Degraded Chalk Stream Environments

Cheryl Gillan Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

Of course, and there was nothing spurious about my delight at Veolia failing to get its application through—it was just that I wanted to bring it to the attention of a wider audience.

[Dame Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

My point of order was not a spurious one. I wanted to inquire whether the Secretary of State for Transport had indicated that he was going to make a statement on the escalating costs of HS2, which will damage the chalk streams in my area, as my hon. Friend well knows.

[Mr Walker]

I thank my right hon. Friend for alerting the House to that very important point. HS2 does pose a risk to chalk stream and riverine environments. No doubt if time allows, my right hon. Friend will bring her concerns to the attention of the House.

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[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

It is always a great pleasure to welcome my hon. Friend to Chesham and Amersham, particularly at the invitation of Paul Jennings. Does he agree that Paul Jennings is one of the most outstanding advocates for chalk streams and our environment, and that he should be praised for all the efforts that he and the River Chess Association put into trying to maintain and preserve this chalk stream for our children and our children’s children?

[Mr Walker]

I entirely agree. I know Paul Jennings well; he is one of the greatest friends any chalk stream could have. He is a conservationist of the highest order, and he deserves our full congratulations and respect for the tenacity that he has shown in ensuring that the issues that afflict so many of our chalk streams are kept somewhat in abeyance on the Chess. However, I am afraid that even he would admit that he has not always been successful in doing that.

In the past 10 years there have been five dry events in the Upper Chess. In the 20 years prior to that, there were three. Drier years mean more abstraction, and things are only going to get worse. Affinity Water serves the home counties north of London, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) will know. Affinity has no reservoirs. It only abstracts waters from the chalk aquifers—that is the only place it can get its water from. As we know, the aquifers it abstracts from are those that feed the rivers that are dying. Affinity serves 3.6 million people. In 20 years’ time that number will be nearer to 4.5 million. Where on earth is the water going to come from? If we go on as we are now, the water will come out of the aquifers and we will not have a single chalk stream running in Hertfordshire or Buckinghamshire. That is not an exaggeration; that is where we are at.

Affinity has tried, within the constraints that it is operating under—bearing in mind that it has no reservoir. It reduced pumping at one pumping station on the River Beane by 90%, which was actually a very brave thing to do. Yet that part of the river has not started flowing again because the long-term damage to aquifers that have been used and abused for the past 30, 40 or 50 years is so extreme that it may take decades to recover.

It is not just abstraction that kills rivers; it is what happens after the abstraction. If companies are abstracting water from chalk streams, they either dry them out—and that does kill them—or they reduce the flow. When there is low flow in a river, it cannot get rid of pollutants; pollutants concentrate. A river that is flowing well can move pollutants on down it, dilute them and dissolve them. This does not happen when a river is being extracted to death. So what is the next consequence of extraction? We get topsoil run-off, which just sinks to the bottom of rivers and depletes them of oxygen. It sticks to the chalk at the bottom, destroying any oxygen that can get into the chalk for the small invertebrates that live in it. Then there is phosphorus from agriculture and sewage works, which causes oxygen depletion from algal blooms and eutrophication. Basically, we have environments that cannot support life, or which support limited life, because there is no oxygen. Agricultural pesticides wash in off the fields, destroying biodiversity and wiping out invertebrates and the fly life that comes from them. Then there are the many septic tanks up and down the country that are unregulated and leaking into groundwater that finds its way into rivers. The challenge is immense.

This is an environmental crisis of a monumental scale that we are failing to address. Fundamentally, we need to reduce abstraction now. Thames Water, which I have worked closely with at times, has done that on the River Chess and the River Cray, but it wants to do more—and quite frankly it needs to do more. So what is Thames Water doing? It is making efforts to reduce leakage, and those are to be welcomed and applauded. It can introduce metering, promote water efficiency, and go into schools to educate children as to the importance of water, but, at most, these efforts will reduce consumption in the area it serves from 142 litres per day to 136 litres per day. That is just not a significant decrease. It is an important amount of water, but at 3.5% it is not going to save the day. Thames Water estimates that by 2045 there will be a shortfall of 350 million litres of water a day between the amount available and the amount needed.

