Water (Special Measures) Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting)

Darren Paffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 16th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Tim Farron]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

We have conferred, and hon. Members will be delighted to hear that we have two proposed new clauses to go and we will not press either to a vote. My hon. Friend the Member for Witney and I may disagree, but I think we have confirmed that that is our view.

I have little to say on new clause 34. We had the substance of this debate on amendment 19, but the new clause is significant all the same. The point is simply that among the things that deeply undermine the public’s confidence in the water companies, and in the industry in general, is the very obvious revolving door between the regulator and the water companies themselves.

I will reiterate some points and add to some things that were said the other day. In its analysis in 2023, The Observer found 27 former Ofwat directors, managers and consultants working in the water industry that they had previously regulated.

[Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)]

The hon. Member mentioned directors. I think we all agree that the strength of this Bill is its clarity, but in his new clause, he has chosen to write “any individual”. Does he agree that it is the directors, not the catering team, the cleaning staff, the admin people, the accountants and so on, who have sought to swindle customers or flim-flam the taxpayer? That is where we should focus the attention, and that vagueness does not add to the Bill.

[Tim Farron]

That is an excellent point, and if I was pushing the new clause to a vote, that might make me think twice. I am not the only person who has done this, but I have spoken at length on this issue, not just during this Committee, to make the point that we understand that this is a heated debate, which at times has become quite fiery out there in communities and in this place. But the people who work for the water companies, the regulators and so on are human beings doing a job, and we need to value them. That even includes the directors.

Having said all that, it is clearly wrong that directors are switching from one to the other. I add that our research found that the director for regulatory strategy at Thames Water had previously been a senior Ofwat employee. We had a senior principal at Ofwat moving directly from Thames, where they had worked on market development. We also found links between Ofwat and Southern Water, Northumbrian Water and South West Water, including directors and those who work on regulation.

Water (Special Measures) Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Darren Paffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 9th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

As well as the environmental and water-related issues that affect coastal communities, there are economic, health and other issues of great importance to them. We believe that there is a strong case for having a person in Government whose specific responsibilities are to take care of our coastal areas, and that the Bill is an opportunity to establish that. My support for the other amendments tabled by Liberal Democrats can be taken as given, but I will allow my hon. Friend the Member for Witney to make the case for them.

[Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I rise to speak in support of clause 3, which deals with defining emergency overflows and reporting requirements. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye, I have the great fortune to live on the south coast and the great misfortune of being in the area where Southern Water is a local provider.

[The Chair]

Order. We are debating amendment 13 specifically, so please restrict your comments to that. I call Charlie Maynard.

--- Later in debate ---

[Charlie Maynard]

I will keep this short. I am looking forward to the factsheet, but the Minister will note that new clause 25 focuses on overflows, not emergencies or storms. Frankly, it does not make much difference to a bug, a bunny or a bather whether they get whacked by an emergency overflow or a storm overflow—they are still getting whacked by the sewage. Trying to unify things and get all the issues into one table would be really helpful.

We have already been denied one amendment about flow; I recognise that and will not go on. But quality and flow are important. I am afraid that I find the Government’s position—“We really need to focus on quality, so let’s not talk about flow or install flow meters”—to be spurious. I mean no offence, but it feels like a real let-down that we are not going there now. I do not see any reason why we cannot; respectfully, I think the Government are being flim-flammed by the £6 billion figure.

We talk about sewage treatment works, pumping stations and so on. I have mentioned them already but really want to push the point home because we want to be capturing every overflow, wherever it is. Too often, people talk about works but forget pumping stations and the overflows on the network itself. We look forward to seeing that being covered in the legislation: overflows, works, pumping stations and the network. We will not press the new clause to a Division.

[Darren Paffey]

rose—

[The Chair]

I call Darren Paffey.

[Darren Paffey]

Thank you, Mr Vickers—so keen was I to support the clause that I tried to speak to it too early. I appreciate your forbearance.

Clause 3 has my full support. As I mentioned, I live in an area served by Southern Water. The citizen scientists on the River Itchen have done such good work that they regularly and consistently show that there are unacceptably high levels of faecal matter in the river, even when there has been no storm or emergency. The fleshing out of the requirement for monitoring so that there can be greater accountability is hugely welcome.

Furthermore, my area is entirely relevant to new clause 25 because of the aquatic sports, particularly during the pandemic. A great wild swimming group use the river, and there are also paddle boarders, canoeists and kayakers. I have the greatest respect for them: they go where I would not be willing to at the moment because the levels of illness that people have reported. The stench of what goes into the river also affects local schoolchildren, who cannot play outside. There are all kinds of reasons why the clause will deal with the issues being experienced in my constituency.

We want bathing water status in the area, but that is almost an impossibility at the moment because of the water quality. Again, clause 3 will guarantee the openness, monitoring and forcing of accountability in the area. I welcome the clause and thank the Minister for bringing it forward. The Bill takes action and makes achieving that status much more likely. People in my constituency and beyond, across not only Southern Water’s area but the country, will welcome it too.

