Sewage

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

The hon. Member makes an important point. One issue that Sir Jon Cunliffe and the water commission are looking at is how we can increase accountability and responsiveness directly to customers and, indeed, to authorities such as the parish councils he has just talked about. I would be happy to arrange a meeting for him with the appropriate Minister.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

The Secretary of State referred to rare ecological rivers that can be damaged by sewage pollution. In my constituency, we have a very rare chalk stream, the River Ver. Thames Water says that many of the sewage spills happen because the pipes are old and porous. Part of the solution is to line them, but when Thames Water is lining pipes, it is not prioritising pipes that are close to rare chalk streams. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss my Chalk Streams (Sewerage Investment) Bill, which would make water companies prioritise those pipes that are close to chalk streams, because of their rare ecological status?

[Steve Reed]

I know the River Ver very well; I used to walk past it every day on my way to primary school at the Abbey primary school at the bottom of the abbey orchard. I would be happy to make sure that the hon. Lady gets a meeting with the appropriate Minister to raise those points.

The additional new resources that our reforms will give to the regulators are underpinned by mandatory monitoring of storm overflows and pollution incidents. Water companies in England and Wales must now publish information on the frequency and duration of discharges from every single storm overflow within one hour of the discharge happening. We have extended that to emergency overflows, so that all spills will be publicly reported in near real time. We expect water companies to monitor 50% of them by 2030 and the rest by 2035. Companies are now required to publish their annual pollution incident reduction plans and implementation reports to outline the progress they have made and show the public that they have a credible plan to end the scandal of water pollution. Those measures give the water regulators new powers to hold water companies to account and ensure that customers and the environment always come first.

We can and we will turn the water sector around. We have secured more than £104 billion of private sector investment in the water sector over the next five years. That is the biggest investment in our water sector in its history, and the second biggest investment in any part of the economy over the lifetime of this Parliament. It will build and upgrade water infrastructure in every single region of the country, cut sewage spills by 45% compared with 2021 levels and drastically improve the quality of water in our rivers, lakes and seas. It will allow us to move ahead with nine new reservoirs and nine large-scale water transfer schemes, and reduce leaks from crumbling pipes, so that we have a reliable water supply for the future.

This vast investment will create tens of thousands of jobs up and down the country, allow us to go ahead with building 1.5 million new homes, support 150 major infrastructure projects and power new industries with high water usage, such as data centres. This is the regional economic growth that the country voted for last year; this is the Labour party’s plan for change in action.