Water Companies: Sewage Discharge

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 582336, relating to the discharge of sewage by water companies.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Paisley, and it is an honour to be leading the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. The petition calls for an outright ban on water companies discharging raw sewage into watercourses. Personally, I think a lot of our constituents will be shocked to hear that it is currently legal for water companies to do this. How can it be okay for multimillion-pound businesses to absolve themselves of the responsibility for ensuring that our rivers and streams, and ultimately our seas, are free of harmful sewage?

I pay tribute to Ferry Harmer, who started the petition after seeing Feargal Sharkey raise some of the issues around the state of our rivers on the TV programme “Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing” last year. I also thank the 111,434 people from around the UK who have taken the time to sign the petition, especially the 186 people from Gower who have signed it. I have had nearly 150 constituents get in touch with me about this issue in one way or another. That demonstrates the strength of feeling about this issue, which has featured recently in the news. When I spoke to Ferry, it was clear he is a man of real passion and determination. He spoke about the petition and told me that 41% of fish species are in decline in British waters. A third of species are in serious decline, including iconic fish such as salmon and trout.

Through my research, I have discovered astounding facts about the state of our rivers and waterways. Some 39 million tonnes of sewage were discharged into the River Thames alone in 2019—that is one river in one year. Last year, raw sewage was discharged into our waters more than 400,000 times, which is quite an incredible figure. This has now become an emergency for our waterways. Not a single river in England is in a healthy condition, not a single river meets a good chemical standard, and over 85% do not meet good ecological standards. Frankly, it is not good enough.

I am fortunate to represent arguably the best coastal community in the UK. The coast around Gower is popular all year round with families and tourists, and a growing number of local wild swimming groups took off during lockdown. It is the only contact that people have with the outside world, and it has been a saviour for so many people. The well-known Mermaids and other groups know that Gower has some of the best surfing in the UK. I will do anything I can to protect our vital ecosystem, seafood production economy and thriving tourist economy. I know that this is a devolved matter, but as I noted in a recent Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Question Time, this a UK-wide issue. What work is the Minister doing alongside the devolved Administrations, and what commitment can she give to do so, because these waterways, whether in England, Wales or Scotland, are all intertwined and all end up somewhere?

If sewage goes into our rivers and waterways, it will ultimately make its way to the sea, and even into our food chain through seafood and fish. I know we are all supposed to encourage recycling, but even I think that is going a little too far. The Government are failing in their duty of care here. The state of our waterways has not improved since 2016, despite ministerial claims that they are cleaning up their act. What is even worse, the unlawful discharge of sewage could be up to 10 times higher than the rate of prosecutions by the Environment Agency. The Environment Agency is responsible for monitoring and enforcement of water quality breaches, but it has fallen foul of the Government’s cuts; its funding has been slashed by 63% since 2010. Simple measures such as the number of points at which samples are collected have been cut by more than 40%. How can we continue to monitor the health of our rivers if less data is collected?

The Government’s response to the petition mentions that

“water companies have agreed to make available real-time data on sewage discharges from storm overflows at designated bathing waters all year round from this year. This data will be made available to help surfers, swimmers and other recreational water users to check the latest information and make informed choices on where to swim.”

Who does not want to check the amount of human waste, used sanitary products and anything else people have flushed into the water before they go for a swim? That is not a delightful thought. Let us not forget the words of the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who back in 2018 told the Environmental Audit Committee that divergence from tough EU rules would be an opportunity for the UK Government to implement unquestionably tougher restrictions. He said that

“being different can sometimes mean being better”,

and that leavers did not automatically advocate for divergence out of a desire to lower standards. However, owing to Brexit, we have seen a shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers and an increase in red tape, which has led to chemicals not being available to fully treat wastewater before it is discharged. What is more, the Government have granted permissions for the discharges to take place.

I am not here only to outline the increasing problems that the Government are exacerbating, because I have received suggestions of things that the Government could put into place to reverse some of the damage. To clean up our waterways, we need a fully funded and resourced action plan. We need targets for water companies and serious consequences when they break the rules. One way of doing that is to increase the environmental reporting requirement for water companies. I call on the Government to improve their plan to introduce annual reports, such as by making them quarterly reports. With more regular reporting and a system that allows for this, we can see where there are problem areas and react much more efficiently.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend also think there should be a requirement on water companies to report that information to their consumers, perhaps in the form of formal consumer committees of each water company, so that that company is more likely to be held to account by the very consumers who suffer from this dumping of sewage?

