Water (Special Measures) Bill [HL]

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Duke of Wellington (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 51 in my name has been put in this group even though it relates to a different clause. Clause 3 deals with emergency overflows and seeks to define an emergency overflow. It also includes within Clause 3 what is in effect a let-out for the water companies, in that, where an overflow occurs as a result of an electrical power failure, that is permitted. I must admit that I find that surprising. I am grateful to the Minister, who allowed me to come and discuss this point with her and her officials a few weeks ago. However, I cannot for the life of me understand how failure to have sufficient electrical power generation capacity in a sewerage works is sufficient reason to allow an overflow to occur.

I remember that, just before or during the passage of the Environment Act, there was a major overflow by Thames Water in London, and the reason given at the time was, “Oh, sorry, there’s been a power failure”. That really does not seem good enough. Nobody running a hospital would be able to plead lack of power as a reason to close down all operations under way in the hospital at that moment. It seems to me that a sewerage works is a place where there must be sufficient emergency power generation through generators in case of a power failure.

This is a simple amendment; I hope the Government will take it seriously. It simply would delete, in effect, in new Section 141G(2)(a),

“electrical power failure at sewage disposal works”

as a reason for permitting an emergency overflow. That is my argument and I hope the Minister will take it seriously.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased for the first time to be able to contribute to Committee on the Bill. I will speak to the two amendments in my name in this group, Amendments 54 and 88. The Minister will already be aware of my enthusiasm for the use of grey water and its importance in new-build domestic construction. I support my noble friend Lady Pickering in what she has just said on this group.

The Committee has already drawn attention to increasing problems of safe disposal of sewage from buildings and the challenge going forward to adequate supplies of domestic drinking water. The fact that the existing system cannot cope with either does not augur well for the Government’s planned housebuilding target, which will include mandatory planning targets set out in the National Planning Policy Framework.

The Minister will know from Second Reading that I support her endeavours in the Bill, but the two amendments in this group tabled in my name seek to mitigate what could quickly become a standoff between the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. I urge the Minister to take some action through these two amendments to prevent this, if nothing else.

I am very grateful for the assistance and legal advice given to me on these two amendments by the lawyers at WildFish, a charity involved in the protection of all wild fish in watercourses.

Some developers argue that, because of the legal obligations on sewerage undertakers to treat wastewater, the question of sewer and sewage treatment capacity is not a material consideration in planning. There is therefore a reluctance among planning authorities to impose conditions to protect the environment from sewage pollution, partly because of the case of Barratt Homes v Dŵr Cymru 2009, where the Supreme Court confirmed that Section 106 of the Water Industry Act 1991 provided a right for householders to connect to the sewer network and that only in narrow circumstances could the water company refuse such a connection.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 55 and 74. I have added my name to Amendment 55 in the name of my noble friend Lady Bakewell and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, for also adding her name in support. This amendment would require water companies to adhere to and deliver stronger environmental objectives and duties within national parks and the Broads, so as to protect waterways across national parks from sewage. The amendment would give the Secretary of State regulation-making power to extend protections to specific bodies of water, such as Lake Windermere.

Our national parks are very special places with national emotional importance, but the sad reality is that the areas that are the most important have some of the weakest environmental protections and this needs to change. There were 377 sewage releases from storm overflows within the boundaries of national parks in England and Wales in 2022, totalling 176,000 hours, equivalent to more than 7,300 days. I am confident that the Minister, like me, will find this as unacceptable as I am sure do all noble Lords present. This amendment seeks to bring forward measures that will help to correct this and return the ecological status of our national parks to a level that we can again be proud of. As we heard in the previous debate, there is not even a single river within a national park that has good ecological health.

It is not just sewage which is causing the problem. The University of York found there was also widespread toxic chemical pollution within some national parks. In many ways this is much more worrying indeed. With huge influxes of seasonal visitors and often old and not-fit-for-purpose sewerage infrastructure, during the summer months especially the systems cannot cope and we have regular sewage spills. This infrastructure needs updating. I want to thank the Minister here. She said on the previous group that she had been meeting United Utilities and that is welcome.

In addition, it is ironic that we have far lower standards for the operation of sewage works in our national parks that we do in our urban equivalents. Proposed new Section 4A(1) in Amendment 55 gives details of how the relevant undertaker must secure high ecological status, enhance wildlife and natural beauty, and reduce total phosphorous discharges into freshwaters within areas of national parks by 2028. Subsection (2) indicates what will happen if this does not happen and calls for the relevant undertaker to be put in special administration and not be eligible for further licences if it fails to demonstrate an adequate process each year and meet the targets in subsection (1). Subsection (3) gives a time limit of one year for the Secretary of State to lay a report on the undertakers’ implementation of the environmental duties in subsections (1) and (2) before Parliament. Subsection (7) of the proposed new section explains exactly what type of environment is covered by this section.

