Environmental Targets (Water) (England) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Hacking and Lord Benyon

Monday 23rd January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I do apologise, but I wanted to remind the House of the 1880s, when London sewage was all put into the River Thames and there was such a stench that both Houses of Parliament had to rise early for the Summer Recess.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this debate.

The water targets put forward in this statutory instrument meet the requirements under the Environment Act to set at least one target in the area of water. As the Act requires, the Secretary of State has sought appropriate advice from independent experts and is satisfied that these targets can be met. The targets set out in this instrument will complement our existing water regulatory framework and the actions that the Government are taking on multiple fronts to address specific pollutions in the water environment.

For example, and to clarify my previous statement, we are driving Ofwat to challenge water companies to achieve zero serious pollution incidents by 2030. This includes the amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill to reduce phosphorus discharges from treated wastewater and reducing nutrient pollution from agriculture by doubling funding for advice and support to farmers through the catchment-sensitive farming scheme and our new slurry infrastructure grant. That grant addresses precisely the point that the noble Baroness made in relation to slurry lagoons. We are putting money into this area, where there is a specific point-source pollution problem, because we want to solve these problems.

I have not mentioned environment land management schemes—

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

That will, of course, be our aim. Dates are just dates; they are moments in time. The idea that we are going to allow pollution to carry on and then it is suddenly going to fall off a cliff is of course nonsense. Whoever is responsible, whether it is the Government, their agencies, private landowners, water companies, farmers or whoever it is will be tackling this either because they are forced to do it or because they are incentivised to do it, and they will get the graph moving, as they have already, downwards. They will deal, like we all do, with the low-hanging fruit first, and then they will move on to the more difficult and the hardest to reach.

There is absolutely that target that we should achieve. We set ourselves a really difficult target with continuing with the water framework directive in its form because a river will be divided under that regulation into reaches. If it fails on one factor in one of those reaches, the whole river fails. That is why only 16% of our rivers qualify. Some reaches of those rivers are in quite good condition. I do not mind that target being demanding, but we need to understand that it is very hard to achieve what we are setting out. We think it is achievable and is doable, but if there is one point-source pollution incident resulting in a spike in phosphorus on one reach of a very long river, that river fails. So these are hard targets to hit, but we are determined to achieve that, and that is why I commend these regulations to the House.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I would like to thank the Minister before he sits down—although he has completed that act—for his very clear exposition over my concern about the postponement date of 2063. I offer my gratitude to the Minister.