Combined Sewer Overflows

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I may have misunderstood the noble Baroness, but I have certainly had it put to me in this Chamber that, when this system of private ownership was put in place, it was somehow an ideological Conservative Government that was doing it. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was done because we were the dirty man of Europe: our rivers were stinking, and a very small percentage of our beaches were compliant. Now, we have nearly 93% of our bathing waters in good or improving conditions. I am not naive; I know that there are serious problems. But if the noble Baroness is really suggesting that the way of dealing with this is to completely change it and require the taxpayer to pay billions of pounds to purchase these companies back, which would see investment in this country into the regulated utility sector fall off a cliff, that is very dangerous not just for our water industry but our energy companies and every other regulated utility.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, while entirely accepting the thrust of what my noble friend just said, there is continuing concern, as he well knows, not just about sewage but, as I have raised many times before, the terrible state of one of the loveliest rivers in the kingdom, the Wye. When can we expect to see proper improvement in those ghastly situations?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. The Secretary of State held a meeting in the Wye Valley with all partners concerned. Out of that have come a number of actions. What is frustrating is when local authorities, for example, do not allow planning permission for measures such as biodigesters, which would deal with the chicken manure that is causing the nutrients to flow into the river, which results in large parts of the River Wye effectively becoming ecologically dead at certain times of the year. We need joined-up thinking not just between government and regulators but between local planners and farmers, and an understanding that, when a producer company vertically integrates its supply chain and we do not understand its impact in planning, it takes years to get right—but we are absolutely determined to do it.

Dangerous Dogs Act 1991: New Breeds

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I absolutely can give that assurance. We in government are lay people in this. There are real experts who understand animal behaviour and lawyers who can advise us on what will stand up in court. If we are to review this Act, we must make sure that we do not lose any benefits we have had from it and that we keep this House informed of every stage of the process.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, in view of the great increase in pet dogs in recent years, particularly during the pandemic, should we not reconsider reintroducing dog licences?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I love agreeing with my noble friend but I cannot in this case. It was a very bureaucratic document that cost more than it amounted to and was no more than a tax on dog owners. It would not deal with this problem effectively because the people who keep the predominant dog species involved in these attacks would not, by and large, have bothered getting a licence anyway.

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.

Water Companies: Licences

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 24th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

It allows us to make comparisons between good and bad performers and to ensure that they are able to operate in the open market and borrow on the capital markets in a regulated way. Dividends are really important because they pay for investment, and very often they are paid to pension companies that invest in these companies. The average dividend is around 3.8%, which is not massive, but we want to make sure we get that balance right. Competition is also in the customers’ interest. Evidence shows that if it had not been for the kind of competition that we have created in the water industry, there would be higher bills for households and less money spent on infrastructure.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, week after week we read about the Wye and other beautiful rivers—they are sewers, in some cases. The question we are constantly being asked is: when can we expect our rivers to run clear and pure? Is it 2040, 2050 or 2030? When can we expect this?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We have set out dates by which we will expect to see different levels of improvement. We are requiring water companies to spend £56 billion, and most of that is being front-loaded. The date of 2030 is the first by which my noble friend will be able to see how successful we have been at that front-loading. On rivers such as the Wye, it is not just the water companies but farming that is the problem—a particular type of farming. We have had this debate many times, and action is being taken through the Environment Agency and grants that we are now offering through our environmental land management schemes to correct some of the issues that have gone wrong. We also need to look at planning, which has been part of the problem.

Water Companies: Water Pollution

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

At a time of concern about household expenditure, it is important that we balance water bills. It is always a balancing act. We want to make sure that, with an average bill at just above £1 a day to provide all the water a household needs and to have all the sewage taken away, water companies can invest in the necessary infrastructure. Most importantly, during the next decade or two, we must eliminate rainwater getting into sewage. This is the challenge. At the moment, we have water coming off roofs and going into Victorian or Edwardian sewers. Many of them have been updated and improved, but billions of pounds still need to be spent to tackle this recurring problem.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I have raised before in this House the River Wye, which is one of the most glorious rivers in our country. We know why it is polluted; my noble friend the Minister has mentioned this from the Front Bench before. Can he give me some idea of when that river will flow clean again so that we can be proud of it, as our forebears were?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am not an aquatic scientist but I can tell my noble friend that the problem in the Wye is principally due to phosphates coming from the poultry industry, which has boomed in that area and for which no adequate planning provision was made to prevent the leakage of effluent. The Environment Agency and other parts of Defra are making sure that we are correcting that. I hope that we will prevent what is happening, which is an absolute tragedy. For large parts of the year, large sections of one of the great rivers of this country are nearly ecologically dead. We want to reverse that.

