Combined Sewer Overflows

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had discussions about sewage discharges over a number of years now, including several extensive sessions during the relatively recent passage of the Environment Act 2021. Everybody is clear that, under the law, sewage should be discharged only in exceptional circumstances—everybody it seems but the Government, the arm’s-length bodies their Ministers are responsible for and the water companies those bodies regulate. In the OEP’s view, Ministers and regulators are guilty of

“misinterpretations of some key points of law”.

That is extremely worrying. We also think it is worrying that the Environment Secretary has chosen to disagree with her own environmental body, in one of its first major investigations of government conduct.

During the passage of the Environment Act, colleagues across your Lordships’ House voiced concern about the OEP’s lack of enforcement powers. Regardless of one’s views on the European Court of Justice and the European Commission, the previous situation was clear: if the Government were found to have acted unlawfully, there could be fines or other enforcement action. Could the Minister confirm today that, if the OEP recommends legislative or regulatory changes, or seeks to take enforcement action against Defra, his department will comply? Does he regret that this question even needs to be asked, following the adversarial approach adopted by his Secretary of State?

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I suggest I have a different understanding of how an OEP investigation works. Let me be absolutely clear about this: the OEP has not satisfied itself, on the balance of probabilities, that Defra has failed to comply with environmental law; rather, the OEP believes it has reasonable grounds for suspecting the Defra has failed to comply with environmental law and has asked us for more information to help it make its decision, and of course we are complying with this process. Her allegation is that this is a done deal; the OEP’s concerns that the Government have somehow broken the law is under discussion. We now have two months to reply, and the OEP then has two months to adjudicate.

The aims of the OEP investigation are to clarify the roles and responsibilities of the public authorities—Defra, Ofwat and the Environment Agency—and to determine whether they have failed to comply with their respective duties. The OEP will consider the responses from all three public authorities in detail before deciding next steps. We should not prejudge its conclusions. The OEP’s press release clearly states that:

“If the response changes the OEP’s view on whether there has been a failure to comply with the law, or sets out steps the public authority intends to take to rectify the failure, then the OEP may decide not to take any further action in relation to the alleged failure(s).”


My answer to her final question is: yes, of course we will comply. We have created the OEP to try to find the best possible way to hold government to account on environmental policy following our leaving the European Union, where we were subject to infraction fines if we had broken the law. Through the Environment Act, we wanted to create something that held government departments to account. We believe in the OEP and what it does, and we will certainly comply with its findings.