Sewage Discharges: South West

Ben Maguire Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

The issue of sewage dumping in our waterways was one of the biggest concerns of residents across my North Cornwall constituency during the general election. And judging by the number of Members here today, I certainly was not alone in that. In the course of my speech, I will take the opportunity, first, to highlight the scale of the problem of sewage dumping and its effects on our communities; secondly, to set out what infrastructure improvements are badly needed to tackle this scandal; thirdly, to outline some of the regulatory reforms that are required; and, finally, to outline what South West Water must now do to end the scandal of constant sewage dumping in our beaches and rivers.

North Cornwall is a very rural constituency. We have several rivers, including the Camel, the Inny and the Allen. North Cornwall is also blessed with some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, including Harlyn, Summerleaze, Widemouth bay, Daymer bay, Polzeath, Crackington and many more. I was extremely fortunate to grow up in Cornwall where I learned to swim and surf at these incredibly beautiful spots. North Cornwall’s families and residents, young and old, thoroughly enjoy the waves at Mawgan Porth, the fishing villages of Padstow and Port Isaac and the breathtaking cliffs at Tintagel. They also enjoy the impressive sea pools in Bude and Boscastle.

The Environment Agency’s 2023 figures showed that the total duration of sewage overflows discharged into local rivers and waterways in the south-west region was 530,737 hours, which represented an 83% increase compared with 2022.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

In 2020, Natural England notified Somerset councils that the phosphate levels in the Somerset Levels and Moors Ramsar site were too high, and thousands of homes are still caught in a moratorium. Alongside this, last year, there were 3,336 sewage spills in Glastonbury and Somerton, making it the most polluted constituency in the country. Does my hon. Friend agree that water companies should be investing in more sewage treatment plants and that the Government should introduce a sewage tax on water companies’ profits?

[Ben Maguire]

I absolutely agree on both of those points and I shall address them in slightly more detail in a moment.

In 2023 alone, many of the blue flag beaches in North Cornwall experienced more than 2,700 hours of sewage discharges across 148 separate incidents. This pollution, as my hon. Friend has just mentioned, is often linked to combined sewer overflows, which are activated during heavy rainfall to prevent urban flooding, severely compromising water quality and endangering swimmers and marine life.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He talks about storm overflows. The data recorded from storm overflows by South Water West is sometimes different to that which appears on the Water UK app. Does he agree that we need just one single reliable source for sewage outflow data?

[Ben Maguire]

I agree that we need one reliable source of data, and I will come on to address that slightly later in my speech.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Member for bringing forward this matter. He referred to the fact that his mum and dad live in a farm building, and it is clear what the issues are there. Does he have the same problems as my constituents when it comes to single houses with septic tanks? The removal of sludge can be done only once a year. For disabled people and big families it is important to have it done twice a year. Has he experienced that issue in his own constituency?

[Ben Maguire]

Having grown up in a very rural area in North Cornwall, I know that many of my constituents face that issue, so I thank the hon. Member for raising it.

To look beyond the shocking statistics for a moment, and properly understand the real impact that the issue is having on coastal communities such as mine, I refer to three-year-old Finley from Widemouth bay. This time last year, Finley’s mum took her son to Widemouth bay to play on the north Cornish beach. Later that day, Finley became extremely unwell, and a friend’s child who had been on the same beach at the same time had similar symptoms of diarrhoea and vomiting, which lasted for weeks. Just last week, there were three sewage dumps in Widemouth bay. Tragically, in just the few months since my election, I have lost count of the number of constituents who have written to me or stopped me in the street to explain how they have stopped swimming or surfing in our oceans for fear of getting sick from the contaminated water.

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

Cornwall is covered with sewage alerts, and proceedings have been taken against South West Water. Does the hon. Member agree that the new water review will be vital to reform regulation and infrastructure?

[Ben Maguire]

I will address the water review in a moment. I am pleased that the Government are finally looking at this issue in detail, and crucially, as the hon. Member says, consulting, which is so important.

