Water Quality: Sewage Discharge

Debate between Bob Seely and Alex Sobel

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I will start on a positive note by thanking those who have actively engaged in this public health, environmental and economic issue, which has been an absolute catastrophe for our country. I thank my friend Feargal Sharkey, the singer turned formidable environmental campaigner, for his tireless work in bringing to life the impact that sewage dumping is having on every part of our country. It is also important to recognise the work of the campaign group Top of the Poops, alongside Surfers Against Sewage, in collating constituency data to allow the public to see the extent of the Tory sewage scandal in the areas where they live, work and holiday.

Opposition Members have made some extremely powerful speeches illustrating the impact of the sewage scandal in their constituencies. My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) made a good point about excessive corporate pay. My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) spoke about the effect on the biodiversity of our birds and fish. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) pointed out that bills have gone up by 40%.

[Bob Seely]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alex Sobel]

Unfortunately we have limited time, so I will make some progress.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) rightly highlighted the importance of the unique habitats that chalk streams provide. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) pointed out that we need increased regulation that is good for people. My hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) and other north-west Members rightly pointed out that United Utilities has the highest number of discharges. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon) pointed out that constituents have suffered heavily because of overflows in her constituency.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), who is a keen wild swimmer, has been an excellent campaigner for Plymouth sound to get clean bathing water status. I hope his campaign comes to fruition. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) pointed out that the Government have a 27-year plan. Who can wait that long for our rivers to be clean? My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) represents Whitstable beach, where I have swum. She pointed out that swimmers can no longer use it because of the sewage.

My hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) pointed out that United Utilities uses the courts to protect itself from private prosecution, which is exactly why our Bill is needed. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) pointed out the danger that sewage poses to the ambitious plans of our metro Mayors. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) told the House about the horrendous 17-hour spill just outside Reading. Our Bill would end such incidents. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) rightly mentioned sustainable drainage systems and grey-water storage as part of the solution. There have been so many excellent speeches today.

We have to ask ourselves some questions. Is the water industry operating in the public interest? No. Is it right for the Tories to allow water companies to dump raw sewage into our waters? No. Is it time for change? Yes. Of course, we cannot and will not just let water companies off the hook. We should not allow them to wash their hands of the issue and walk off the pitch with £72 billion in dividends, leaving behind a broken system.

[Bob Seely]

rose—

[Alex Sobel]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman, with whom I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on Ukraine.

[Bob Seely]

Earlier today, the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) made a truly dire attempt at public speaking in which he avoided most of the questions put to him. One of the critical questions was why the last Labour Government allowed the utility firms to self-monitor. Does that not exemplify an uncomfortable, corrupting relationship between the last Labour Government and the public utilities?

[Alex Sobel]

When Labour left office in 2010, the Environment Agency said that our rivers were the cleanest at any time since before the industrial revolution. That is Labour’s record.

It should not be left to us or to the public to clean up the mess and pay the price of Tory failure, but we will have to do it. Conservative Members have made the argument that that will involve households picking up the tab. It will not. Our plan, unlike the Government’s, does not require increasing taxpayers’ bills.

As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), in the absence of a credible plan, Labour has done the Secretary of State’s job for her in presenting its own oven-ready plan: to deliver the mandatory monitoring of all sewage outlets and a standing-charge penalty for all water companies that do not have properly functioning monitors in place; to deliver automatic fines on polluters, which is not happening under this Government; to give regulators the necessary power and require them to enforce the rules properly; to set legally binding sewage-dumping reduction targets that will end the Tory sewage scandal by 2030 and not 2050; and crucially, to ensure that any failure to improve is paid for by water companies, which will not be able to pass the charge on to customers’ bills or slash investment.

