Pollution in Rivers and Regulation of Private Water Companies

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, a certain degree of nostalgia comes in as I speak in this debate because, looking around the Chamber, I see that I am the only survivor here today of the Committee that dealt with privatising our water industry. Throughout that process—I do not mean to dump this on the Minister—I was told repeatedly by a variety of individuals, most of whom are not in the House, “Don’t worry, the regulator will deal with it. It’ll jump in”. If you raised a concern, that was what you were told. We heard it so often that it almost became a joke. In those very late hours towards midnight, which were normal then, I lost count of the number of times we were told on group after group that the regulator would deal with it.

It is now quite clear from what we are hearing that that model did not work. This might be because the regulator did not expect to deal with what was going on but lots of different parties have had lots of chances to intervene here. We have known for a long time about global warming, about the fact that warmer air has more water in it and about the fact that the increased water vapour in the air comes down as rain. We have known for a long time that this was coming—we should remember that one of the last acts of Baroness Thatcher as Prime Minister was to talk about the fact that we do not own the planet but are merely leaseholders on it; I think that was the term—yet we have permitted this model for the water industry to carry on despite the fact that it does not do anything. I remember, when we finally finished that process—once again in the small hours—picking up the Times, I think, and seeing a cartoon of a classic yuppie of the era looking at a computer screen and saying, “We’ll all get filthy rich”. That was somebody who got it right.

We have known that this has been coming. It is not something that is removed from us—a dreadful problem but not one to worry about—because it is starting to affect other bits of our lives. The thing that caught me, which was suggested by some of my noble friends, is that it is affecting leisure activities on water. You would have thought that being able to canoe, fish, swim or go rowing is something that you could take as read most of the time on a river or inland waterway in Great Britain. On the River Trent in Nottingham is our national water-sports training centre. The one thing I regret about getting older is that I am becoming long-sighted, so I will put my glasses on: last autumn, 5,106 hours of training were lost to our elite centre there due to red-flag water notices—amazing. Think about that; that stretch of water has been taken so that elite athletes can use it for canoeing and open-water swimming. There have been cases recently of open-water swimming where everybody got sick. At the World Triathlon Championship, people got sick from their training programmes. We have something here which is directly affecting human health.

Some people might shrug their shoulders at sporting activity and say that it does not really matter that much—that it is only a bunch of people running around and that they can all go to the gym. But sport is a bit bigger than that. It is a representation of bringing people together and getting them outside, giving them status and—in the case of these athletes—national pride. If you cannot keep a place like that safe for activity, what other types of activity lower down the sporting food chain are going to be affected too? When news gets out, people will say, “Do we want our child, brother, sister or father to be anywhere near that water if it is dangerous?” The Government should keep that in mind.

Let us talk about another group: anglers. We are affecting our waterways. Everybody should pay attention to anglers because there are an awful lot of them. They are the biggest participation group in the country by a long way. We are damaging the environment which allows them to have that pastime. From the invertebrates to other animals and activities in water, it will all be reflected in the food chain to the angler. I suggest that, as a body, anglers do not punch their weight. I hope that they will get out there and start to put a bit of pressure on the Government. That might mean that they will have to work with the canoeists and rowers, who they do not like—they disturb each other—but I hope that someone will come in and say, “Get together and make people listen”.

The historical analogy of the Great Stink and Bazalgette’s inspiration is one I hope we do not have to get to. I hope that others can say that there is a problem coming, because there is. It is starting to affect the smaller outlets. The fact that water companies have been making lots of money but have not even done the basic function of making sure that raw sewage does not get into the water system is unforgivable. They have failed in that basic requirement. We knew that higher rainfall was coming; we knew they were making money. Why did the regulator not do something about it? I do not know if the regulator needs bigger and sharper teeth—a more powerful jaw, if you want to follow the analogy through—but I know that it needs encouragement to use those implements to make things very uncomfortable for those who pollute.

If we do not do that, this current model of ownership of water—a natural monopoly, because it is expensive and heavy, and you cannot move it around the country without huge energy costs—will fail. We must make sure that this pays. The cost to us all is a worse environment and probably worse health. Surely that is worth making sure that the regulatory function fulfils its basic duty and that those who run water companies can be satisfied with simply having a perfectly solid blue-chip investment, as opposed to something rather better.