As I said, I have lost count of the constituents who have told me that they have stopped swimming or surfing in our oceans for fear of getting sick from the contaminated water. Imagine the immense effect of that on our tourist industry in Cornwall and the south-west, which has been the envy of the country. Sewage spills are wrecking not only our health but vital local businesses. Surfers Against Sewage has reported large increases in reports of people getting ill after entering the water. In the year to September 2022, there were 720 reports, double the number in the previous year. By September 2023, the number had rocketed to 1,924. It was with a certain amount of trepidation that I went surfing at Summerleaze beach in Bude just days before the election—not just because my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) was standing next to me in a wetsuit and I wondered what stunt awaited me, but because there were visible signs of a sewage dump from earlier that day.

It is not just our beaches that bear the brunt of sewage dumping but our rivers. Just today, Natural England confirmed that the River Camel remains in an unfavourable condition, and Cornwall Wildlife Trust cautioned me just this afternoon that our ecosystems and species are in grave danger if we do not urgently put a stop to this.

[Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)]

My constituency is a little further north but still in the south-west. I recently spent an afternoon with some environmental campaigners in Tewkesbury, testing and recording samples from the River Avon for nitrate and phosphate pollution. The amount of pollution was found to be very high in the former and high in the latter, consistent with their findings since June 2023. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is time to put environmental experts on water company boards to hold them to account and ensure that environmental concerns take precedence in the boardroom?

[Ben Maguire]

I do agree with my hon. Friend—I am starting to wonder whether hon. Members have seen my speech because I was coming on to that.

How do we end this scandal? Despite the results of the parent company of South West Water, the Pennon Group, for 2023-24 showing that the group’s revenue had increased 10% to £908 million, largely thanks to higher customer bills, very little of that was spent on much-needed infrastructure upgrades. To add insult to injury, the company recently announced that South West Water bills will rise by a staggering 22% by the year 2030. A copy of Pennon Group’s five-year business plan to 2030 seemingly describes the state of our waterways in a parallel universe. On page 27, under the heading “Bathing water quality”, reference is made to

“delivering improvements at bathing and shellfish waters across the region, to maintain our 100% bathing water performance.”

A quick glance at the company’s own WaterFit sewage app shows there to be sewage dumping at multiple beaches across Cornwall and the south-west region today, and quite likely as I speak.

[Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate. Sewage is a massive issue across the south-west, and in Dorset in particular, and a constant source of frustration for my constituents. One issue that comes up time and again is the excessive profits that private water companies are making. Does he agree that it is time those companies were brought back into public ownership?

[Ben Maguire]

I will lay out some of my suggestions for water company reform shortly, so I will not give away any spoilers just yet.

It is well known that one of the biggest reasons for sewage dumping is that there is not enough capacity in our storm overflow tanks to hold rainwater. To make sufficient capacity, those tanks are routinely emptied and raw sewage is pumped into our waterways. Soon after my election, I was faced with reports of brown water coming out of residents’ taps in St Eval and, in some cases, no water at all. It turned out that the reservoir tank at the nearby Bears Down reservoir had serious cracks in it, and water tankers were deployed to serve the area. The capacity of the tankers was nowhere near sufficient, and a measly compensation of £50 per household was issued after weeks of severe disruption.

Similarly, in Week St Mary, residents complained to me about problems with their water pressure, which have persisted for years. In some cases, the sudden drop in pressure caused scolding from the resulting hot water. It is quite clear that those issues have arisen after decades of under-investment in our water and wastewater infrastructure. We may reasonably ask, “Where has Ofwat, the water regulator, been while all of this has been going on?” Ofwat has seemingly been missing in action, which brings me to the urgent need for a regulation revolution in our water industry.

I welcome the Government’s plan—part of the Water (Special Measures) Bill—to prohibit performance-related pay for senior officials in a year when a water company fails to meet its environmental, consumer or financial standards. I eagerly await how those standards will be more tightly defined. I am more suspicious, however, about the proposal to require each water company to publish an annual plan detailing how it will reduce pollution incidents. Many water companies already do that, and my constituents want to know how those companies with their glossy brochures and ambitious targets will be held to account.

