South West Water: Brixham Contamination

Emma Hardy Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

Another day, another example of the depths of failure to which this Government have taken us. I cannot believe that I am about to say this, but after 14 long years of Conservative rule, in 21st-century Britain, our water is no longer safe to drink. Of course, the Government will be flailing around, desperate to clasp on to somebody else to blame, but this crisis is theirs, and it is this Government who must show some leadership and take responsibility for it. They were the ones who weakened regulation, leaving our Victorian-era sewerage system starved of investment. They turned a blind eye and left water companies to illegally pump a tidal wave of raw sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas. Only last month, the Labour party warned that our nation’s health is at risk because hospital admissions for waterborne diseases have skyrocketed by two thirds since 2020. Is this an example of the Government’s plan working? Is this what they think success looks like?

And now this, as the icing on the cake of failure: a parasite outbreak in Brixham with South West Water. Some 16,000 homes and businesses have been advised to boil water before drinking it; over 46 cases of cryptosporidiosis have been reported; more than 100 people have reported symptoms; and a 13-year-old boy has been admitted to hospital. That is appalling.

Enough is enough, so today we are calling on the Government to urgently adopt Labour’s plan to put the water companies into special measures in order to clean up their water. As a matter of utmost urgency, the Government must strengthen regulations so that law-breaking bosses face criminal charges, and go further by giving the regulator new powers to block the payment of bonuses until water bosses have cleaned up their filth. With Labour, the polluter will pay, not the public.

I have one question for the Secretary of State. With contaminated water hospitalising children and record levels of toxic filth in our water systems, how much worse does the situation have to get before the Government adopt Labour’s plan to put the water industry into special measures?

[Steve Barclay]

Members on the Labour Front Bench like to claim that their party wants to be taken seriously as a potential party of Government, yet once again we see shadow Ministers pre-empting the investigation and trying to shift the issue to that of raw sewage. Obviously, it is for the Drinking Water Inspectorate to fully investigate this incident and the water company, but the initial information shared with me suggests that the concern is about farm contamination, not raw sewage. Of course, we need to wait for the results of that investigation, but the Labour party is just jumping to a conclusion that fits a narrative; it is not interested in what the facts suggest.

If the hon. Lady had actually listened to my statement, as opposed to pre-empting it with a question that she did not then change, she would have heard that 85% of those who were subject to the boil notice were upstream of this incident. From the information I currently have, they were not subject to any issue with their water. Because of the seriousness with which we take these issues, a precautionary notice was quite rightly issued to those residents, but the evidence presented so far suggests that there was no issue for those residents because the contamination happened downstream.

As for the wider point-scoring and political narrative, in this House there is usually a distinction between serious issues such as this one and the usual party knockabout. What the community want to hear is reassurance that all the investigations have been done, that we are getting the compensation right, and that we are getting the remaining 15% onstream—all of which, incidentally, the hon. Lady did not even ask about. She did not seem interested in those things, as opposed to the natural knockabout that she was trying to do.

However, let me divert to the topic she wanted to talk about. We have a fourfold increase in the number of investigators, so the water companies cannot mark their own homework. In this instance, the Drinking Water Inspectorate is conducting a full investigation; phase 1 has been completed, and it is now on phase 2. I have quite a list, Mr Speaker, but since you are signalling to me, I will close with the fact that the largest criminal investigation launched by the Environment Agency and Ofwat is currently ongoing.