Water: Wales and England

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The Abingdon reservoir was brought to Ministers over a decade ago, and the case made by Thames Water was not correctly put forward. We told them to go back and do it again. They have, and this will now be part of their water resources management plan, which will go to Ministers this year. I hope that we can learn from this. It should not take two to three decades for really important infra- structure to be built.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend knows of my affection for the Wye, that glorious river. Can he give any encouragement on the cleaning up and reduction of pollution in that river since his last answer?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Agricultural pollution, primarily through slurry spreading and the use of inorganic fertilisers, was responsible for roughly 70% of the phosphate pollution in that extraordinarily beautiful river. My Secretary of State has made this a personal mission: she hosted a round table in Hereford, bringing together all the stakeholders, where the main focus was to find the best ways to restore this river to a favourable condition. She identified a key point: one local authority, which was then run by the Greens and independents, had not even looked at, let alone refused, the application for a phosphate-stripping plant, which was put in by a company that was using chicken manure to produce energy. We really need to make sure that we are joining things up so that local authorities, the Government, the regulators, water companies and farmers are all working together to save this river.