I will not repeat the remarks made about Amendment 34A in group two, but it is worth noting that Lake Windermere is a UNESCO world heritage site which has inspired Beatrix Potter, William Wordsworth and Arthur Ransom and that it contributes over £1 billion a year to the UK national economy. This site is particularly sensitive and I guess that everybody in this House wants to see improvements made to it. I hope other noble Lords can support this amendment and the Minister can support it as well. It might be that the Minister has other ways of doing these things, possibly through statutory instruments, but I look forward to her response.

Finally in this group, Amendment 74 is in my name and I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for adding her name in support. This amendment aims to provide “high ecological status” to our chalk streams. To be clear, “high ecological status” is the closest wording the Table Office said was in scope for blue flag status. What I am trying to do is have a conversation with the Minister about putting forward blue flag status for our chalk streams. That is the point of the amendment.

As we have heard, England’s chalk streams are of global significance and are a source of great national pride. They are unique waterways, found particularly in the south of England and Yorkshire. They have been referred to as the “rainforests of England” for their special qualities, the diversity and range of the habitats they provide and the iconic species, from invertebrates to kingfishers, that dwell within them. I confess that I spend quite a lot of my spare time mountain-biking and quite a lot of that is done on the South Downs, so places such as the River Meon are very special to me and I am sure other noble Lords have experiences with other chalk streams.

Research undertaken by my party found that, according to Environment Agency data, in 2022 chalk streams were subject to 14,000 hours of sewage discharges. This is devastating to these very valuable but fragile ecosystems. Wessex Water was guilty of 1,013 separate sewage discharges across the west of England. The worst chalk stream sewage discharge lasted for nearly 3,000 hours in the River Till, a tributary of the Hampshire Avon. Thames Water discharged sewage into the Misbourne in Buckinghamshire for 1,206 hours last year and Southern Water’s 62 discharges into the River Meon last year lasted over 1,000 hours. The figures may have been even higher than that as a number of monitors are not working; I would argue that the true scale of the discharges into these rivers is not properly known, which is also a worry.

I am very grateful for the support for this amendment and I hope the Minister can lend some support to it from the Government. It might be that there is a possibility of further conversations or some kind of compromise around these issues. It might be that the Minister or the Government feel that blue flag status is not quite the appropriate means to help give further protection to these chalk streams. I am open to ideas. I am open to other ways that we could work collectively to try to increase protection for these very fragile systems.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to have been able to add my name to this very important amendment. I live on the Dorset/Hampshire border and chalk streams are really important in my part of the world.

We have heard from the noble Earl, Lord Russell, of the importance of these chalk streams, which have been managed in England since Roman times. There is the real danger of contamination of the water course itself from sewage and agricultural run-off, but one of the key features of a healthy chalk stream is the water flow. Not all chalk streams are particularly deep but, so long as the water flows regularly, fish can spawn and the other flora and fauna which are so important to them can survive. Once the streams slow down, for whatever reason, particularly from excessive abstraction, that immediately has an impact on all the wildlife that we associate with chalk streams. So I am very pleased to add my name to this very important amendment.

Amendment 90 in this group, which is in my name, is on the general duty to deliver measures set out in water resources management plans. I was a bit concerned whether it is in the right group, but I guess that it is—it is associated. It is all very well to legislate but unless you can enforce legislation, it seems to us legislators all a bit pointless. As far as water resources management plans are concerned, this is about tightening up the regulations to make more sense of them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I rise to speak to Amendment 87 in this group, and I am very grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Browning, and the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for their support. I agree with all that has been said, in particular what the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Deben, said. We do need a step change here, rather than just trying to fix the system—although I do want to talk about fixing the system.

The water companies are completely uninterested in transparency. It echoes so much of what we talked about: who is winning in this game, nature or money? Rather too often, the money seems to win out. According to the Observer at the weekend, they have been passing pollution tests that were not even carried out. The system is so clearly not working that it seems an obvious one for the Government to reset.

Amendment 87 would require the proactive publication of both regulatory and what the water companies call “non-regulatory” or “operational” data about their sewage works and their associated discharges of sewage effluent. Specifically, it defines water companies as “public authorities” for the purposes of the Environmental Information Regulations, amends the regulations to make clear that public authorities must make the information they hold on effluent or wastewater monitoring data completely public to anybody. It amends the appeal and enforcement provisions in the 2004 regulations to allow members of the public to complain to the Information Commissioner where such info is not proactively published.

