Environmental Targets (Water) (England) Regulations 2022

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. As always, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, has given a very thorough introduction to this statutory instrument. I thank the Minister for his time in providing a briefing.

The environmental targets, which were delayed from 31 October and eventually published on 19 December, are now being somewhat hurriedly debated before the end of January. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee debated all the environmental target SIs on 17 January. The committee did not feel that the original Explanatory Memorandum explained the four water targets very well or how they will be assessed and reported. The Minister has laid out very passionately the rationale behind the water targets.

I have received a briefing from Wildlife and Countryside Link and Greener UK, for which I am grateful, which makes the very valid point that only 16% of water bodies are in a good ecological condition. Therefore, ambition is needed to move this forward. The targets for pollutants—nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment—represent a siloed approach, which I will comment on later. Overall, the lack of ambition is worrying. It is some time since the 25-year environment plan was launched. The subsequent Environment Act should have supported fully that plan, with the environmental targets playing a wholly supportive role.

I have looked at the summary of responses to the government consultation. There were over 56,132 answers to the questions on water posed by the Government, and the government response can loosely be described as “No change”. The date for achieving the targets, however, has changed from 2037 to 2038. The rationale for this is that it will allow targets to span a 15-year minimum timeframe, and this will then tie in with the five-year reporting cycle of the environment improvement plan. This is eminently sensible and straightforward, provided that the targets are ambitious.

The abandoned metal mines target for a 50% reduction by 2038 is, however, not ambitious enough. Some 91% of the responses on this target disagreed with it. As far as I was able to ascertain, there is no detail on how the pollution substances target will be monitored. The Government, in their response to the disagreeing 91%, said that tackling pollution by the largest substances will lead to these rivers achieving good status, since there are few reasons for failure. However, they do not say how they are going to achieve this.

Further down in the document—I fear I quote here—the Government say:

“This ambition will require at least a 10-fold increase in the number of projects operated by the current Water and Abandoned Metal Mines Programme. We considered calls to increase our target ambition, however we concluded this would not be feasible given significant additional funding required, supply chain constraints and long lead-in times to secure the additional capability and to plan schemes. Ultimately, the additional costs would reduce the cost to benefit ratio”.


I repeat: they say that the additional costs would reduce the cost-benefit ratio. We are talking about cadmium, lead, copper, zinc and arsenic. These poisons are leaching out of abandoned mines into our watercourses, in which children are playing and adults may be swimming—but they say that cleaning this up does not meet the cost-benefit ratio. It would seem that silo working can justify almost anything. Undoubtedly, the cost to the water industry will be reduced by this unambitious target. What about the cost to the NHS of dealing with the health issues of those poisoned by exposure to toxic chemicals—workers off sick, children off school? The health impacts are enormous.

I turn now to the target on agricultural nutrients. Some of the respondents wanted more pollutants included in the target scope. The Government reject this because nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment are, by a considerable margin, the agricultural pollutants causing the most harm. Regardless of just how many pollutants are covered or not, the target to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment from agriculture by 40% by 2038 is just not good enough. We have had many debates in this Chamber about the pollution of our major rivers, including the Wye polluted by chicken manure. It really is time for Defra to be taking this matter seriously and dealing with this toxic pollution on a permanent basis.

Much is made in the document of that fact that the majority of responses came from campaigns by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the RSPB and the Woodland Trust. However, each of the responders under these campaigns were individual members of the public who felt passionately about the issues.

The pollution from wastewater target is poor, allowing the water companies flexibility to deliver on it. The consultation response document states that 98% disagreed with the target on pollution from wastewater, preferring a more ambitious target. The document also stated that, of the non-campaign answers, 44% agreed with the outlined flexibility in the target. This means that 56% still disagreed with that target. However you attempt to translate the responses to the consultation questions, the overwhelming response all round is “Not ambitious enough”.

Lastly, the water demand target increases the target for leakage reduction in domestic supplies from 31.3% to an amazing 36.9%. This is on the basis that it will align with industry targets. This is also at a time when household bills are increasing. Surely to goodness the water companies can do better on their percentage of leakages than 36.9%. Who is paying for all this leaked water? The consumer, of course.

