Water Quality: Sewage Discharge

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I can indeed give my hon. Friend that assurance. We will continue to ensure that the licence fees and the costs of permits cover inspections, and we will consider further what additional funding changes might be needed for that purpose.

Perhaps Labour intended to introduce a sewage tax or something similar, as proposed by the Liberal Democrats, although it would take such a tax some 500 years to fund the level of investment required. That is, dare I say, another classic Liberal Democrat policy—all soundbite but detached from reality. Meanwhile, we have an ambitious, credible and realistic plan.

As for mandatory sewage outlet monitoring, the Government are already doing that; 91% is already in place, and the rest will be completed by the end of the year. The Environment Agency will also ensure that water companies carry out monitoring in line with their permit conditions. The monitoring requirements introduced by the Government have been instrumental in enabling the regulators to undertake the largest criminal and civil investigations of sewage discharges in water company history, covering more than 2,200 treatment works. Through powers in our landmark Environment Act, we are also making it a legal requirement for the near real time data on discharges to be available to the public, and the consultation on those regulations is live now. We are going even further by placing a duty directly on water companies to monitor the water quality impact upstream and downstream of all their assets—not just storm overflows but wastewater treatment works as well.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

This is not just the responsibility of the water companies, because it is not just water assets that discharge into our rivers. Within a short section of the River Tame in Greater Manchester there are three water assets, but there are also Johnson brook and Wilson brook. Johnson brook regularly discharges raw sewage into the Tame because of a misconnected sewer somewhere along the reaches of that brook, and Wilson brook regularly discharges chemicals into the Tame because of industrial processes. The Environment Agency’s actions are appalling. What more is the Secretary of State doing—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We cannot have these long interventions, because too many Members want to speak. It is simply not fair.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It will come as no surprise to Members in the Chamber that I rise to support the Labour Front-Bench motion, because I support the Bill tabled by the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon).

The River Tame, which runs through my constituency, has the unfortunate honour of being one of the most polluted waterways in the UK. In detailed, peer-reviewed research, Professor Jamie Woodward and his team from the University of Manchester found that the Tame, which is one of two tributaries forming the River Mersey at Stockport, is heavily contaminated with microplastics, because untreated waste water and sewage are routinely discharged into the river when it is at low flow. Professor Woodward found concentrations of 130,000 microplastic particles per sediment on the riverbed around Denton. This is one of the few accessible green spaces in my constituency, and it is absolutely disgraceful.

In 2022, there were 11,000 hours of sewage discharge into the River Tame and the local environment by United Utilities. That pollution, and also the pollution from industrial processes along the river, is having a disastrous impact on the local environment. In a recent interview with Paul Whitehouse on the BBC, Chris Clarke, an angler who works closely with the Friends of the Tame Valley, told of his devastation as he watched raw sewage—not from a UU plant, but from a misconnection into Johnson brook—being pumped into the waterway on the same day that the Environment Agency was replenishing fish stocks.

Local people across my constituency are doing their very best to solve this problem. Groups such as the Friends of the Tame Valley, which I am incredibly proud to be a part of, often organise community riverbank cleans, but all too often it feels as though they are fighting an uphill battle. There has also been the formation of the River Tame working group. Spearheaded by the Mersey Rivers Trust, this brings together various community and corporate stakeholders, including United Utilities, to resolve the local operational issues and to help shape local catchment actions plans. In the interest of balance, I should say that UU is investing £100 million to immediately commence a further programme of works to reduce spill frequency at eight prioritised storm overflows, there are four river rangers and we are training a generation of river guardians.

In closing, in 2010 the Tory Prime Minister said that we are “all in it together”. I am sure he did not think that, 13 years later, that would mean the sewage in our rivers.