What we have set out in my hon. Friend’s Bill is just the first phase of Labour’s plan to clear up the mess, but we are under no illusions: the system is fundamentally broken. That is why we need a phase 2 plan—which we will set out in due course—to reform the sector, placing delivery for the public good at the heart of the water industry. There needs to be a greater degree of public oversight in the running of the water industry to protect the public interest, because under the Tories, households are paying the price of a failing water industry, through first having to pay for sewage treatment in their water bills while the Tories allow corner-cutting and the dumping of raw sewage in our waters rather than its being treated properly. I recently discovered that only 37% of our sewage treatment plants even have storage tanks, while the others discharge straight into the local rivers, and even the simplest precautions are not being taken in the majority of our sewage plants—

Environment Bill

Debate between Bob Seely and Alex Sobel

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The world has changed immeasurably in the year since the Bill’s First Reading. In the last 12 months covid-19 has devastated lives, torn through communities and paralysed economies across the globe. The pandemic has taken so much: lives, of course, but also hugs, handshakes, kisses, birthdays, Christmas and Eid. It has given, too: mental health issues, domestic violence and poverty. However, during the height of the pandemic the lockdown also gave us much lower emissions and much better air quality. Anecdotal evidence suggests, somewhat ironically, that those who suffer from certain respiratory illnesses fared much better during the first lockdown. That gives us a brief window into a post-pandemic future if we manage to take a hold of it. We need to create long-term structural change, underpinned by robust legislation.

In my city of Leeds, a person is 20 times more likely to die from air pollution than in a car accident—20 times. According to the Royal College of Physicians, across the UK, air pollution is responsible for 40,000 early deaths, at an economic cost of £20 billion a year. For that reason, I believe it is my moral duty to support amendment 25 to ensure that the particulate matter target for air quality is at least as strict as the WHO guidelines. That is a call I made when we introduced the charging clean air zone in Leeds, a commitment the Government have abandoned. We need to pass the amendment and reintroduce the clean air zone.

The State of Nature report says that UK species diversity is in freefall, with 15% of UK species at risk of becoming extinct. Some our most-loved animals, including Scottish wild cats, red squirrels and water voles, are at risk. I am the parliamentary species champion for the white-clawed crayfish. New clause 5 would give all those species a much better chance of survival. We also have bee-harming neonicotinoids. The UK Government recently granted emergency authorisation for sugar beet seeds to be treated by neonicotinoids. That is banned under EU law and we cannot allow it to come in through the back door, so we need to pass amendment 39.

Finally, on the OEP, its progress has been followed by the Environmental Audit Committee for three years. It is supposedly independent, but its budget, board and chair are set by the Government. Only recently, the Secretary of State said: “We will be able to guide the OEP.” It is worth noting that the Government have no comparable power in relation to any existing enforcement bodies. We therefore need to pass amendment 23 to bring a semblance of independence back to this important regulatory body, and ensure that we move forward and do not have another pause in this legislation.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con) [V]]

I am speaking from the Isle of Wight, where, in addition to being a UNESCO biosphere, we hope in the next couple of years to become the UK’s first island park, if the Government intend to bring forward the new protected landscapes Bill, as I clearly I hope they do.

I support this Bill very much—I think it is a great Bill—but I wish to speak in favour of new clauses 14 and 15 to argue the case for minimising the impact of housing on the environment. It is great that the Government want to design better, and frankly we need better design in this country, but a well-designed low-density greenfield housing estate is still a low-density greenfield housing estate, and these housing estates are, by nature, unsustainable. New clause 14 would allow for a handbrake to stop environmentally damaging housing, because it would, by law, prioritise carbon-efficient housing and carbon-efficient locations.

House building, along with everything else that we do, needs to align with the UK’s binding obligations in the Paris climate accords and carbon-efficient obligations, as well as the Government’s justified world-leading commitment to net zero by 2050. To do that, we need carbon-efficient housing solutions, and that implies a focus on cities as opposed to suburban and rural development. If we do not get that carbon-efficient housing in this Bill, as mandated by this new clause, then can we look at it for the housing Bill?

For me, this also means that we need to do more to incentivise brownfield development in not only suburban but rural areas. Very often brownfield sites are too small to be used efficiently under the current financial regime, and it is much cheaper to build inefficiently on greenfield sites. Greenfield sites, as well as being the most carbon-intensive because we are building detached houses, are also dependent on car use outside existing communities, which means dependence not only on carbon-emitting cars but on people having to travel to get to amenities rather than those amenities being built near them. Research provided by the House of Commons Library shows that homes built in urban areas are significantly less carbon-emitting than those built in suburban and rural areas.

I welcome this Bill, but can we please look at the legal requirement for the most carbon-efficient housing in the most carbon-efficient locations, not only for our climate change commitments but for quality of life in cities, in suburbs and in rural areas?