Sewage Discharges

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered sewage discharges.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. I thank all colleagues who are here to debate this important issue. I also thank the public and the e-petitioners for driving us to seek this change. I welcome the Minister to her place, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), the Chairman of the Environmental Audit Committee, for everything he has done on this matter. Many hon. Members wish to speak, so I will try to limit interventions. I recognise that there is a Minister here—my right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman)—who cannot make a speech, and I hope some of these words will apply to him.

Let me illustrate why I sought this debate. As of 16 September, on nine out of the 16 days of the month Bexhill’s beach had been issued with a pollution risk warning and signs warning against bathing because of the risk of sewage discharge. On 18 August, a fault at a pumping station at Galley Hill caused a discharge of waste water, and sewage was pumped into the Bexhill coastline. It lasted for two and a half hours, starting at 2.59 pm, and bathers were not warned about what was occurring until early evening. In the settlement of Heathfield, residents at the bottom of the hill are up to their knees in discharge when heavy rain comes. That has led to rat infestations, illness for children and pets and contamination of homes and gardens.

Our sewerage system is not fit for purpose, and yet we keep building homes in these areas and making the situation worse. Much of our nation is covered by combined sewerage systems comprising hundreds of thousands of miles of sewers. When those systems cannot cope with the volume, rather than back up into properties, they discharge into our seas, our rivers and our waterways from approximately 15,000 combined sewer overflows. The practice is disgusting. Last year, there were more than 370,000 monitored spill events. Every discharge impacts our environment and our marine life, and our ability to enjoy it and make a living from it. This can no longer be tolerated.

Successive Governments have failed to tackle the issue, going back to the 19th century when much of the combined sewerage system was installed, although I welcome the Government’s latest steps to tackle the problem. Our job is to find solutions. With that in mind, I have four issues that I wish to touch on, and I will ask the Minister a number of questions.

The first issue is the storm overflow discharge reduction plan. I welcome the concept, but we could be more ambitious with the deadlines to eradicate storm overflows. The plan relies on data being correctly and fully recorded. Many citizen scientists, for whom we should all be very grateful, believe that the discharges are not fully recorded. I therefore ask the Minister the following questions. Given concerns about under-reporting, is she confident that the discharge data is accurate?

The event and duration of overflow discharges is monitored, but not the volume and impact. The Environmental Audit Committee recommended the installation of volume monitors on overflows. Will the new Minister explain why the Department rejected that recommendation?

Given that the 2035 and 2050 targets have been criticised for lacking sufficient ambition and urgency, will the Minister consider allowing Ofwat to permit sewage companies to deliver their improvement plans earlier and to higher standards? Southern Water, in the area I represent, aims to meet the storm overflow targets, but it would hit 80% by 2030, rather than 75% by 2035, which is the Government’s target.

The second issue is bathing water testing and quality. To use an example local to me, Bexhill’s bathing water quality is rated sufficient. There was a concern recently that it would drop to poor. The town comprises 40,000 people, and that number swells during tourist season. To assess water quality, testing occurs weekly between May and September. It is tested at different times of the day, but always in the same place in the sea. I am told that the water is tested in the busiest part of the beach, but our beach has no focal point and surely a wider area of bathing water should be tested. We are adjacent to excellent bathing water at St Leonards, so swimmers cross from excellent to sufficient in one stroke.

Every day—I am sure it is the same for other colleagues—the Environment Agency sends me pollution risk warnings. However, for many days, Bexhill has been the only beach where signs advising against bathing should be displayed. When I asked what made Bexhill unique, given that it rains across the Sussex coast, I was told that there was something particular about Bexhill and heavy rainfall. In Bexhill’s case, the testing place is adjacent to an outlet coming from a stream, which is the responsibility of the Environment Agency. In three years in which the agency has tested sub-optimal bathing water, Southern Water’s own testing in the immediate vicinity has come up clear on the same day.

Many suspect that heavy rainwater is coming from the highways into the stream and then entering the sea. That may or may not be the cause of the low bathing water quality. However, the fact that we do not know why our bathing water is only just sufficient tells us that we do not know enough about what is going on and therefore we do not know how to clean things up.

Does the Minister believe that it would be more optimal to test water quality on different parts of the beach and on a continuous basis? Given that the bathing water testing regime is some 30 years old, does she believe that the Environment Agency’s testing takes into account the latest pollutants, such as plastics, and gives an adequate reading of our bathing waters? Will the storm overflow discharge reduction plan prioritise busy bathing areas, such as Bexhill, which have bathing quality status below excellent or good?