There is only one game-changing solution to this crisis, and that is to create more storage capacity, which we do by building more reservoirs. I think that the last major reservoir we built was the Queen Mother reservoir for the east and south-east of England in 1974, so we have grown the population by millions but we have not put in any additional water storage. If we want to save our chalk stream rivers, of which we have 85% of the world’s resource, we really have to build reservoirs. The spade-ready reservoir that has been on the books for 12 years but has been blocked by a well-organised group of 20 people is the Abingdon reservoir in Oxfordshire. That is a game changer. If we get the Abingdon reservoir built, that starts to create the capacity we need, but at the rate the population of London and the south-east is growing, we will need more than one Abingdon—we will need two or three Abingdons. Until we start capturing water at the times of plenty and using it during dry periods like we are experiencing now, we will remain in trouble. We will be in a position where our own environmental record falls well short of where it should be, and we will limit our ability to change the way that other countries handle their natural resources, because they can look at us and say, “What on earth are you doing? You are in no position to lecture us.”

I could go on at great length, but I am not going to. In fact, I may have already gone on at great length, but this subject warrants some exploration. Finally, I would like to thank the Angling Trust, particularly Martin Salter—a former Member here—and Stuart Singleton-White, for the amazing document they have published, “Chalk Streams in Crisis”. It really is an extremely good, but somewhat depressing and sad, read. It is a call to arms. If we are to be taken seriously, we have to make changes to the way in which we approach our valuable and precious ecosystems. One of the most valuable and precious is our chalk streams, and, as I said, we have a lamentable record in this area.

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[Dame Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western). When I was growing up politically, one of my great mentors was Sir Keith Joseph. He said that one of the greatest challenges we were going to face in the future of the world was water shortages and the resulting movement of populations around the world, and I think that is starting to come very true today. My mother was always very keen on saving water. I do not know how many hon. Members will remember doing so, but she used to put a brick in the cistern to make sure that she did not use too much water when flushing the lavatory.

Aside from that, may I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) on obtaining this debate? It would be fair to say that he and I have spent many a happy hour, with Paul Jennings, sitting beside one of the purest and clearest chalk streams, the River Chess, just outside London. It is not even at the end of the Metropolitan line; it runs alongside the Metropolitan line. It is accessible to the public, and it is one of those wonderful habitats and environments that can really bring people peace and tranquillity. People can leave this world behind as they sit there and, in the case of my hon. Friend, try to attract a trout to the end of his line.

[Mr Charles Walker]

The great sadness is that, to the uninitiated eye, the river looks beautiful—and it is beautiful—but as Paul Jennings would say, it is clinging on by its fingertips. Its flow is a fraction of what it should be; although it remains beautiful, its ability to support life is just draining away.

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

I am afraid my hon. Friend is right. I came into the House at the same time as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald), in 1992. That reservoir is not overdue, but long overdue and should have been built many years ago.

May I also pay tribute to the authors of “Chalk Streams in Crisis”? Four of the organisations that contributed are closely associated with my constituency. The Chilterns chalk streams project—a fantastic project started in 1997, prompted by the low flows in the 1990s—was expanded in 2000 to include all the rivers. It is led by the Chilterns Conservation Board, with the River Chess Association and the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire wildlife trusts. All these organisations work constantly and tirelessly to try to protect our environment.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

In my constituency, there are people who can remember swimming in the River Beane north of Watton-at-Stone when they were very young; now it is completely dry. Does my right hon. Friend have constituents with such recollections about the Chess?

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

Yes, very much so. Both the Chess and the Misbourne, at times in the past, flowed really well and invited people in during the hot weather, such as we are going to experience this week, in safety. Safety is very important, because although there is now the amazing rough swimming movement, it is important to remember that rough swimming must be carried out in safety. People need to think about how they are getting into the water and how they are getting out. I fear there will be plenty of people diving into the water later this week, as the temperatures soar.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for letting me join this brief debate on chalk streams. I am going to spend the first Saturday of my recess canoeing down the River Chelmer in Chelmsford. I believe all our rivers are potentially in crisis and need protection. Does she agree?

