Pollution: Rivers and Beaches

Lord Cromwell Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The statistic is absolutely right—I can remember seeing it and being stunned that the Government prior to the coalition Government had no idea about this. They knew about only 5% of the storm overflows, so we set about getting that data. If the person quoted in the other place said 100%, it is not quite that but it is nearly there: we are in the 90s, and by the end of this year the figure will be 100%. If the telemetry we require to measure the quality is not working, I am happy to take any cases up with the Environment Agency and make sure that we are applying this.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

Can the Minister tell me how long this will take? I believe the £56 billion that he referred to will take about 25 years to roll out and invest. When will we be able to see a visible difference?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We have announced our targets in the provisions of the Environment Act—some of those are for 2035, and some are for 2038—and we will review them in 2027 to see how they are going. There are others that are more long term. There was an unfortunate mistake in a regret amendment last week, in which it was claimed, somehow, that we are pushing this out to 2063. What is absolutely true is that we are sticking to the requirements of the water framework directive, as we did when we were in the EU. We are emboldening that with other provisions, such as the ones in the amendments to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. So, there is a degree of urgency because we want these matters to be dealt with as quickly as possible. I urge the noble Lord not to listen to what was claimed in the regret amendment last week.