Office for Environmental Protection

Duke of Wellington Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Duke of Wellington (CB)]

My Lords, I commend the report from the Office for Environmental Protection. I quote from it:

“The current state of the water environment is not satisfactory … the pace of change has now stalled”.


Will the Minister and his ministerial colleagues consider setting up a review of the way the water companies are regulated? Regulation is currently divided between Ofwat, as the financial regulator, and the Environment Agency, as the environmental regulator. Would it not be better to have a single regulator?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank the noble Duke for his question. The report the OEP produced was for the year up to the end of March last year. In April we published our plan for water, which addresses many of the points the OEP raised. Of course, since then we have had the announcement of the large investment in water quality that we are requiring water companies to make. His point is interesting, and I have considered over many years whether we could have a better landscape of regulation of our water industry. What I want to urge is that there is an urgency about trying to tackle the problems. We have set ourselves very important targets, and if government were to indulge in navel-gazing over many months in trying to create a new body, we would miss our really important 2030 target, which Ministers are concentrating on.