Water (Special Measures) Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Helena Dollimore Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 9th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Charlie Maynard]

Let us talk about the spectrum of information here. We have got the number of spills, where we have no idea how long those spills went on. We then have EDMs—event duration monitors—which count the number of hours of pollution. There is then the volume of flow, and then various iterations around measuring dissolved oxygen, or whatever it might be. I do not want the perfect to be the enemy of the good. We need to make progress. Thames Water is installing flow monitors all over its network, upstream of its sewage treatment works, but not downstream. That is because it is scared of actually having to count and have in the public domain the volume of sewage that it is dumping.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) said, “If you have a coke bottle of sewage, and you don’t know how diluted it is, you still don’t want it in your bath.” Of course we want to know how diluted it is—that would be nice—but if we are serious about addressing these problems, we need to know how much is coming out of those overflows.

To quantify what has been going on over the last few years—I give the previous Government some credit—some 14,000 monitors have been installed in the last seven years, which is good news. The figure was less than 1,000, and 15,000 have now been installed on the storm overflows, but another 7,000 do not have monitors. Amendment 16 talks about where those locations are. We can have overflows at a sewage treatment works, at a pumping station or on the sewer network. I believe that everyone on this Committee wants to capture wherever that overflow is, which is what the amendment would do.

I will try to quantify some of the numbers, and I will talk about my favourite, Thames Water. Right now, Thames Water has 30 event duration monitors at inlet storm overflows at waste water treatment works. It has 183 EDMs on storm tanks at waste water treatment works and 137 EDMs at storm discharge overflows at pumping stations, and it has 320 storm overflows on the sewer network—not in a pumping station or at a treatment works. We are trying to capture all those areas, because we need to know what is going on. If we do not know what is going on, we cannot fix it.

Amendment 13 is on the volume of discharge. Amendment 14 concerns the same count, so I will not go into it in more detail. Amendment 15 relates to reporting on discharge from overflows and would add to existing stipulations about the form in which the information must be published. I will read it out: the information must

“be uploaded and updated automatically”.

Let us get rid of human involvement. We are in 2025—all this stuff can, and should, be automated.

Professor Peter Hammond has done some great research, and I am incredibly grateful to Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, which has been one of the drivers of information and campaigning in this space. Well done to Peter, Ash, Vaughan and Geoff; I give them many thanks. Peter spotted that when Thames Water monitors its sewage, it does so at the wrong times of day, when the level of sewage is at its lowest. We want to automate that so that it is monitored all the time. That means less human interaction and lower costs, and it is much more achievable.

There is a map that shows whether sewage has been dumped in the last 48 hours, is being dumped currently or has not been dumped in the last 48 hours—Thames Water was actually one of the first to put that in the public domain—but it does not give the historical information. We need the historical information in there and it needs to be downloadable, so that any citizen scientist can come along, pull the data off and act on it. Without amendment 15, we do not have that. These are very nuts-and-bolts, practical things that we want to head along.

[Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)]

On the questions that the hon. Gentleman is asking around the type of monitors we have on sewage outlets, is he aware that the Environmental Audit Committee looked at this very issue in the last Parliament? It recommended the approach currently being taken by the Bill, which is to look at monitors upstream and downstream that look at the water quality. The Committee regarded that as the best way to assess this issue.

[Charlie Maynard]

I am very happy with looking at monitors upstream and downstream. That is fine, but I want them all to be in, and I want them done quicker. In the last seven years, 14,000 monitors were put in. As per the House of Commons Library briefing on clause 3, we are currently being signed up to a much slower installation of monitors—it does not matter if they are EDMs or flow meters. The briefing states:

“The reporting duty on discharges from emergency overflows would be phased in, with water companies expected to achieve 50% monitoring coverage by the end of the next price review in 2030 and 100% by 2035, the end of the following price review.”

Why would we go slower? That is a lot slower than what has been done over the last seven years. We should be moving much faster.

I find it rather depressing that I suspect this information came out of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Why is there this desire to slow the whole thing down if possible? We have a huge problem, so why are we not moving faster to deal with it? Frankly—I am not looking at the crew opposite—the DEFRA mindset is profoundly depressing. That’s that.

Amendment 16 covers the installation rate. What we are trying to do there is get the rate much faster. We have asked for 12 months, and I will try to quantify this; I have a business background. How much do flow monitors cost? How much they cost matters. Flow monitors are £500 to £2,000 per unit. We have 15,000 across the country, so we are talking £85 million or whatever it might be. That is if we have £2,000 as the unit cost. If we take the higher level of the unit cost and say that each of them will cost £2,000 to install, it is quite a lot of money. We did it much cheaper in west Oxfordshire and Witney. Well done to the Witney flood mitigation group. It got 10 installed for a fraction of that, so that is doable. Let us just talk £84 million. Does that sound like a lot of money? Frankly, it does not to me, and I will try to quantify that. The £84 million is between 10 or so water companies. Thames Water alone has £17 billion of debt. We are talking about £84 million. It is a fractional number, and if we are serious about fixing our problems, we have to go there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Darren Paffey]

Thank you, Mr Vickers—so keen was I to support the clause that I tried to speak to it too early. I appreciate your forbearance.

Clause 3 has my full support. As I mentioned, I live in an area served by Southern Water. The citizen scientists on the River Itchen have done such good work that they regularly and consistently show that there are unacceptably high levels of faecal matter in the river, even when there has been no storm or emergency. The fleshing out of the requirement for monitoring so that there can be greater accountability is hugely welcome.

Furthermore, my area is entirely relevant to new clause 25 because of the aquatic sports, particularly during the pandemic. A great wild swimming group use the river, and there are also paddle boarders, canoeists and kayakers. I have the greatest respect for them: they go where I would not be willing to at the moment because the levels of illness that people have reported. The stench of what goes into the river also affects local schoolchildren, who cannot play outside. There are all kinds of reasons why the clause will deal with the issues being experienced in my constituency.

We want bathing water status in the area, but that is almost an impossibility at the moment because of the water quality. Again, clause 3 will guarantee the openness, monitoring and forcing of accountability in the area. I welcome the clause and thank the Minister for bringing it forward. The Bill takes action and makes achieving that status much more likely. People in my constituency and beyond, across not only Southern Water’s area but the country, will welcome it too.

[Helena Dollimore]

Does my hon. Friend share my horror at our current situation, in which constituents are getting ear and eye infections from swimming in the sea or rivers? One constituent of mine even attributes their deafness in one ear to an infection they got in the sea. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill is desperately needed for our constituents?

[Darren Paffey]

I share my hon. Friend’s shock and disgust at not only what people are suffering, but the entirely avoidable reasons why people are becoming ill. There are so many benefits to what the clause and the wider Bill can achieve, not just on the issues that Members on both sides of the House have mentioned in relation to trust in our water companies and the use of public money, but for public health. How much more public health benefit could people across all our constituencies experience if they were able to engage with aquatic sports or just enjoy the park areas that surround so many of our rivers, beaches and waterways? I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and am grateful that her point adds even more weight to why this clause is absolutely necessary.