Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords]

Jon Pearce Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

As my constituency contains the Rivers Axe, Brue, Parrett and Tone, together with countless streams, brooks and rhynes, it is of the utmost importance to my constituents that the water quality of our rivers is maintained and improved. The parish of Burnham-on-Sea and Highbridge is a coastal resort, as are the villages of Berrow and Brean. It is important for the tourism industry, as well as the local people who enjoy those beaches, that we improve the quality of our bathing water, and I therefore welcome the Bill. We are told that it has four key aims:

“To block the payment of bonuses to executives who pollute waterways;

To bring criminal charges against persistent law breakers;

To impose automatic and severe fines for wrongdoing; and

To ensure independent monitoring of every”

—sewer overflow—“outlet.”

I welcome all those aims, building as they do on the work of the last Government to improve our water quality.

I want to speak in favour of new clauses 16 and 19. New clause 16, entitled “Establishment of Water Restoration Fund”, establishes the principle that fines should go towards environmental improvement rather than to the Treasury. I am somewhat curious as to why the Government would not support that, but perhaps the Minister can explain when she responds to the debate. In November 2024, Wessex Water, which serves my constituency, was fined £500,000 for polluting two rivers, one in Wiltshire and one in Somerset. That money should be used to improve the local environment; it should not be swallowed up by the Treasury.

New clause 19 states that when civil penalties are imposed, there should be an equivalent reduction in customer bills. That is important, because otherwise the water company that has been fined will simply pass on that fine to the consumers; the new clause would ensure that there was no penalty for the customer. I am curious, again, to know why the Government would oppose new clause 19—along with new clause 18—and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s explanation.

[Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)]

I thank the ministerial team for all their hard work in producing the Bill within six months of Labour’s election in July.

Is there anything more emblematic of the decline and mismanagement presided over by the last Government than the state of our rivers and waters? It was fascinating to hear from the shadow Minister that the Opposition seem suddenly to have realised that this is a bigger problem than they ever thought it was when they were in government. As we have heard from Members on both sides of the House, waterways throughout the country have been choked with record levels of sewage. In 2003, 39 sites in my constituency were polluted by Severn Trent Water and United Utilities. Across those sites, there were 2,579 sewage dumps—and what was the punishment for the bosses of those companies? Did any of them face imprisonment? Were their bonuses curtailed, or stopped entirely? Did they feel the hard edge of enforcement action? The answer is no.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

If the hon. Gentleman, as a Back-Bench MP, is presuming to tell a regulator with criminal powers how to investigate and prosecute companies or indeed any defendants, we need to be very careful, because never before in our law have we permitted Members of Parliament and Ministers to direct independent investigators on whom to investigate and prosecute.

[Jon Pearce]

I welcome that intervention from the shadow Secretary of State, but let me suggest that if the measures in this Bill had been implemented by her Government, we might have seen some of those enforcement actions.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is very kind. I remind him that in 2002 a Labour Government allowed, through their regulatory regime, the uplift in bonuses that he outlined. Can he tell the House how much sewage dumping happened in his constituency between the years 1997 and 2010, and can he justify why only 7% of rivers were being monitored? He will not be able to, because we did not know.

[Jon Pearce]

I welcome the hon. Member’s intervention. I simply say to him that his party was in power for 14 years and did nothing. To go back 30 years seems rather extraordinary.

In 2002, the United Utilities chief executive received a bonus of nearly £1 million, and Severn Trent lifted its bonus to £3.36 million. That is millions of pounds that my constituents in High Peak have put in bosses’ back pockets to reward their failure. When I speak to residents on the doorstep in High Peak, they ask me, “How did they get away with it? How can they be allowed to do this?” They got away with it because Conservative Members let them. The previous Conservative Government cut the Environment Agency’s budget by half between 2010 and 2024, leaving the agency toothless to tackle the disgraceful behaviour of our water company bosses. Perhaps that helps us to understand the enforcement issues we have been talking about.

I also remember that just before the election, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), in his previous role as Water Minister, told Environment Agency officials not to publish the headline figures of the total number and duration of spills. How typical of the Conservative party’s approach—rather than face issues head-on and tackle them, it chose to hide them and keep them in the shadows. That approach to government has left our water infrastructure crumbling. By failing to confront these issues, failing to invest in our broken infrastructure and letting consumer money be spent irresponsibly, the Conservative Government left my constituents in High Peak paying twice.

These points underpin the importance of this legislation. This Bill, coupled with the Government’s wider programme to safeguard the environment, will ensure that the beauty of the Peak district in my constituency, with our nature-rich rivers, is entrenched for generations to come. The Bill introduces tougher penalties, including imprisonment for water executives who fail to comply with or obstruct investigations. The Bill will ban bonuses for CEOs and senior leaders unless high standards are met on protecting the environment and their consumers. The Bill will also introduce severe and automatic fines for offences, closing the gap in the Environment Agency’s enforcement powers. Importantly, the water companies will have to start covering the costs of enforcement action. Unlike the previous Government, we will not let the water companies hide from their wrongdoing. The Bill will see that every outlet has independent monitoring.

I am proud to support this major step forward in the Government’s wider reforms to fix the broken water system left behind by the Conservative party. This is a great first step, and a commission will look at the whole water industry, which will hopefully address some of the concerns raised by Members. Only by taking these actions with this ambitious plan, which the Government have done in their first six months in office, can we begin to turn the page on years of decline and attract much-needed investment into the sector, which will preserve the beauty of High Peak and the Peak district for the long term.

[Several hon. Members rose—]