Water White Paper

Carla Lockhart Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Emma Reynolds]

I can promise my hon. Friend that that is exactly what we are going to deliver: a new, more powerful regulator with teeth. I am concerned about the incident that she describes, so the Water Minister or I will be happy to meet her to discuss it.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I broadly welcome the White Paper and its evidence-based recognition that sewage and waste water failures are central to poor water quality, rather than defaulting to blaming agriculture. That approach is entirely absent in Northern Ireland where the Agriculture Minister, Mr Muir, is advancing an extreme, one-sided environmental agenda in the form of a nutrients action programme and blaming farmers alone while Northern Ireland Water pumps over 20 million tonnes of sewage into rivers and loughs each year. Will the Secretary of State agree to engage with the Northern Ireland Executive and share the learning, so that they can learn from what is happening here in GB?

[Emma Reynolds]

I would not like to get involved in Northern Irish politics—that is not for me to do. I can reassure the hon. Lady, however, that we are working in close co-operation with all the devolved Governments. I met Andrew Muir at the Oxford farming conference, and we discussed water. Early last year, at an interministerial group meeting, we discussed different sources of pollution and how the different devolved Governments are dealing with them.