This will cut through all the delaying tactics and refusals by water companies, by ensuring that data is proactively published, so that the public and campaigners will not have to keep asking for information and be endlessly given the runaround. Water companies will be required by law to publish it up front, without anyone having to ask. I support my noble friend’s amendment that this must all be in one place and easy to find. I feel that this is complementary to Clause 3 of the Bill, which requires discharges from emergency overflows to be published accessibly and immediately, so that action can be taken.

It is important to outline a little history of the context. Despite the success of the leading Fish Legal case, which went to the European Court of Justice a few years ago, in securing a decision that water companies are “public authorities” for the purposes of the Environmental Information Regulations, over the last few years the water companies have tried many different tactics, under the Environmental Information Regulations, to try to avoid disclosing data to those requesting access that shows how poorly performing their sewage works or CSOs have been. They have been extremely successful. The ICO has, in the past, supported various water companies in their refusal to provide data to a range of campaigners, due to the long-running investigations into them by the regulators themselves. The ICO’s mind seemed to change on this after the CEO of Ofwat announced that they did not consider the investigation by Ofwat and the Environment Agency as a reason to not publish. So now we are in a weird situation where the water companies, specifically United Utilities, are currently appealing against an ICO decision that went the other way, in which the ICO decided that information, specifically about how poorly a sewage works in Cumbria was operating, should be disclosed to the public. This case is ongoing, but we have an opportunity to send a parliamentary reminder that we are in no doubt that this information should be made publicly accessible.

This has highlighted to me not only the clear lack of transparency but the real lack of willingness. Despite several years of this very public scandal, companies continue to obstruct. This is what the Bill is really about: forcing them to change where they will not. We are well past simply asking them to do this.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to have added my name to the amendment that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has just spoken to, and the amendment in this group tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, both of whom have outlined very clearly their concerns.

Amendment 89, in my name, is really about abstraction. I mentioned the over-abstraction in chalk streams, which is genuinely a real problem. It is claimed that the Environment Agency rarely inspects water company abstraction monitoring records.

There is also no requirement for continuous volumetric monitoring and publication of real-time or up-to-date data. It is not surprising, therefore, that there has been no effective enforcement where there have been breaches of abstraction licences. Spot-check results indicate neither the duration of the breach nor the seriousness of such breaches, either as against the licence condition or for the rivers or groundwaters from which the abstraction has occurred unlawfully.

Therefore, this amendment proposes that the Water Resources Act 1991 be amended so that all licences for abstraction held by water undertakers should include a condition that real-time abstraction volumetric data is recorded and made publicly available in as close to real time as is practicable. This is very straightforward. The Minister must have a view as to whether she thinks the Environment Agency carries out rigorous checks, and if it does not, I believe my amendment is the answer to it.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I first declare my interest as on the register. Since it seems to be de rigueur in the Committee tonight, I declare my wholehearted support for the controlled reintroduction of beavers into appropriate locations.

I thank the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for leading this group of amendments on improved monitoring and publication of data and I rise to speak to Amendment 48 in my name. First, I was rather impressed by the points on telemetry made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. We find in Natural England that the use of modern technology can replace hundreds of people on the ground trying to carry out inspections, and this sort of technology has to be the way to proceed.

It is important that the nature of emergency discharges is collected by water companies and is made available to the public and Parliament in an easily accessible format and location, as has been said by every noble Lord tonight. The damage of pollution caused by emergency overflows has become an issue of increasing concern to the public in recent years, and they deserve more information on how water companies are performing. It is sensible to require water companies to publish the extent of emergency discharges, as this data is indicative of the strain on our water sector and will provide valuable information as to what kind of infrastructure development is necessary to prevent overflows in the future.

We support the Government’s intention in this part of the Bill, but we feel the Government can go slightly further to ensure that the monitoring data is available to the public on the water company’s website. My Amendment 48 is a modest little amendment that would deliver that change. We on these Benches feel that this relatively small amendment would do a great deal of good in ensuring that consumers can access this information easily on the website of their own provider.

A number of noble Lords have moved amendments on monitoring and reporting. We are broadly satisfied with the Government’s measures to improve monitoring and reporting in the Bill, but we are also keen to see some movement from the Government in the direction of making this information more readily accessible to the public and have taken on board many of the points raised by other noble Lords tonight.