Oral Answers to Questions
Ellie Chowns Excerpts(6 days, 20 hours ago)
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Emma Hardy
Unsurprisingly, I could not agree more. I thank my hon. Friend for his work to champion his community here in Parliament. The previous Government oversaw record levels of sewage pollution in our rivers, lakes and seas, but this Government have secured £104 billion of private investment to upgrade crumbling pipes and halve sewage pollution by 2030, so that communities can once again take pride in their rivers, lakes and seas.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
As I have reminded Ministers on a number of occasions, tackling pollution in our rivers and seas requires us to address agricultural pollution as well as sewage pollution. I am disappointed not to hear the Minister mention that, but I like to come with solutions. I recently visited the Wyescapes landscape recovery project in my constituency, which is an innovative farmer-led project of 49 farmers protecting soil, reducing pollution, restoring nature and producing great-quality food. Will the Minister, or perhaps her colleague the Farming Minister, come to visit this innovative project to see how we can tackle river pollution and protect nature and food production?
Oral Answers to Questions
Ellie Chowns Excerpts(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Steve Reed
I thank my hon. Friend for her question, and I understand her concerns. I reassure her that the Government will always act in the national interest on these issues. Thames Water must meet its statutory and regulatory obligations to its customers and to the environment—it is only right that the company is subject to the same consequences as any other water company. The company remains financially stable, but we have stepped up our preparations and stand ready for all eventualities, as I have said before, including a special administration regime, if that were to become necessary.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
As the Secretary of State knows, my constituency of North Herefordshire is very seriously affected by water pollution in the Lugg and the Wye. I confess that I am disappointed that, in both his answers to the hon. Member for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes), he did not mention agricultural pollution at all. That is despite the fact that agriculture is the main source of water pollution in the country, as is shown in the report of the Independent Water Commission, which unfortunately was not allowed to look into it in any detail. I pay tribute to River Action, which this week won a court case forcing planning authorities to consider the cumulative impact of industrial agricultural development, and to Greenpeace, which last week pointed out the impact of toxic sewage sludge. Will he confirm whether he is updating the farming rules for water? Given that he has cut the budget of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—
Thames Water
Ellie Chowns Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Steve Reed
My hon. Friend will be aware of the action we have taken through the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 to give the regulator the power it needs to ban the unjustified bonuses that water bosses were able to pay themselves under the previous Government. The era where they could profit from pollution ended when that Government ended.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
The Green party has campaigned for the public ownership of water since the year dot, unlike certain cynical opportunists behind me on the Reform Benches. We know allowing privatised monopolies to control water leaves infrastructure crumbling, waterways running with sewage, sky-high bills, and shareholders laughing all the way to the bank. Given this obscene and fundamental failure, why will the Government not even consider bringing water back into public hands, where it belongs?
Steve Reed
The problems facing the water sector are to do with failures of governance and regulation. We need to tackle the actual problems, not the imagined ones. If we were to seek to nationalise the water sector, that would cost in excess of £100 billion that would have to be taken away from services such as the national health service or education. It would take years to unpick the current model of ownership, during which time there would be no investment and water pollution would get worse. From the example of Scotland, we know that nationalisation is not the answer, because there are also problems with pollution there. We will ensure that our priority is pure water, not the purity of the hon. Lady’s ideology.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ellie Chowns Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I can assure him that I and Baroness Hayman, who leads on this in the Department, are very well aware of the recent reports and the antiquated nature of the legislation. We will come back with proposals in due course.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
The hon. Lady and I have discussed these issues before. I know that she shares my passion for achieving the transition to the nature-friendly farming that we all want. The Government are investing £5 billion in farming over the next two years—the highest budget for sustainable food production and nature recovery in our history. Through a range of measures delivered through the Government’s environmental land management schemes, we are supporting farmers to implement nature-friendly farming practices. We now have more farmers than ever in nature-friendly farming schemes, and reform in the sustainable farming incentive will target funds fairly and effectively towards food, farming and nature priorities. We will announce further details later this year.
