Sewage Pollution
Debate between George Eustice and Khalid Mahmood(2 years, 3 months ago)
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George Eustice
It is important to distinguish between the failure of water companies to abide by their permit conditions, which is an issue and is the reason for the Environment Agency bringing multiple prosecutions on this matter—we must bring that to a speedy conclusion, seek immediate rectification and bring them back into compliance with their permit conditions—and the separate issue of the permitted use of storm overflows. That issue is about long-term investment in infrastructure, which is what our discharge plan addressed.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
I hope you will excuse me for being slightly political on this matter, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State continues to talk about the discharges and how he is trying to catch up with the water companies, but the reality is that we should be surcharging the water companies for the continuous abuse of our rivers, streams, play areas, seas and everywhere that this gets into. It ruins our environment for our rivers and our streams. If he wants to deal with this, he should surcharge the companies. If they cannot pay the surcharge, he should bring this back into public ownership—that is the answer to all of this.
George Eustice
As I said, we have brought many prosecutions since 2015 and levied fines of about £140 million on the industry. In one case, that precipitated a change in ownership of a water company. The right thing to do is bring prosecutions where a company is in breach of its permits, and that is what the Environment Agency is doing.