was acknowledged as a significant source of pollution, yet the administration failed adequately to recognise ULEZ’s contribution, despite estimates that harmful nitrogen oxide emissions in Harrow were around 15 per cent lower in 2024 than they would have been without the outer-London expansion.
ULEZ was also not simply a policy disagreement at City Hall. It became a major battleground in the 2024 London mayoral election. Conservative candidate Susan Hall, herself a Harrow Conservative councillor, explicitly campaigned on scrapping the ULEZ expansion on her first day in office. She badly lost the election.
That history makes the new scientific evidence particularly uncomfortable. Much of the political argument centred on motorists, charges and attacks on Khan. Far less prominent was another constituency with no vote and little political voice: children whose developing lungs were being exposed to polluted air.
The issue therefore goes beyond whether Sadiq Khan or ULEZ was politically popular in Harrow. Children do not breathe Conservative air or Labour air. They breathe whatever pollutants political decisions permit them to breathe.
The new research makes the question considerably harder for Harrow’s leadership to avoid. Perhaps the Council should now acknowledge that, whatever its political campaign against ULEZ, cleaner air appears to have delivered something far more valuable than a political headline: healthier developing lungs for London’s children.
A major five-year study involving more than 3,400 primary-school children in London and Luton, reported by the BBC, has found striking improvements in lung development following the introduction of ULEZ. Before the scheme began in 2019, London children had significantly smaller lung capacity than comparable children in Luton. As pollution fell, their lung development accelerated until the two groups became broadly comparable. Researchers describe the findings as some of the strongest evidence yet that clean-air zones can help reduce pollution-related harm to children.
For Harrow, this evidence deserves particular attention. The Conservative administration did not merely express reservations about the impact of ULEZ on motorists. Harrow was one of four Conservative-controlled London boroughs (alongside Bexley, Bromley and Hillingdon) which, together with Surrey County Council, pursued a judicial review challenging the Mayor’s expansion of ULEZ across London.
The challenge was dismissed on all grounds. The eventual cost attributed to each of the four London boroughs included £147,853.20 for Harrow.
Harrow Monitoring Group subsequently highlighted another uncomfortable contradiction in the Council’s own 2025–29 Air Quality Action Plan. Road transport was acknowledged as a significant source of pollution, yet the administration failed adequately to recognise ULEZ’s contribution, despite estimates that harmful nitrogen oxide emissions in Harrow were around 15 per cent lower in 2024 than they would have been without the outer-London expansion.
ULEZ was also not simply a policy disagreement at City Hall. It became a major battleground in the 2024 London mayoral election. Conservative candidate Susan Hall, herself a Harrow Conservative councillor, explicitly campaigned on scrapping the ULEZ expansion on her first day in office. She badly lost the election.
That history makes the new scientific evidence particularly uncomfortable. Much of the political argument centred on motorists, charges and attacks on Khan. Far less prominent was another constituency with no vote and little political voice: children whose developing lungs were being exposed to polluted air.
The issue therefore goes beyond whether Sadiq Khan or ULEZ was politically popular in Harrow. Children do not breathe Conservative air or Labour air. They breathe whatever pollutants political decisions permit them to breathe.
The new research makes the question considerably harder for Harrow’s leadership to avoid. Perhaps the Council should now acknowledge that, whatever its political campaign against ULEZ, cleaner air appears to have delivered something far more valuable than a political headline: healthier developing lungs for London’s children.