Ellie Chowns
On behalf of the Green party, on this special day of commemoration, I join colleagues from across the House in paying tribute to all those who sacrificed so much to resist and defeat fascism 80 years ago.
I thank the Minister for his response. We have indeed discussed these issues before and will continue to do so, I am sure. At the weekend, I spent time on two farms in my constituency—at both I met groups of farmers, including members of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, who told me of their huge frustration at being let down by the Government’s policy on farming and the lack of support. They recognise how vital farming is, including the transition to nature-friendly farming, for this country’s food security, nature protection and climate action. Does he agree with the farmers in my constituency about how vital the transition to nature-friendly farming is for those issues, and will he give us a date for when he will introduce such policies—
Sewage
Ellie Chowns Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
I thank the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for bringing this important debate to the House. As the Secretary of State said, we are all in furious agreement that the condition of our rivers, lakes and seas is an absolute scandal. It would be remiss of me not to point out that the problem is not just due to sewage, as the Minister knows. As colleagues have mentioned, agricultural pollution is a key factor in the condition of our rivers, lakes and seas, and we cannot fix the problem without addressing both sewage and agricultural pollution together. However, today’s subject is sewage, so I will focus on that.
Turning to the motion before us, I am not against introducing a blue flag system for rivers and streams, but that is just tinkering around the edges of a broken system. A shortage of flags and targets is not the problem. Last year, the Environment Agency gave the water companies a collective target of a 40% reduction in sewage incidents, but what did we have? A 30% increase. Monitoring and targets are not enough if there is no meaningful action or sanction. I understand that the water companies have well over 1,000 criminal convictions between them—some companies have over 100 convictions—but they are still getting away with it.
At the same time, bills are going through the roof by an average of over 20% in a single year, and by even more for rural constituents, including mine. It is the bill payers, not the shareholders, who are paying the price. Customer bills provide an average of 35% of company revenue to pay the financial costs—the dividends to shareholders and the interest on loans—of the privatised water and sewerage companies in England and Wales. In the case of Scottish Water, a publicly owned company that may have other problems, those costs amounted to just 8% of revenue from consumer bills.
Mr Adnan Hussain (Blackburn) (Ind)
In my constituency, raw sewage discharge increased by 75% in 2023, yet there are plans to raise bills by 32% in the next five years. It is clear that the British public are being ripped off. Does the hon. Member agree that while better regulation and investment rules may fix some of the issues, the only way to solve the whole problem is to bring the water supply back into public ownership?
Ellie Chowns
I completely agree. That is precisely the thrust of my argument.
Over the last three decades, shareholders have extracted £83 billion in dividends. They have invested effectively less than nothing, because the share capital and retained earnings in those companies are now lower than they were at the time of privatisation. The capital investment has been taken out of customer bills, yet customers are still paying through the nose. A professor at the University of Greenwich—I have his report here—has shown that the cost of the investment needed in the water industry would be much lower under public ownership than under private ownership. It is clear that, ultimately, public ownership is the only way to gain the control needed to ensure that this essential public utility works for the public benefit, yet the Labour party is unfortunately not willing to consider it.
The Government have the power to bring failing companies into special administration via the High Court, but during the passage of the Water (Special Measures) Act, the Minister said:
“Special administration must be a last resort, as it has significant consequences for a company’s investors.”––[Official Report, Water (Special Measures) Public Bill Committee, 14 January 2025; c. 96.]
That speaks volumes about who the Government think our water industry is for. It is not for those so-called investors—actually extractors—who have taken out so many dividends paid for by debt while neglecting our infrastructure and killing our waterways with sewage. There should be significant consequences for them. The people of this country—the British people—do not want their water to be investable: they want it to be clean, reliable, affordable and in public hands. Public ownership is the key element of the solution to the sewage scandal.