[Helena Dollimore]

Does my hon. Friend share my horror at our current situation, in which constituents are getting ear and eye infections from swimming in the sea or rivers? One constituent of mine even attributes their deafness in one ear to an infection they got in the sea. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill is desperately needed for our constituents?

[Darren Paffey]

I share my hon. Friend’s shock and disgust at not only what people are suffering, but the entirely avoidable reasons why people are becoming ill. There are so many benefits to what the clause and the wider Bill can achieve, not just on the issues that Members on both sides of the House have mentioned in relation to trust in our water companies and the use of public money, but for public health. How much more public health benefit could people across all our constituencies experience if they were able to engage with aquatic sports or just enjoy the park areas that surround so many of our rivers, beaches and waterways? I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and am grateful that her point adds even more weight to why this clause is absolutely necessary.

[Emma Hardy]

I thank all Members for their contributions to the debate on clause 3. I reiterate my promise to provide a factsheet and information about the numbers we have used. We have had an interesting debate about the different types of monitors. To clarify, we have emergency overflows, storm overflows, water quality monitors, event duration monitors and volume monitors, which we have discussed. We will make sure that the factsheet provides clarification so that we are all on the same page and understand the debate clearly.

Putting all that to one side, I think we ultimately all agree that it is important to better understand the frequency and duration of discharges from all the emergency overflows. We all think we need to improve transparency and inform investigations by the regulators into potential non-compliance.

Combined with the equivalent duty for storm overflows, which has just come into force, clause 3 will ensure that all sewage overflows on the network are monitored. That will enable regulators and, importantly, the public to see, in near real time, when a discharge from any overflow has occurred and how long it lasted. Water companies will use that information to prioritise investment to mitigate the impact of the most polluting overflows, as guided by the regulators. We have discussed our concerns about volume monitors being more difficult and costly to install. I gave a rather garbled explanation of the difficulty owing to the pipework in the majority of overflows requiring modification. As I said, I will provide further information on those numbers.

Such a large programme of work would take much longer than 12 months. We do not think that this added cost is proportionate to the additional value that volume information would provide, especially given that volume information alone does not provide a comprehensive account of the impact of a discharge—measurement of the water quality is required for that. To repeat a point, I do not want to be a Minister in a few years’ time who has perfected the art of monitoring and done nothing to deal with the causes. That is why the water companies will begin installing continuous water quality monitors for storm overflows, as set out in the price review ’24, to provide further information on the impact of sewage discharges on water quality.

New clause 25, tabled by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, would require capacities for each sewage treatment works and pumping station to be calculated. That is unnecessary because that information is already included in environmental permits and available from the Environment Agency’s public register. The new clause also proposes a general duty for water companies to collect data relating to their performance operating a sewerage system. We do not believe that that broad duty adds any meaningful requirement on water companies beyond their existing duties through the environmental information regulations.

On that basis, I commend clause 3 to the Committee and ask the hon. Gentleman not to press his new clause.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 3 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4

Nature-based solutions

Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords]

Darren Paffey Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to welcome this much-needed legislation. A couple of weeks ago, I visited Bitterne Park primary school, which is just across the River Itchen from Southern Water’s treatment works. I met the school’s Eco Warriors, an inspiring group of schoolchildren who are passionate about improving their environment. They told me that the stench from the treatment works sometimes makes them feel so ill that they cannot play outside at lunchtime. That is what happens when there are more than 1,000 hours of sewage dumping, as there were last year alone—a 350% increase on the year before. Those children expressed their outrage, and their desire for change, in a way that grown-ups are often less good at. Let us be clear: this is not something that our children should have to accept as normal. That is why I am campaigning for bathing water status for the Itchen, and I would like to work with Ministers to see how we can clean up the river and achieve that.

This is a big local issue, and one that I am determined to try to help resolve, but—as has been made plain by the excellent contributions of other Members—there is no doubt that it is also a national issue, and that private water companies have been treating our rivers with utter contempt. Let us not forget how we got here: 14 years of Conservative failure have left us with crumbling water infrastructure and record levels of pollution. That is the legacy. Instead of addressing the crisis, Conservative Ministers buried the scale of the problem, hiding sewage data and shielding water companies from scrutiny. That is why I welcome the tough new penalties in the Bill, which will ban unjustifiable and undeserved bonuses.

We have seen and heard how water companies have piled up debt and demanded bail-outs from the taxpayer, all the while paying bumper bonuses—more than £41 million since 2020—to executives who fail to meet the most basic standards of competence. Meanwhile, it is my constituents and those of other colleagues here who have paid the price—in higher water bills, and in the frustration of seeing a river that they treasure polluted by negligence. The Bill draws a line under those wasted years. That is what we mean when we say we are a Government of service, because we are not afraid to stand up to corporate interests. We are here in service of the British people. That means long-term investment in our water networks and ensuring that every penny spent benefits customers and the environment, not just shareholders.

I am grateful to the groups that have campaigned to keep these issues on the agenda. Now it is over to this Government of service to finish the job and hold those responsible to account.