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

I think the points made by colleagues across the House have been very accurate in that we are busy lecturing other people around the world about how they should save their environment, but we are not actually looking over our shoulders at our own backyard, which is deteriorating.

The point that we have 85% of the world’s chalk streams is not lost, particularly in the south-east, because about a fifth of those are in the Thames Water region. The combination we have talked about—the climate and the geology of where these chalk streams are—means that they have the most amazing characteristics. They support special wildlife habitats and species, including things such as the brown trout and the water vole. Chalk streams are really important not just for angling, but because they are fed by groundwater aquifers. That means the water is clear, pure and inviting, which is of course why the water companies always wants to take water from them.

The hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) spoke about the Thames Water briefing that was put out. He said he was struck by the predicted shortfall of 350 million litres a day between the amount of water available and the amount we will need by 2045. Population growth, climate change and environmental regulations will dramatically affect our demand and need for water. I echo the call made by the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington, because unless we build in safeguards and build in the reuse of water, we are going to find ourselves in a desert and in a drought like no drought we have ever seen. We take water for granted in this country; it is such a shame that we have that attitude. We will have to change it if we are going to preserve our environment, particularly our chalk streams.

[Mr Charles Walker]

I hear what my right hon. Friend says, and she is absolutely right. There is nothing more irritating than to hear weather forecasters on the BBC, ITV or radio programmes such as on Radio 4 going, “Good news, it’s going to be a dry week.” or, “Good news, it’s going to be a dry weekend.” This country needs rainfall. We do not have it in abundance—and when we are not having it, we really do suffer.

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

The point is well and emphatically made: that is absolutely right.

[Matt Western]

The right hon. Lady is being very generous in giving way yet again. I would just add that so much of our culture has been steeped in this green and pleasant land, as it is oft described, but it is becoming increasingly parched. There is one point I want to raise with her. Does she share with me a slight concern that, with HS2, there will be some sort of disruption to the watersheds in her constituency and potentially to those in my own in Warwickshire?

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[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

I like the cut of the hon. Gentleman’s jib, as they say. I am going to get on to HS2—I tried to get on to HS2 earlier, but I was admonished—because it is important.

I want to make a couple of points, particularly about my own constituency. In the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty, we have nine chalk streams. The River Chess and the River Misbourne sit within my own constituency, and I am afraid the problems are identical for both. When we talk about the term “over-abstraction”, I think that is to use the phrase quite mildly. To put this crisis into context for the Chilterns specifically, the average person there uses about 173 litres of water a day, which is 32 litres above the national average. In the Chilterns, we are also facing unprecedented infrastructure development.

Being at the end of the Metropolitan line, we are obviously a popular place for people to live out of London, and we now have the arc of innovation joining Oxford to Cambridge. We will face housing pressure down from the north of the county and across the middle, which will bring hundreds of thousands of houses and more pressure on our precious environment. London and Slough are also expanding, so we have more and more demand coming up from the south of the county for housing and therefore water. The Chilterns AONB is being squeezed in the middle, yet it is the lungs of London. It is the nearest easily accessible area where people can enjoy the pleasures of walking in the hills and by the chalk streams, watching the red kites soar above, yet we will lose all that unless we try to protect it.

The Chess and the Misbourne are unique in finding themselves in the unfortunate position of being on the HS2 route and therefore part of what was a £55.7 billion taxpayer crisis—what I gather is now more likely to be an £85 billion crisis, according to the chairman’s internal review, if the rumours are correct. I believe the figure will be even higher. This is not just about the financial cost of HS2, but about the damage done to our chalk streams, which will cause a loss of environment and habitat that is irreplaceable.