Water Bill
Ellie Chowns ExcerptsFriday 28th March 2025
(5 months, 1 week ago)
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Carla Denyer
If hon. Members of this House feel threatened by the setting up of a citizens’ assembly in order to gather views, that may be an indication of the weakness of the democracy that we have in this place. I really value the contribution that citizens’ assemblies can make. They have been used in other countries, notably Ireland. They are not a replacement for the House of Commons, but they can add valuable extra detail.
Ellie Chowns
Does my hon. Friend agree that we have the example of the citizens’ assembly on climate change, which was established jointly by six Select Committees of this House a couple of years ago?
Carla Denyer
I agree with my hon. Friend, and I would also point to the citizens’ assembly set up by Bristol city council. Citizens’ assemblies are particularly strong at looking in depth at detailed, specific questions, rather than broad topics to do with how the entire country is run. I see citizens’ assemblies not as replacing the role of the House of Commons, but as supplementing it valuably.
Dame Meg Hillier
It seems there are an awful lot of mind readers in the Chamber today, because the hon. Gentleman anticipates my comments. I am proud to be a Labour and Co-operative Member, so I have thoughts on how, one day, we may be able to move to that nirvana of co-ownership.
We have seen too often that dividends and bonuses are paid without investment in infrastructure, which is where my hon. Friend and I would agree. We have a privatisation model that was supposed to deliver investment on the back of people investing in shares. In return for getting a dividend, there would also be an investment, but we have not seen enough of that.
Of course, under Ofwat rules, water customers bear a share of the cost. In Hackney, under Thames Water, which has been a poster company for the problems in this sector, bills are going up by more than a third. A number of constituents who are very worried about their water bills have written to me just in the last fortnight. When we talk about money in this place, we sometimes talk about millions or billions of pounds, but £100 a month is a great deal of money for many of my constituents.
To set that in context, I have a number of fantastic street markets in my constituency—ones where people can buy fruit and veg, and clothes and underwear at a reasonable price—and I also have the lovely Broadway market, where sourdough bread costs about £5 a loaf. I have constituents who do not have £5 left at the end of the week, let alone at the end of the month—those are the margins that people are working with. Water bills are therefore a significant issue, which is another reason why I am delighted to be here today, supported by colleagues of all parties who want to talk about the challenges of water.
On the face of it, the argument for nationalisation sounds appealing to many, but there is a cost—and it is not a hidden cost: to those who bought shares in good faith, to those pension funds that are investing, and in the upheaval of turning around these companies. Where would we get the people to run a nationalised water company? It is likely to be the same executives, if they would take the pay cut. There is not a wealth of expertise.
I spent a decade examining the work of Whitehall, and there are some excellent civil servants in this country who have done amazing work—many of the civil servants who did not do such amazing work appeared before the Public Accounts Committee—but finding somebody overnight with the technical and management expertise to run a major water company is a challenge.
To take the corollary, I am passionate about seeing insourced services in our hospitals, but after having intense conversations with executives at my local hospital, I know that, when the public sector has not done something for many years, it takes a very long time to build up the expertise. Let us take catering. If hospitals do not cater well, they could kill patients, so they need to make sure they have the management structure in place to deliver those skills. It is the same with water companies—it is not as easy as saying, “One day it’s private, and the next day it’s national. No problem at all.” The upheaval would be immense, so we need a measured plan, and I think this Government have begun to develop that plan, for all the reasons I will outline.
I will talk a little about what the Government will do to improve the situation, and then I will talk about the Bill, but I want first to touch on the comments of the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer). I am very interested in her passionate commitment to citizens’ juries. She has been elected, which is a privilege as we all know, to represent her constituents in this place, yet months after her election, she wants to pass responsibility for this big, difficult decision to a citizens’ jury, rather than taking responsibility for that decision as an elected MP.
Ellie Chowns
I think it is important to correct the misapprehension among some Government Members, which may arise from an inadvertent misreading of the Bill. Clause 4, on the citizens’ assembly on water ownership, at subsection (4), simply says:
“The Commission must publish the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly.”
