Water Companies: Fines

Lord Bishop of Norwich Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for securing this timely debate. It is a scourge on us all that sewage pollution is damaging so many of our watercourses and coastlines—damaging their ecosystems but also our enjoyment of them. I remember my first experience of such pollution when, as a young lad, I caught sticklebacks in my hands from the ditches around our Yorkshire village. One day, I went to my usual place of good stickleback hunting to find it putrid, with a storm drain leaking sewage and items—at the time, I did not understand what they were—floating in the ditch. The sticklebacks were gone for over a year.

The Rivers Trust reports that none of our rivers are now in good overall health. Its 2024 report, State of Our Rivers, notes that 54% of our nation’s rivers are impacted negatively by the water sector, mainly through sewage effluent. Surfers Against Sewage reports that there were 604,833 discharges of raw sewage into UK waterways in 2023, with the water in 75% of UK rivers posing a serious risk to human health. A BBC investigation 18 months or so ago found that three water companies illegally discharged sewage on dry days. Thames Water, Wessex Water and Southern Water collectively released sewage in dry spills for 3,500 hours in 2022. All three spilled on the hottest day on record.

Surely, with the right effort and the right pride in the boardroom and among shareholders and the workforce—and with the right investment in infrastructure—none of this needs to be the case. The American poet and writer Wendell Berry gave a twist to the golden rule, suggesting:

“Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you”.


Boardrooms should perhaps have that as their inspirational quote on the wall.

So, as well as stopping the sewage pollution, the fines must be used to restore our rivers and damaged habitats. We need the polluter pays principle to be taken incredibly seriously, with the right level of fine, not only to prevent but to give enough funding directly through grants—to farmers, communities and conservation groups, as we have heard—to restore our rivers and damaged habitats and to enable our watercourses to begin to thrive again with the right interventions. It has been argued that it is cheaper to pay the fine after a discharge than to do the right thing in the first place. But the cycle of polluting, fining and restoration—and polluting again, fining again and restoring again—will not ultimately enhance our aquatic ecosystems, and it will do us, as people, no good at all.

As well as the fines, we need to embed culture change and good leadership. Allowing sewage pollution should be as damning an indictment on those responsible as not taking seriously their health and safety duties to their staff or the contamination of drinking water. There needs to be a culture of pride in our boardrooms to compete to have the least sewage released among their competitors. Investors need to take pride in supporting having the right infrastructure in place and the right investment in infrastructure, not in maximising financial returns at the expense of the environment.

St Francis of Assisi gave water a priority in his great canticle, “Song of Brother Sun”. He wrote:

“Thou flowing water, pure and clear,

Make music for thy Lord to hear,

Alleluia, Alleluia”.

When we finally take sewage pollution seriously, we might be able to add our own Alleluia. Until then, will the Minister agree with me that the choking of our river courses with sewage and swimmers and surfers dodging floaters need not only our lament but a culture change in the industry to give the highest protection to the intrinsic value of our nation’s seas, lakes, lochs, streams and rivers, those liquid threads of the water of life that wind their way through our landscapes and memories?