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

That is key. Accountability is needed. If we are to move forward, those consumer committees that my hon. Friend speaks of are exactly what we need: a practical solution in order to move forward.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to introduce measures to reduce sewage discharge from storm overflows, but unfortunately this does not go far enough. The Government must eliminate sewage discharges. That is why Labour voted in favour of the Duke of Wellington’s amendment calling for exactly that. The Government’s aim of publishing a plan on this by September 2022 is just not good enough. Let us have that plan in place early next year. This has been dragging on for far too long, and there is no reason why we cannot have a strategy sooner.

If Ministers are serious about reaching the targets for cleaning our rivers, lakes, streams and seas, they must have a fully-resourced action plan for monitoring water quality and holding companies to account. However, there are also high-tech solutions that could be employed immediately. Ferry mentioned a system called HYBACS—hybrid activated sludge process—which does not sound absolutely delightful, but is cheaper and more effective than the system that companies are currently using. That sounds like a pretty obvious thing for the water companies to put in place. Where there are capital expenditure issues, it must fall to the Government to ultimately step in and protect the waterways. Natural mitigations can also provide solutions to this problem: reintroducing beavers, building more reservoirs and increasing tree and hedgerow planting.

The Minister has plenty to answer from my contribution, but I would also like to know how many water companies have been fined by the Environment Agency. How much have they been fined? When did the Minister last meet with the Environment Agency to discuss this?

I bring my contribution to a close by asking the Government to be bold in doing the right thing and getting our rivers and streams cleaned up. They should listen to the advice of experts: beef up the Environment Agency’s powers and keep pushing water companies to take responsibility, not just for those who signed the petition, but for everybody living in the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I appreciate the opportunity to speak in this debate. I join others in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on opening the debate. I want to underline in particular the figure that she used: 39 million tonnes of raw sewage was dumped in the River Thames in 2019. As someone who loves walking by the Thames, occasionally swimming in it, and certainly canoeing on it, that figure gives even me pause for thought.

The contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) were very powerful in their critique of the ownership of water companies. Since privatisation, there has been a 40% real-terms hike in bills, almost £60 billion in payments to shareholders, and more than £50 billion in debt loaded on to water companies to make those payments to shareholders.

One of the problems with the argument made by the right hon. Members for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) and for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), and by the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore), is that it glosses over the issue of ownership and, in particular, the fact that annual investment in water supply infrastructure was lower in 2018 than in 1990. That rather suggests that there has been, for some time, a serious question mark about whether our privatisation is delivering.

[Philip Dunne]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to defend my remarks. I made no remarks on the subject of privatisation. As he has raised it and accused me of having done so, I ask him whether he recognises that the amount of capital investment by the water companies in the 10 years prior to privatisation was half the amount invested in capital treatment works in the 10 years post-privatisation.

[Gareth Thomas]

The right hon. Gentleman will have to forgive me. I was concentrating on other things in the 10 years before privatisation—I am not quite that old. If he shares the Opposition’s concerns about the quality of performance of the privatised water companies, I welcome that.

I recognise that the Minister is not likely to give a commitment today to bring the water companies back into public ownership of one sort or another. I will therefore suggest a third way. We could maintain pressure on water companies to bring down the amount of sewage dumped in our streams long after the news cycle has moved on to other issues by giving the consumers of water companies more power, perhaps in the form of a requirement that any increase in bills—or if the Minister were willing to be radical, any increase in the salary of the chief executive and board—has to be approved by the consumers of that company. There should be a water users consumer committee for each water company, with real power to hold to account the board of that company. At the moment, only two committees, without any substantive powers, cover the whole operation of the English water companies. They are clearly not having much impact. I urge the Minister to take away the need to give consumers more direct power over and say in the operation of the water companies on which we all rely.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I call Mr Grahame Morris. If it is more comfortable for you to remain seated for your speech, I am more than happy to facilitate that.