It does not say, “This House will hereby delegate responsibility for making decisions about water sector ownership to the Citizens’ Assembly.” It simply suggests setting up a structure, which, as I said, has already been used by the House to provide the opportunity for the general public to consider in depth an issue of complexity.
Dame Meg Hillier
My point is clear. Just as, many years ago, a certain Mr Ratner famously talked about the price of a prawn sandwich in Marks & Spencer and the price of earrings in his store, people do not want to be on the board of Marks & Spencer to get a decent prawn sandwich; they just want to be able to buy a decent prawn sandwich, and while my political foundations are in devolution, neighbourhood structures, working and listening to people, ultimately we must responsibility ourselves.
I am looking at clause 4, as the hon. Lady highlighted. I have been around for many years, but one of the challenges about citizens’ juries is that while we can have this engagement, they are lengthy and costly, and we know that not everybody attends the whole time. How would we select people? There are many challenges in setting them up.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I remind the hon. Member that interventions should be short.
Ellie Chowns
I remind the House briefly that all these issues are well investigated and understood, and the House has previously used this mechanism effectively.
Dame Meg Hillier
Well, in my experience of 20 years in the House, this system has been used once, and that was in 2019, by a selection of Select Committees, not by the Government of the day. I am aware that the first debates about citizens’ juries were 30 or so years ago, and there are many challenges to delivering them.
Dame Meg Hillier
Absolutely. I think we would all agree that we talk all the time to constituents, whether on doorsteps or at public meetings and other forums, because that is our job. I say to constituents every week when I am on their doorsteps, “I am here because I need your expertise. I can’t do my job without you.” But it is a cumbersome task to be on a citizens’ assembly as it requires people to devote a great deal of time, and only a certain subset of society has the time to do that. Many of my constituents are working three or four jobs and struggling to survive. They do not have the time to do that, but their voices need to be heard, too.
Ellie Chowns
I declare experience in this area in that, through Herefordshire council, I set up a citizens’ assembly. A process called sortition is used to ensure a fully representative sample. Participants are paid for their time so that people of all socioeconomic backgrounds can participate, and additional efforts are made to ensure that under-represented groups can participate. Will the hon. Lady acknowledge that such an institution might be more representative of the general public than this House, in which two thirds of MPs were elected by only a third of the electorate?
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
I am delighted that we are having this debate in the House today. Clean water is a subject that is very close to my heart as the representative for North Herefordshire, and to the hearts of my constituents, because the condition of the River Lugg, the River Wye and their tributaries has caused terrible damage to the local ecology and, indeed, to the local economy. I draw the House’s attention to my role as co-chair of the all-party group on water pollution, which I established.
These issues are crucial. I will start by reflecting on the debate we have had thus far, and then go on to make three points. One hon. Member said that we should not do anything in a rush, but it is clear that nothing in this Bill would be done in a rush. The Bill sets out a considered approach to tackling a very complex issue, and there has been some debate today about the potential to use citizens’ assemblies as one component in addressing it. I regret to say that some of the comments and interventions have perhaps been rooted in a misunderstanding of, or a lack of engagement with, the concept of citizens’ assemblies. For example, the citizens’ assembly to which I have referred, which was set up jointly by six Select Committees of this House, was held in Birmingham, not London, and partly online. Travel expenses and participation expenses were paid. Full attention is paid to participation.
Mark Ferguson
Birmingham is, in fact, far more difficult than London to get to from my constituency. I do not believe it is about the specific geographic place; it is about how we get people together from all corners of the country, to make sure we have a regional spread.
Ellie Chowns
I warmly invite the hon. Member to read up about how citizens’ assemblies work, how the sampling works and how participation is facilitated for all people, and about the time commitment. The citizens’ assembly previously established by this House was over three weekends in Birmingham. These are not huge commitments, but they are a valuable mechanism for ensuring that the public have the time to consider an issue in depth.
