Environment Bill

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak on my own behalf now. First, I am absolutely horrified at the abuse that the Minister has received. I do not know about the practices in this House, but the other Member should be disgusted at his behaviour. I have not seen it all. I would check up, but he has blocked me. I think I offered a tiny amount of criticism once and he blocked me. The first person to block me was President Trump—so, you know.

The amendment from the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, is absolutely necessary. We have seen a vast public outcry over this. The whole point was that the Government swept aside our amendment without really understanding just how much the public cared. That was a huge mistake on their part and I hope that they now go all the way to meeting the noble Duke. He has in fact amended the amendment slightly, making it much more reasonable.

Quite honestly, if any Conservative Members at the other end vote against this again, they will have to explain themselves. I thank Feargal Sharkey, the punk star, and Professor Jamie Woodward, who have given me huge amounts of information. I do not believe in abuse on social media, but if I see Tories being virtuous on this subject, I will highlight what is happening in their constituencies.

If we are going to fix the sewage discharges, we can also fix the discharges of plastic and microplastics. Apparently, we could do this all together. That is something we clearly have to do.

I was absolutely horrified by Conservative Central Office, which put out all that nonsense about how much this was going to cost. If the Minister wants to correct the record on that, I would be absolutely delighted, but I understand if he does not have the figures to hand. The issue of cost was not raised at the other end, because I am sure the Ministers did not want to mislead Parliament. Perhaps the Conservative Party’s office might just draw in its fangs occasionally and start to tell the truth.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, on his determination and persistence on this issue. Equally, I thank my noble friend the Minister, my honourable friend Rebecca Pow and the officials who have engaged so sincerely and robustly with us in exploring ways forward.

I am grateful for the progress we have made so far. However, before the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, laid amendments to this Bill, the Government seemed reluctant to place an actual duty on companies. I am hopeful that we can be extremely proud of the changes that we in this House have made in bringing this issue to the forefront of public opinion and prompting action from the Government.

I too express my abhorrence for any vitriol levelled against honourable Members in the other place. Have we not learned in recent weeks the dangers of that type of discourse and personal abuse? I implore noble Lords and those who may still have significant concerns about this Bill to accept that the progress we have made has been made in good faith by Ministers and officials who sincerely wish to make this a landmark piece of legislation—I believe it will be—and are committed to the environmental causes that are so important to so many of us.

Without the duty that the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, proposes, it is entirely possible that little or nothing would happen. That is not safe for public health. I declare my interests as in the register. I recognise the importance of private water utilities to many pension funds and institutional portfolios, which rely on their generous dividends. I have no interest in seeing these companies pushed into bankruptcy or public ownership, but I believe they have neglected their sewage overflow problems for years. They have failed to invest sufficiently to limit the problem and have even played fast and loose with the requirements to report overflows and allowed many illegal discharges. It is time to legislate to force them to spend significant sums to make up for past underspending and egregious behaviour, rather than relying on further promises which leave us with horribly polluted waters.

As the Rivers Trust said—I commend it on its work—more than half of Britain’s rivers are in poor ecological condition due to sewage discharges. This amendment does not call for the immediate elimination of sewage discharges but for ongoing reductions. Clearly, this will take time, but a new duty is so important as we have not really even started.

I noticed this afternoon that the Government have just announced and released on the Defra website plans to further strengthen the Bill with their own amendment to be enshrined in law, which I am led to believe will ensure that water companies have a duty to progressively reduce the adverse impact of sewage discharges from storm overflows. I sincerely hope that that is the case. For that to happen we will need to pass this amendment in this House tonight. I also congratulate my right honourable friend Philip Dunne and my honourable friend Richard Graham and others in the other place who have been working so hard behind the scenes to ensure that we move to a much better place on this amendment.

I therefore hope that noble Lords will support the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, in this important amendment, and I hope and believe that the Minister and the Government will take us to the right place very soon.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, in view of the Minister’s remarks, I should intervene briefly. The noble Baroness just made the crucial point that there appears to have been a major change of government policy. Let us not delude ourselves: that is because of the strength of parliamentary and public opinion. We have been doing our job in making it clear that the disgraceful situation which my noble friend Lord West, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and others have referred to, should not continue.

The Minister was so busy criticising me that he did not say explicitly that he is accepting the amendment in the name of the noble Duke. Are the Government accepting it? I see that the noble Baroness is shaking her head. Is it the case that they are not accepting the amendment? So we will have to vote. That is quite a significant point. The Government are still not in a situation where they are clearly accepting what the noble Duke said. The Government could, procedurally, accept the amendment in the name of the noble Duke, it would go back, and they could then move a further amendment.