Sewage

Calum Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for opening this debate for the Liberal Democrats, and I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am an office holder in the all-party parliamentary water group.

It is one day short of nine months since the first Prime Minister’s Question Time of this Parliament. On that day, it was my privilege to pose the first question to the Prime Minister, and I asked him about the levels of sewage being pumped by Thames Water into the River Evenlode in my constituency. He said that

“Customers should not pay the price for mismanagement by water companies”,

and added that

“it falls to this Government…to fix the mess of that failure.”—[Official Report, 24 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 661.]

However, since that date, Thames Water has pumped sewage into the Evenlode for a further 1,050 hours, while hiking bills for my constituents by over 30% on 1 April. As such, I regret that I cannot see that the plan put forward by the Government is yet working. I urge them to work with we Liberal Democrats to go further and faster.

The problem is that pumping sewage into our rivers and waterways is now routine—indeed, it is so routine that it happens even when there has been no excess rainwater or storms. On the River Ray, for example, there were seven and a half hours of sewage-spilling on 9 April. There was no rain that day, and neither had there been any in the previous week. This so-called dry spilling shows that the regulatory arrangements are a joke. My constituents were shocked to learn from Lib Dem freedom of information requests that Ofwat had not issued a single fine to water companies for their management of sewage treatment since 2021. In the past year, I have joined local residents and campaigners to participate in citizen science projects with the Evenlode Catchment Partnership and RiverWatch to look at the quality of our water. On every measure, the Rivers Evenlode, Ray and Cherwell are severely contaminated.

At the same time, Thames Water is failing its domestic customers in my constituency. These include Mark Hamilton in Garden City, Kidlington, who purchased pumps to try to keep sewage out of his and his elderly neighbour’s home, but they were not enough; Colin Fletcher in Bladon, who had sewage flood into his garden in September and still awaits a repair from Thames Water; Ros Frangopoulus in Chesterton, who saw sewage lap against her house walls and was left with faeces and toilet paper in her garden when the water receded; and Martin Johnson in Yarnton, who could not use his toilet as it routinely overflowed into his home with sewage and now has a tanker stationed next to his house, loudly pumping 24/7 while Thames Water takes months to agree a sewer repair.

In short, we have a company that pollutes our rivers and waterways and the homes and gardens of its customers, while all the time rewarding its executives handsomely and spending an increasing share of billpayers’ money to service excessive debt. The Prime Minister told me that his Government would fix this mess, but I regret that the Water (Special Measures) Act does not go nearly far enough. We need a powerful, effective and public-interested clean water authority to clean up the water companies’ act.