Lindisfarne Highly Protected Marine Conservation Area

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Trawler activity on our seabeds is often incompatible with marine conservation. We want to make sure that while we are helping our fishing industry prosper in the new world in which we live, we are also mindful that what legitimate British fishing interests on these islands want is a rising biomass. That requires us to have marine conservation running alongside productive fisheries. The actions of some international vessels coming into our waters is of course of concern when they are breaking the rules, and we have available very strict enforcement policies.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I warmly congratulate the Government on getting two things right in two days.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am lost for words.

Water Companies: Pollution Penalties

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

If anything, it will be improved, because we want to see urgency in the restoration of our waterways, and that is what we are pushing for.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, one of the most glorious rivers in this country, the Wye, has been defiled in an unimaginable way. Is there not a personal culpability here, and would it not be right, following up the points made by my noble friend Lord Forsyth, for individuals to be held responsible and punished if they defile in this way?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The principal problem in the River Wye is poultry farming and the run-off of phosphates from poultry farms to satisfy people’s demand for free-range eggs. The lesson we learn from this is that our planning system has to match our environmental policy and our economic policies. In the case of the River Wye, which my noble friend is absolutely right to mention, at times of the year, parts of the river are ecologically dead. We are trying to return it to what it should be: one of the great rivers of this country. We can do that only by learning from those mistakes and making sure that they do not happen in future.

Household Waste Recycling

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

That is a very good point. As the noble Baroness rightly says, many households do not have the ability or space to do this but those that do need to be given information. They also need to know what they can do with the end product; for example, we are banning peat as a growing medium and compost can be an alternative to that.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I wish my noble friend happy travels in Wales and a long period in office, but does he accept that what this country desperately needs now is continuity in government? It would therefore be wise if, when the present Prime Minister resigns, he does not remain as a caretaker but rather has an acting Prime Minister in the deputy in the other place.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, the words “above”, “pay” and “grade” come to mind. There is constitutional precedent on this, of course; I am sure that that is what will be applied.

National Food Strategy

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I will write to the noble Baroness with details of that. The food strategy is a comprehensive piece of work which looks at a lot of health-related matters. It is across government, and the Department of Health has been very closely involved in putting it together. I cannot tell her exactly whether there will be reference to food allergies in it, but there is certainly a lot of work going on in government on that subject.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, last week’s “Countryfile”, which has great influence, was very disturbing. It indicated that we were not giving proper encouragement to our own sugar beet industry but bringing in cane sugar from thousands of miles away. This supports what was said by the splendid noble Baroness, Lady Jones. Is this the case? If it is, we have got it wrong.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

It is the Government’s intention to sustain a viable sugar beet industry. That involves not just farmers producing sugar beet but the four factories that we have in this country continuing to do so. If one or more of them were to close, we would be reliant on sugar produced in less environmentally sustainable ways from much further away, and my noble friend is entirely right to point out that it would be at a much higher environmental cost as well.

Bird Control Licences

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Under our environmental land management schemes farmers will be rewarded for doing what we call public goods, and that includes creating habitat for wildlife and protecting species which will otherwise, on our watch, become extinct. I could go on about the curlew, as I do every day in Defra, a species for which you can map the point at which it will become extinct in a decade or two’s time. We do not save it then, we save it now, and so we must deploy every measure that we can, whether it is in government grants or activities that we allow land managers to perform to protect them.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

We should be grateful to the noble Baroness for initiating a brief but enlightening debate. I thank my noble friend for his answers, but can he add another factor? Game is about the most nutritious food that you possibly can eat. If the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, had a few more pheasants, she might find life a bit more agreeable.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, it is not my position at the Dispatch Box to prescribe noble Lords’ diets, but I entirely agree with my noble friend about the health-giving benefits of natural food.