Water Quality: Sewage Discharge

Derek Thomas Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

We all care about this issue. I am a Cornish MP and know more than anyone how difficult the issue is for constituents who really care not just about the quality of the water in which they swim, but about marine life and the importance of our rivers for supporting really good ecological systems. We often refer in this place to the responsibilities of the water companies, but we do not talk about the fact that what must go into the system has to come out somewhere. When we ask children in primary school, they understand that, if we were to switch off storm overflows tomorrow, the sewage and all the waste would come up in their homes. The idea that we should switch those off today and appease all our voters is ludicrous, because they will soon be arguing and chasing us down the street because of what we have done to their homes.

Let me give an example. In Cornwall, in order to reduce storm overflows, septic tanks could not be emptied last year. That meant care homes, private homes and businesses could not clean out their septic tanks. It was havoc. It was driven by the need to clean up what we put on our land, which I support, and by the need to reduce storm overflows, which I also support, but it was done in a way that did not understand what the immediate implications would be. It was a massive problem. Following a lot of pressure from MPs, the Environment Agency adjusted the advice to allow us to get round that. As a result, South West Water is building in massive capacity—treatment plants to store this stuff in times of high waterfall. We need to be careful that what we ask for does not create alternative consequences that we would not want in our own homes and the homes of our constituents.

However, this is not about Government doing nothing. I have had conversations with the Minister about this going back many years. Today, because of her actions and the actions of others, £50 million is being spent on the Isles of Scilly alone to clean up the water that people drink and how the sewage is treated and then put into the sea. That money is being spent because the Government forced that to happen and ensured that it happened. I have had money spent in St Ives, Carbis Bay and St Erth—a massive amount of money has been spent in St Erth where the treatment plant is—Mousehole, Newland and Porthleven. My experience as an MP is that, when we engage constructively with Ministers and the water companies, we can get these things done and done quickly—or at least more quickly than was happening previously.

I find this whole debate infuriating because it fails to take broader responsibility on the question of how we communicate with our constituents about their water use, how we make sure that councils reduce the run-off into combined sewage systems, and how we work with farmers to understand how we can plough differently to stop water pouring into the water systems. This is not just about beating up water companies, on which the Government introduced regulation to correct the problem as soon as we can.