I want to raise three points on this important Bill. First, I could not agree more with the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) that the privatisation of water has been an absolute disaster. We have seen soaring bills, soaring executive pay, soaring dividends and soaring siphoning of finance out of our country into the pockets of private interests, while at the same time our infrastructure has crumbled and our rivers have become increasingly polluted. It is long past time to resolve this national disgrace.
My Green colleagues and I believe that public ownership is a core part of the solution, but it is not the only solution. We have to ensure that the water system is adequately regulated, so that whoever is in charge sticks to the rules, does not make profits on the back of pollution and does not pump sewage into our rivers—that is fundamental and essential.
Dame Meg Hillier
How does the hon. Lady propose to pay them for running the water system? We all agree there are problems, but in the current climate, where would she get the money from to pay for this to happen?
Ellie Chowns
I refer the hon. Lady to my previous comments on the merits of citizens’ assemblies in considering the details over many dozens of hours. I also refer to my party’s manifesto.
Secondly, climate change is a systemic challenge. I am glad that some hon. Members have mentioned this and that it is included in the text of the Bill because, as the hon. Member for Norwich South said, it is a huge problem when there is too little water. Too much water is also a huge problem, and that problem is increasing.
I have already spoken several times in this House about flooding in my constituency. Climate change is making these challenges more frequent and more severe, so any Water Bill needs to address not only the water industry, water supply and sewage, but also climate change and its interactions with water. I am pleased that is mentioned in the Bill.
Another topic mentioned by the Bill, somewhat briefly, is perhaps even closer to my heart—and certainly close to my constituency. Indeed, as I put my hand to my heart, I feel the jewellery I am wearing, which represents the River Wye. Pollution is the elephant in the room in how this issue is currently being tackled. Pollution comes not only from sewage but from agricultural run-off. Nearly three quarters of the pollution in my constituency is from agricultural run-off. There has been a planning moratorium across almost all of my constituency for more than five years, with devastating economic effects. Tackling the water industry will not address this. Indeed, the majority of my constituency is served by the only non-profit water company in the UK.
The problem we face is around pollution. I find it disappointing, even distressing, that although the conversation about water in this House has rightly focused on sewage, it has not focused sufficiently on tackling water pollution. As DEFRA figures and the Environmental Audit Committee’s report both show, half of the problem is from agricultural water pollution. Slightly more of our waterways are in bad condition because of agricultural pollution rather than sewage pollution. This is an issue that we need to tackle together, working in concert with farmers.
We need to support farmers, which is why I am so devastated by the direction in recent months, which has arguably been wrong. I am particularly upset that just a couple of weeks ago, the sustainable farming incentive was taken away from farmers without anything to replace it. We need a Government who work with farmers and support them to transition to nature-friendly farming, so that we can reduce the agricultural run-off that has such a devastating effect on our waterways.
The Government have this vital role to play in leadership. It is essential to tackle the failures of the privatised water industry, essential to tackle the outrageous volume of sewage overflows into our rivers and essential to tackle agricultural water pollution.
Jeremy Corbyn
Could I take the hon. Member back to the question of farming pollution? Does she feel that the problem is too many pesticides being used in farming, too large fields, or an inability to restore the natural drainage systems, such as ditches, which lead to water going into groundwater, rather than rushing down and filling and polluting our rivers?
Ellie Chowns
I hope the right hon. Member would agree that it is a multifaceted problem, and that there are different issues in different places. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. In my constituency, the issue is particularly about phosphate pollution, but in other places it is about nitrates, and in other places it is about water volume. I absolutely agree with his earlier comments on the importance of upland water management and natural flood management approaches, which are ways to ensure that we manage water, keep water on the land and address questions of drainage. Indeed, I mentioned this in a debate on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill just the other day, because it is vital that the Bill addresses the question of water management.
We need to treat these things in an integrated and site-specific way. I have called for many years now for a water protection zone in my constituency to ensure that the sources of pollution are correctly attributed and tackled, and have called for more funding and teeth for the Environment Agency to enforce the existing rules, which will help to reduce the problem of pollution.
