Sewage Pollution

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if he will make a statement on sewage outflows into our beautiful waterways and on our beaches.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

As a Cornish MP, I have long been aware of the challenges created for our aquatic environment by storm overflows. When I became Secretary of State in February 2020, I instructed officials to change the strategic policy statement for Ofwat to give the issue greater priority.

This is the first Government to set a clear requirement for water companies to reduce the harm caused by sewage discharges: we have set that in law through the Environment Act 2021. We are taking action now on a scale never seen before. Water companies are investing £3.1 billion now to deliver 800 storm overflow improvements across England by 2025. This will deliver an average 25% reduction in discharges by 2025.

We have also increased monitoring. In 2016, only 5% of storm overflows were monitored. Following the action of this Government, almost 90% are now monitored, and by next year 100% of all storm overflows will be required to have monitors fitted. This new information has allowed our regulators to take action against water companies. The Environment Agency and Ofwat have launched the largest criminal and civil investigations into water companies ever, at more than 2,200 treatment works, following the improvements that we have made to monitoring data. That follows 54 prosecutions against water companies since 2015, securing fines of nearly £140 million.

Water companies should consider themselves on notice. We will not let them get away with illegal activity. Where permits are breached, we are taking action and bringing prosecutions. Under our landmark Environment Act, we have also made it a legal requirement for companies to provide discharge data to the Environment Agency and make it available to the public in near real time: within an hour. This is what Conservative Members have voted for: an Environment Act that will clean up our rivers and restore our water environment; that has increased monitoring and strengthened accountability; and that adds tough new duties to tackle sewage overflows for the first time.

The Government have also been clear that companies cannot profit from environmental damage, so we have provided new powers to Ofwat under the Environment Act to modify water company licence conditions. Ofwat is currently consulting on proposals that will enable it to take enforcement action against companies that do not link dividend payments to their environmental performance or that are failing to be transparent about their dividend payouts.

Yesterday, I laid before Parliament the storm overflows discharge reduction plan. The plan will start the largest investment in infrastructure ever undertaken by the water industry: an estimated £56 billion of capital investment over the next 25 years. It sets strict new targets for water companies to reduce sewage discharges. Designated bathing waters will be the first sites to see change. By 2035, water companies must ensure that overflows affecting designated bathing waters meet strict standards to protect public health. We will also see significant reductions in discharges at 75% of high-priority sites.

Water is one of our most precious commodities. Water companies must clean up their act and bring these harmful discharges to an end. I commend our storm overflow report, which was published yesterday, to the House.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the Secretary of State for his response, but I am utterly staggered by his complacency. Following the news over the summer that raw sewage was being pumped into our waterways and along our beautiful beaches, I have received so many messages from constituents who are horrified that water companies are polluting in such a revolting way. Does the Secretary of State recognise that, after 12 years, people rightly hold his Government responsible for this risk to human and environmental health, and for allowing the twin failures of weak regulation and Government cuts, together with the continuation of a privatisation process that has lined the pockets of shareholders at the expense of investment in the infrastructure that we so desperately need?

Where is the urgency from Ministers? We have a so-called plan that allows water companies to continue polluting until 2035 in areas of significant importance to human and ecological health and until 2050 elsewhere, which means sanctioning nearly 30 more years of pollution. Is that genuinely what the Secretary of State considers to be an urgent response? Will he strengthen it to a 90% reduction in storm overflows by 2030 at the latest? Worse still, it was previously illegal for water companies to discharge sewage when there was no heavy rainfall, but under the Government’s new plan, that is now permitted until 2050. Why are this Government going backwards?

Our soon-to-be Prime Minister has claimed that she will “deliver, deliver, deliver”, but all that she did deliver when she was Environment Secretary were devastating cuts to the Environment Agency. Has the Secretary of State asked whether she regrets those cuts, and will the Government reverse them? Is the Secretary of State proud of a situation in which 24% of sewage overflow pipes at popular resorts have monitors that are faulty, or do not have monitors at all? Since privatisation in 1991, water companies have made a staggering £50 billion in dividends for their shareholders. Why does the Secretary of State’s plan include imposing costs on customers to pay for improvements—a bill that the companies themselves should be footing?

Coastal communities are still recovering from the pandemic. Local beaches are at the heart of these communities, and they are critical to our constituents’ wellbeing as well as to local economies. However, one local firm in Brighton told me that on the August bank holiday weekend, when it would normally see a 30% increase in business, it saw a 70% decrease. What compensation will there be for such businesses?

Will the Secretary of State now cut the crap, commit himself to strengthening the Government’s plan, and bring our failing system back into public hands, which is where it belongs?