Environment Bill

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th September 2021 Lords Chamber

I had a recent experience of having a new housing development put up beside us at my home in Scotland. Being an adjacent proprietor, I was able to take interest in the planning of that development. It is in Inverness, so noble Lords can understand that there might be some water around, particularly rainwater, but also other groundwater. It was made a planning condition of the development that the developer had to put in place a new system to take the groundwater down underground. Thus the sewerage remained in the sewer, but the groundwater and rainwater were dealt with completely separately, rather in the manner of the hierarchy in Amendment 82, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt. In my respectful submission on this subject, what is required is a system as described in Amendment 59, but not a system developed by the undertaker but rather by Her Majesty’s Government under the legislation that is required to make the separation, so that the water companies deal with water and the sewerage is dealt with otherwise.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 59 and 60, so ably spoken to by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, whom I hope I can call my noble friend. I am grateful to the Minister and his officials for the engagement and time they have given us in discussing these important amendments. I welcome the Government’s own Amendments 61, 62 and 63. Nevertheless, I hope that the Government might go further. I also commend the work of my right honourable friend Philip Dunne, in the other place, who has done so much important work on this issue.

As we have heard, there were 400,000 sewage discharges in 2020. This is not a rare occurrence. Water companies have underinvested in sewerage infrastructure. I hope that the Government can overcome their reluctance to impose a duty on them in this Bill to act and invest urgently, as is required. Without such a statutory requirement as specified in these amendments, water companies will continue to be able to put profits and dividends above public health and protection of our precious waterways. I recognise and welcome that the Government have strengthened the duties on these companies, and the expectations to address storm overflows in the drainage and wastewater management plans that will be statutorily required by Clause 79(3)(g). But these plans will not even be consulted on until next summer, let alone be introduced or acted upon. So far, according to a very helpful briefing produced by Defra, water companies have committed just £1.1 billion to investigate and improve storm overflows. This is insufficient for the scale of the problem to be tackled.

I welcome the Storm Overflows Taskforce announced last August, which

“has agreed to set a long term goal to eliminate harm from storm overflows.”

This, too, is most welcome but, so far, this involves improving monitoring and transparency rather than meaningful action to reduce sewage overflows into rivers and waterways. So far, the Environment Agency has clearly struggled to assess compliance with discharge rules and impose enforcement action or fines to galvanise noticeable action and stop or reduce these overflows.

Research on sewerage from Professor Peter Hammond and Professor Jamie Woodward of Manchester University has found clear evidence that untreated sewage or wastewater are being routinely discharged outside the conditions allowed by the Environment Agency permits. It is vital that regulation of discharges of untreated sewage and wastewater are tightened, and these amendments would assist in this regard. The Government’s plan is to set targets on reducing pollution from wastewater, agriculture and so on, but setting targets is not an active reduction of this pollutant.

I find it difficult to understand why the Minister and his department are so reluctant to put a duty now on the water companies directly to ensure they reduce and ultimately eliminate discharges of raw and partially treated sewerage into our rivers and waterways. The companies, represented by Water UK in an interesting briefing, have urged us to move focus away from end-of-pipe to look instead at the way surface water is managed, as my noble friend Lady McIntosh was commenting upon. It is true that developers are too often connecting to sewage systems that cannot cope, but this is only part of the problem, and it needs to be resolved by implementing Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. Of course, sustainable drainage systems are important, and connection to a public sewer should not be automatic and needs to be conditional on official approval.

I hope the Minister can provide the reassurances sought by my noble friend the Duke of Wellington so that he will not press Amendment 59. Amendment 60 places a duty

“on sewerage undertakers to take all reasonable steps to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged”

and

“demonstrate improvements in the sewerage systems and progressive reductions in the harm caused.”

In this ground-breaking Bill, how can we not impose that type of duty? Of course, the amendment also requires the Secretary of State and director of the Environment Agency to “secure compliance.” Too often, companies have been allowed to self-report. But, so far, the Government are saying they are fully committed to producing a report on actions required to achieve total elimination so they can fully understand the costs and impacts of doing so. But Amendment 60 would accelerate action on the ground. I hope that, ultimately, the Minister might be persuaded about the merits of supporting this amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this is an interesting issue. The question, of course, is: where does the blame lie? Sewage spills happen and they are intensely damaging for humans and for ecosystems, yet we have heard some explanations that almost seem conflicting. We can argue that it is we who cause the problem because of the way that we dispose of our own waste, or that it is the fault of the water companies, which are clearly incompetent at times—I shall be supporting the noble Duke’s amendment. As I argued in the debate on the office for environmental protection, we have to penalise them for these spillages. In many cases it might be the developers’ fault for building on land they should not have built on, or it might the local authority’s fault for allowing developers to build on, for example, flood plains where they should not be building. At the moment, however, it is the water companies, and we really have to take this seriously.

I am supporting all the amendments as they all seem perfectly acceptable. The Green Party’s view is that all new developments should have a proper, sustainable drainage system so that the sorts of spillages that we are hearing about simply do not happen. However, this has clearly not been achieved and it is a big problem. I have signed the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, on chalk streams. I was going to eulogise about them, but I think I was given the same briefing, as other people have covered more or less the same territory.

I thank Feargal Sharkey, who was the lead singer in a punk band, the Undertones—I am afraid I have never heard of it. He is apparently a lifelong fly-fisherman, but is now dedicating his life to chalk streams and he sent an excellent briefing. Chalk streams are very precious and special, and we do not treat them very well. If not one of our chalk streams currently achieves a good overall environmental health status, that is quite shocking; we really need to do something about it.

I was incredibly impressed by the PR machine of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I have had dozens of emails supporting his amendment. I admire that; perhaps he could share with me exactly how he got it to work.

This is, again, clearly an issue that the Government should have put in the original Environment Bill. This is an old Bill in the sense that it was originally written in 2019. It was pathetic then and it is pathetic still. Can the Government please do a little rethinking and include this issue in the Bill?