All round, I regret that I am disappointed in the water targets. I look forward to the Minister’s response to this debate.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Hayman for drawing these substandard water environment targets to the attention of the House. As has been said, they arise from the requirement of the Environment Act 2021 to publish these targets. As my noble friend has said, they are late and already put Defra in breach of its statutory obligation. But, more importantly, neither these water targets nor the remaining statutory targets which have been published are sufficient to address the persistent trends of environmental decline that we have been hearing about this evening.

The excellent progress report from the Office for Environmental Protection, which was published last week, illustrated well just how big the gap between ambition and delivery has become. As the OEP chair, Dame Glenys Stacey, said:

“Progress on delivery of the 25 Year Environment Plan has fallen far short of what is needed to meet Government’s ambition to leave the environment in a better state for future generations.”


The report went on to say that, of 23 environmental targets assessed, none was found where the Government’s progress was demonstrably on track. It does make you wonder what Defra has been doing for the last four years.

I am grateful to the Minister for reminding us of his previous stint as the Water Minister. I do not doubt what he said, which is that we have more information on water pollution now than we had in the past. But does that not just demonstrate the fact that the Government have been falling asleep on the job? They have known about this, they have been seeing the data coming through, and what exactly have they been doing over the last 13 years—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones? As that evidence came through, why was it not matched by action? Why are we still having to raise these issues now?

It is also hugely frustrating that all of us who were involved in the debates on the then Environment Bill heard the promises made at that time by the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, about focused and ambitious targets that would be truly transformative, yet all that seems to have come to nothing. These water targets appear to focus on very partial elements of the overall water quality challenge. It is not clear to me why these particular targets have been selected. As the OEP identified in its report, there is already a proliferation of targets to which the Government need to bring some sort of order; again, noble Lords have made reference to those other targets. What we need now is an ambitious, long-term, overarching statutory target that provides a proper direction and pulls all the other targets together so that there are proper priorities for our environmental challenges. However, these water targets completely fail to do this.

I agree with many of the submissions to the consultation that what we need is an overall water quality target. That should be the focus of our statutory obligations. We know that not one English waterway, including rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters, is in good ecological and chemical health at the moment. Tackling agricultural pollution is one part of the solution but so is tackling the ongoing crisis of sewage pollution from water treatment works, which we have heard about this evening. This is being exacerbated by the impact of climate change: a mixture of record-breaking temperatures and higher rainfall is leading to the increased use of storm overflows to release raw sewage into rivers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said, storm overflows have become a constant flow rather than occurring as a result of any particular temperature or weather impact.

If the Minister’s response to all this is that there are other measures in place to tackle water pollution, can he please explain how they add up to a total water quality target? What is the overall target and how are we to measure progress on it? That is what is missing from the targets set out in this document. Based on the current trajectories, we are not going to see healthy rivers and lakes in our lifetime.

The Government also make the argument that they already have targets under the water framework directive but, of course, they are proposing scrapping all those European pieces of legislation under the REUL Bill. Can the Minster explain what the longer-term intention is for the water framework directive and, indeed, all the other water directives to which the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, referred? I would have thought that they are essential for us to protect and take forward our environmental ambitions for water in the longer term. Can the Minister clarify whether the Government intend to keep all that legislation?

As my noble friend Lady Hayman said, Greener UK and Wildlife and Countryside Link made the point that the specific water demand target is relative and based on water abstracted, divided by population numbers. The Government have already admitted that it may measure and improve water efficiency levels, but this does not necessarily mean that there is any environmental improvement. Why was this target not linked to a parallel target focusing on controls on water abstraction, with an overarching outcome of improving water quality? That is what we are looking for: a “big picture”, overarching target.

The targets we are debating today are just one example of the inadequacy of the Government’s target-setting process. I hope the Minister and the Government will heed the advice of the Office for Environmental Protection and come back with more ambitious and coherent targets for the future, so that we can see real progress in reversing the environmental crisis we have heard about this evening. I look forward to the Minister’s response.