River Ecosystems

Debate between Lord Gardiner of Kimble and Lord Ribeiro

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

The noble Lord raises something hugely important: we have not only to adapt but to mitigate. That is why the environmental land management schemes, involving what we hope will be 70% of the land farmed in this country, will be precisely about how we mitigate and adapt and how we ensure that we improve water quality through things such as planting trees and better environmental management generally.

[Lord Ribeiro (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a riparian owner. Abstraction is an issue in any area with few reservoirs, and particularly with rivers designated as being of special scientific interest. Of equal concern is abstraction for commercial purposes to clean salads. In particular I point to Bakkavör, a company in Alresford, which imports salads from Europe and cleans them, and the water then goes back into the river system. My question to my noble friend the Minister is: what steps can we take to ensure that water that goes back into the river after cleaning processes is of the same quality as the water abstracted in the first place?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, this goes back to the point about needing to ensure that we reduce abstraction and that we have only sustainable abstraction of water. On the principle that the polluter pays, we certainly need to ensure—and we do increasingly ensure—that people using water return it in better quality than they might do now.