To conclude, I warmly welcome the Bill brought to the House today by the hon. Member for Norwich South, which presents a thoughtful, constructive and detailed way of bringing people together to address what we all recognise is a crucial problem. However, I say to him—and to the Minister—that we must tackle agricultural water pollution with the same sense of urgency and commitment with which we are addressing sewage. Sir Jon Cunliffe’s Independent Water Commission explicitly excluded this issue from its terms of reference, except in so far as it relates to the water industry. I have read the water commission’s terms of reference very carefully, and have spoken to the commission about it: it is not set up to address the problem of agricultural run-off into our rivers. We need the same level of focus on this issue as we do on sewage, because if we want to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas, we need an integrated approach.
Farming
Ellie Chowns Excerpts(5 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
I welcome this timely debate on the future of farming, in the week in which the SFI rug was pulled out from underneath farmers.
Surely the future of farming has to be young farmers. I have been in touch with some young farmers in my constituency to ask what they think I should talk about in this debate. I was sent a screenshot by Beth, who was partway through her SFI application. It said, “Thank you for doing your application. When you are ready, submit it. If we need to close applications, we will give you six weeks’ notice. We will publicise this on gov.uk and we will email you.” If that is not a broken promise, I do not know what is.
Louise, another farmer in my constituency, said that she was
“angry, disappointed, upset and exasperated…we have followed the Government’s advice to the letter, and been kicked in the teeth”.
Another farmer said:
“Pulling SFI is absolutely criminal—just more short-term thinking that forces us into decisions we don’t want to make.”
Ben said:
“yet another nail in the coffin for…family farms…with no warning environmental projects that had been in planning for months on our farm will have to be stopped….We cannot plan for the future when the rules keep changing.”
The future of farming needs to be S, F and I: S for sustainable, F for fair and I for in partnership.
Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)
I think the hon. Member will agree that the shutting down of the SFI with no notice on Tuesday night is an awful situation. DEFRA has been either disorganised or sneaky, but either way it diminishes the trust of our farming communities in the Government.
Ellie Chowns
I could not agree more. This has diminished trust. It is vital to rebuild that trust because we need that sustainable, fair and in-partnership future for farming. It needs to be sustainable in environmental terms— we need to recognise the reality of the climate crisis and the nature crisis. We need to support our farmers to make the vital transition to nature-friendly farming. Farmers in North Herefordshire are at the forefront of that, but they need the Government to back them, not knock them off their feet with policy changes with zero notice.
We need farming to be sustainable environmentally, and sustainable economically. It is not acceptable that the rates of return on farming are so low for so many. The Government have a crucial role to play in tackling that. The Green party has long called for a doubling of the nature-friendly farming budget, because of all the extra benefits that farming provides socially, economically and environmentally. We need the Government to step up on that.
Farming needs to be fair, both internationally and locally. Internationally, our farmers must not be undercut by trade deals that let in products that undermine our animal welfare and environmental standards. We need to ensure that the Government stand firm on that. Farming needs to be fair locally, because access to farming support schemes has not been equal. It is hard for many farmers to access those schemes. Whatever replaces the SFI, I hope that the Minister will ensure that farmers have equal access, and the support that they need to access those schemes. [Interruption.] I see that the Minister is nodding.
Finally, the future of farming has to happen in partnership with farmers themselves—their voices have to be heard—and with the rest of Government. We need a fully joined-up approach to land use, food, farming and sustainability. It also needs to happen in partnership with nature, because without a thriving natural world, there is no sustainable future for farming.
Sustainable Farming Incentive
Ellie Chowns Excerpts(5 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Daniel Zeichner
Many farmers are now in these schemes and are benefiting from them. We are also getting the environmental benefits that the whole transition away from basic payments to the environmental land management schemes was designed to achieve. Let me give some credit to the Opposition—they set this train in motion, but what they did not do was set up the schemes in a way that could properly be managed. That is what we are now doing.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
Yesterday, the Government shamefully pulled the rug out from underneath thousands of farmers by cancelling the SFI with zero notice, despite saying that they would give six weeks’ notice, and without putting in place anything to support farmers in future. This morning, my inbox was full of emails from despairing farmers who were on the point of submitting an application, had no way of planning for this and now are utterly left in the lurch. How does the Minister expect the UK to make the vital transition to nature-friendly farming and boosting UK food production if this is how he treats farmers?