For years my constituents have sent me pictures of the Chess and the Misbourne when the flows are low. They come back, but one day they will not. The River Chess in particular is one of the most important areas of wildlife. I have mentioned the brown trout and the water voles, but we also have stream water-crowfoot there. We get fishermen, photographers and the wildlife enthusiasts coming out. The Chess is also an important educational asset as a chalk stream, and we get universities gathering data and people coming to study there. It used to be very active, with amazing water mills, but that would not be possible today. The Chess was a productive river; we could not find that today. Those water mills are now private houses. The weather and the climate becoming drier, interspersed with some very wet periods, has done the chalk streams no good at all. The river also faces other threats, including from invasive species such as the mink and Japanese knotweed, and that is on top of the extraction for public water supply and the pollution that results from the concentration as the flows become lower.

I very much hope that this debate, which was called by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne, will stimulate a greater interest in these chalk streams and a greater will on the part of the Government to protect them. We are pleased to see that Thames Water and Affinity Water are planning to work together on a new reservoir project near Oxford, which now features strongly in both their new water resource management plans and in Thames Water’s revised business plan for 2020 to 2025. The south-east region of the UK is one of the driest and most populated corners of the country and has the highest demand for water. If we do not increase our reservoir capacity, it will become the desert of the United Kingdom.

This excellent report, which we have all had the opportunity to read, contains a number of recommendations and actions. I will not read them out, but I recommend that the Minister read them carefully and study what could be an important way forward in giving vital protections to this part of our environment. It is unique, and the status of these chalk streams is important not just to the environment in the United Kingdom, but to the world. Once we have lost them, we will never ever get them back. If there is a climate change crisis, there is certainly an even bigger crisis in the state of our chalk streams.

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[Richard Benyon]

One of the most enjoyable things I did in government was writing the water White Paper, and I refer my right hon. and learned Friend to page 35—I think that was the one. It showed a scene of good farming on one side of a river and bad farming on another, so that figuratively laid out before us was what we needed to see more of and what we had to stop happening. I bored my civil servants with that and I bore most of my family, with my wife referring to the River Pang as my mid-life crisis, but the River Kennet is in such trouble. A few years ago, someone spilled about an egg cup-worth of Chlorpyrifos into the system somewhere and it effectively killed several miles of life. That shows us just how extraordinarily vulnerable these ecosystems are.

We can debate great matters of state in this place, and we often do, but rivers are about people’s sense of place. As has been said, we can hold our heads high internationally if we are getting it right on rivers and we cannot if we are getting it wrong. What is shaming is that, while 85% of the chalk streams in the world are in the UK, we are getting it wrong. Wonderful things are done by organisations such as Action for the River Kennet and many of the other organisations that hon. Members in all parts of the House have talked about, but I believe the recommendations at the end of the river fly census are really worth reading.

In the context of the water framework directive, which we are transposing, correctly and with more ambition than exists in that directive as it stands, we should have a special designation for chalk streams. We should also look at the impact of phosphorus spikes and recognise that after we leave the European Union the world is our oyster and we do not have to be stuck by the same rules that govern rivers in southern France and northern Spain. This is our ecosystem, and we have to get it right.

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

rose—

[Richard Benyon]

I will give way for a final time, then I will conclude.

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[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. We are reviewing the position on national parks and the designations that we make around the country. I have asked for the Chilterns AONB to have a stronger designation to give it protection. Does he agree that we should see whether the chalk streams in our country could get a higher designation for protection? Does he agree that this would be a golden opportunity to lift that level of protection, particularly for this rare habitat and environment?

[Richard Benyon]

My right hon. Friend is right. We look forward with interest to what the Glover review will deliver, because it is an opportunity to look at our most precious landscapes and to see whether we are protecting them in the right way. We have an enormous number of designatory tools at our disposal, but they do not seem to stop the problems happening or result in our Environment Agency and other organisations cracking down on wrongdoing as much as they should. This is an opportunity to stand up for what we believe in on the natural environment and say, “Here is something really special, and we are going to get it right.”