Farming Rules for Water

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. We should see the fact that only a very small percentage of our rivers are fully functioning ecological systems as something of a national disgrace. We have spent many hours debating the Environment Bill here and are moving to a much better place—but we can do much more, working with the farming community and recognising that it is only part of the problem and that there are other polluters as well. We want to make sure that we are abiding by our commitments to get our rivers in good ecological state in a very short space of time.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Clearly, sorting out pollution in our rivers is absolutely critical. As the Minister said, we have talked about this time and again on the Agriculture Act and the Environment Bill. My understanding is that a statutory review of the regulations was undertaken by Defra at the turn of the year and was due to report last April, but we have not seen this yet. Can the Minister explain the delay and when we are likely to see it? He mentioned the working group. Is this something that the working group will look at and report on?