Daniel Zeichner
I am astonished by the hon. Lady’s contribution. She should be celebrating the fact that so many farmers are now farming in an environmentally sensitive way. I invite her to help us ensure that these schemes work better in future. This is actually a cause for celebration of the benefits of the environmental land management schemes.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ellie Chowns Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Reed)
The previous Government did nothing as water companies discharged record levels of sewage into our waterways. The Water (Special Measures) Bill will create new powers, including banning water companies that pollute from paying bonuses, and bringing criminal charges against persistent lawbreakers. Ofwat has confirmed a record £104 billion investment to fix our broken water infrastructure and end the Tory sewage scandal once and for all.
Steve Reed
The money announced in Ofwat’s final determination before Christmas will create record levels of investment in our water system to do precisely what the hon. Gentleman says, dealing with the current sewage problems while also putting in place the infrastructure to manage and meet future demand.
Ellie Chowns
As the Secretary of State knows, North Herefordshire is badly affected by water pollution, with devastating effects for the local economy. He also knows that agricultural pollution, not sewage, is the main problem in my constituency. He did not mention that in his answer, so I respectfully remind him yet again that the Government need to tackle agricultural pollution and sewage pollution in a joined-up way. We know the solutions—
Ellie Chowns
I apologise, Mr Speaker. I will get to my point. As the Minister did not answer the first part of the question, I had to raise it. In North Herefordshire, we know that the solutions require farmers, regulators and environmental organisations to take action together. Will the Secretary of State now commit the funding needed to take forward the Wye catchment plan, and will he visit North Herefordshire with me?
Climate and Nature Bill
Ellie Chowns ExcerptsFriday 24th January 2025
(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
The climate and nature crises are the defining test of our era and, therefore, of our Government. As a co-sponsor of the Bill, and having co-sponsored it in previous iterations when Caroline Lucas, the former Member for Brighton Pavilion, first brought it to the House, I have seen throughout my time here the importance of working cross-party. That does not mean that we agree on everything, or that opposition Members or Labour Back Benchers cannot forcefully hold our Government to account; it means that we need to prioritise what materially is best for dealing with the climate and nature emergency.
I have called, and will continue to call, my party out when it is not going far enough or even getting things wrong, but I will also fight tooth and nail for transitional demands in the pursuit of tackling the climate and ecological emergency. I know the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) will say herself that the measures in the Bill are not the ceiling of what we want to achieve, but the floor. As she said in her opening speech, the Bill is not a silver bullet. We are now working towards getting the concessions from the Government they have already committed to, holding them to account, pushing them to go further, and taking action up to and beyond what this Bill asks for.
I do not want to sacrifice the transitional demands that we have won as a result of pressure in negotiation, not just from MPs—in fact, perhaps we have played the smallest role—but from campaigners, who have been pushing us to push Ministers and the Government. I am not willing to sacrifice the transitional demands that we could win for climate and nature—today, right now—and that we could hold the Government to account on delivering, in order to have a vote that would mean we lose those demands. I care about the material—that is why I am in Parliament.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
Given that we have strong cross-party consensus, as has been demonstrated today, on the urgency of tackling the climate and nature crisis, I do not understand the hon. Lady’s argument that the Government would somehow draw back from measures that they have committed, in negotiation with the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage), to take forward. A number of hon. Members think that it is important to vote on a Bill that will help move us further and faster towards tacking the climate and nature crisis. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) explained, Second Reading is an opportunity to further discuss the issues and build cross-party consensus on exactly the measures needed. Will she explain why a vote on the Bill is not a good idea—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I have a long list of speakers to call.