Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser has called for a complete ban on the sale of petrol-and diesel-powered cars, in one of the most dramatic proposals yet made on tackling climate change. “We need to be pressing for the economic drivers which are required to bring these technologies to Britain.”His remarks are the first time any Government adviser has advocated such a tough policy on car use.”This is a hugely significant statement from someone at the centre of Government,” said Tony Juniper, director designate of Friends of the Earth. “Until now, the Government has failed to recognise that, logically, we must phase out fossil fuels. Hopefully, Tony Blair will listen.”Imposing a deadline would shock the car and oil industries which sold more than 2.2m new cars, worth about £30bn, and 29 billion litres of fuel in the UK in 2000.

They will claim that Lombardy and California, which has imposed a zero-emissions policy for new cars, are chiefly concerned with cutting urban air pollution rather than climate change.Environment campaigners argue, however, that road transport is responsible for about 25 per cent of Britain’s annual CO2 emissions of roughly 152 million tonnes, and is the only major sector which is increasing its CO2 emissions.Professor King refused to be drawn on which year should be chosen but said “green” cars would soon be widely available. Major car and oil companies such as Ford, Chrysler, Shell and BP already have an “impressive” joint project to test various hydrogen-fuelled cars in the United States. Ford has begun selling a solely electric two-seater car, The Think, and the British company Johnson Matthey is, he said, close to unveiling hydrogen fuel cells for buses and cars.Professor King’s intervention follows the publication last Thursday of the Government’s energy review, which set out new proposals to promote renewable energy.Professor King said that Downing Street’s Policy and Innovation Unit report had failed to highlight the scale of the climate change crisis “as clearly as I would have liked to see it”.. Sarah Fulford-Brown, 45, moved to Lytham St Annes in Lancashire from central London eight years ago. Two of her three children had serious asthma, particularly her daughter Georgina, who was four at the time.

Now, away from the pollution of the capital, both Georgina and her younger brother Benedict have made full recoveries. Georgina was diagnosed with asthma very early and put on a lot of medication, including two different kinds of nebuliser and various other inhalers. Over the next three years, she was admitted to hospital six times with serious asthma attacks. It was absolutely terrifying.”Since we moved to Lytham, there has been an absolute improvement. She’s a good runner and her school hockey team, of which she is an integral part, has recently won the Lancashire title She still takes her [inhaler] to training but never uses it. I guess you could say she’s a good advert for country living.”Mrs Fulford-Brown was angry that the link between exhaust fumes and asthma had not been established before “I think that a lot of information has been hidden.