There was a palpable sense of relief among senior executives at South West Water when I met them soon after the details of the Bill were published. On enforcement measures, if the water companies fail to meet improvement targets, Ofwat will be given the power to issue fines. It is questionable whether fines will incentivise firms that are making hundreds of millions of pounds and, again, I look forward to seeing at what level the penalties will be set following the consultation.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. Certainly in my own constituency, further west than his own, in west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, there have been 18 discharges around the coast just in the past 10 days. On the proposed changes in the Government consultation, as attractive as the concept of bringing water back into public ownership is—and I strongly support it—the consequences and costs make it rather challenging. The Conservatives set up the companies as risk-free, money-making emporiums. Does he agree that we need to bring in regulation that ensures they are governed in the public interest?

[Ben Maguire]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I will outline some of the measures I will put to the Minister.

I urge the Government to go much further by scrapping Ofwat, which has proven itself to be toothless and missing in action. The Liberal Democrats would replace Ofwat with a much more powerful clean water authority, which could ban bonuses for water company bosses who fail to stop sewage dumping, revoke licences of poorly performing water companies immediately, force water firms to publish the full volume and scale of their sewage dumping, mandate local environmental experts to sit on water company boards, and set legally binding targets on sewage discharges.

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way and for bringing this debate before the House. On the question of public ownership, does he think that the independent commission on the water sector regulatory system might be better off if it were tasked with at least considering how public ownership of water companies might work, rather than the current situation, in which this supposedly independent commission has been banned from considering one of the possible solutions to the problem?

[Ben Maguire]

The hon. Member raises an important point about independence. As was covered briefly earlier, that consultation will be a very important part of this process.

Lib Dem amendments have recently been tabled in the other place to empower the regulator to revoke water company licences in the face of repeated failures and, crucially, to make it a criminal offence for water companies to fail to implement pollution reduction plans, holding senior managers personally and criminally liable. In the last Parliament, my Liberal Democrat colleagues in this place also tabled an amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill that would have created a sewage illness victim compensation scheme. Under that scheme, where medical evidence is provided to support a claim, proper compensation would be payable by water companies to their victims, such as three-year-old Finley and his family. I take this opportunity to plead with the Minister, on behalf of all my constituents, to seriously consider these measures so that water companies are finally held accountable, with no more excuses and no more delays.

Picking up on a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) earlier, EDMs—not electronic dance music or early-day motions, but event duration monitors—that are fitted to storm overflow tanks only measure the number and duration of spills, not the volume. There have also been reports of faults with those EDMs, which could represent a serious under-reporting of sewage spills, significantly skewing the data. That could mean that the situation is far worse than we thought. Whatever enforcement approach is taken by the Government against water companies, the accuracy of the data will be crucial, so I ask the Minister to please consider the accuracy of the current monitoring system.

When I took my seat in this place, I promised my constituents that I would always speak truth to power. In a previous career, I advised businesses and their leaders. If I could offer some advice here and now to the chief executive of South West Water, I would say, “Please do the decent thing and go now.” In what other universe could a chief executive preside over such a record of abject failure? With Ms Davy having been the chief finance officer since 2015 and then the chief executive since 2020, almost 10 years of failed leadership have brought us to this diabolical situation. How on earth can anyone now have confidence that South West Water will miraculously turn things around in the next five years?

Ms Davy declined to take a bonus last year, instead adding that bonus amount to her base salary, which at last count was a whopping £860,000. Before Members start worrying about South West Water’s shareholders, they too were awarded a generous dividend of 44p per share. This is all while water bills are rocketing, children are getting severely sick as a result of that greed, and people everywhere are too afraid to enjoy the beaches and rivers that make Cornwall and the wider south-west so uniquely special. As a society, at what point do we come together and say that this has to stop, for the sake of our children and the sake of us all? Well, I humbly suggest that that point has now long passed.