The third issue is the impact from roads and house building. I will refer to the experience of residents in Heathfield, who have been blighted by sewage and flooding, and they still are when heavy rain comes. This is not just about the sewage companies, but about highways agencies ensuring that their drains can take heavy rainfall rather than it ending up in the combined sewer and causing a discharge or backfill. Despite this, Heathfield has more house building on top of the ridge below which these other roads sit.

On house building and roads, does the Minister believe that it is right to put the onus mainly on water companies to deliver fixes in the storm overflow discharge reduction plan, when many of these assets and the responsibility for them rest with the highways authorities? Has she considered giving the highway authorities a statutory duty to act and to maintain these assets after action has been taken, along with the funds that are to be generated for the plan? Alternatively, would she consider a prohibition on surface water from the highways entering the sewerage system? Either would reduce the chances of the combined sewer becoming overwhelmed in inclement weather. Next, will the Government commit to implement the plan for sustainable drainage systems—or SuDS, as it is known—thereby removing the automatic right to connect to the public sewer system, in order to prevent new developments from adding more surface water to the combined sewerage network?

Highways authorities can refuse to allow connection to their water courses. Will they be required to provide this access in order to avoid a situation in which developers connect to the combined sewers? Will the planning provisions in the forthcoming Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill enable further action to ensure that development takes place only where it will not put further pressure on the combined sewerage system, or will it provide local planning authorities with a justification for saying that further house building cannot take place without the establishment of separate drainage systems? Will the new planning rules allow for sewage companies to be statutory consultees on new planning applications rather than on just the local plan? My right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow has a fine amendment in mind for that, and I would fully support it.

The final piece is the role of all of us—the role of the public. With more understanding of the combined sewer system and a demand that we end discharges into our waters, the public stand ready to play their part. However, many householders just do not know whether they are putting the heavy rainwater from their gutters into the sewerage system. If they did, many of them would take action to halt the flow and thereby halt the number of discharges when the system is overwhelmed. It might be cheaper to provide water butts to homes for free than to cope with an overwhelmed drainage system.

Will the Minister consider a requirement for householders to be informed if they have a combined sewerage pipe from their homes? Will she consider further financial incentives for householders to ensure that their rainwater goes into a water butt or tank, to help to reduce volume and to help when water is scarce in drier times?

I am so pleased that we are having this debate. I will end my remarks there because so many people wish to speak, and I am grateful to the Minister for the response that she will give.

[Julie Elliott (in the Chair)]

As everyone can see, this is a highly subscribed debate. If everyone gets to speak—I want to try to get everybody in—they will have a minute and a half. I will have that limit informally for the first couple of speakers, but I will quickly introduce it formally if people do not stick to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) on securing this important debate.

I pay tribute to everyone who took to beaches across the south of England this weekend in protest at the deplorable condition of our beaches and rivers. At Bexhill beach, in the hon. Member’s constituency, wild swimmers came together to form a human wave. Meanwhile, in Whitstable, local campaigners cordoned off Tankerton beach and declared it a crime scene. They were distinctly British protests, and people had the right to be angry.

Even if Ofwat is content to turn a blind eye, a crime is being committed—not just against our precious natural environment, but against all those who depend on our nation’s waters for their livelihoods, leisure and mental wellbeing. For far too long, the water monopolies have been allowed to treat our rivers and coastal waters as open sewers. Since 2016, more than 1 million sewage spills have been recorded, which is one every two and a half minutes. That is the equivalent of more than 1,000 years of raw sewage. Britain is once again the dirty man of Europe.

In my constituency, more than 650 sewage spills were recorded last year, with thousands more along the length of the Mersey. That is dealing a grievous blow to the decades-long effort to improve water quality in our region and undermining the ability of working-class families in Birkenhead to enjoy some of our borough’s best beauty spots.

The blame for the unfolding ecological catastrophe lies squarely with the water monopolies which, since the privatisation of the water industry in 1989, have hiked up bills by 40% on average in real terms while paying £57 billion in shareholder dividends that could have gone towards making much-needed improvements in infrastructure. However, we must not forget the essential role that this Government have played as an accessory to the crime.

Water companies such as United Utilities in my region would surely never have acted with such disregard for their obligations towards our natural environment had they not been guaranteed that successive Conservative Environment Secretaries would simply look the other way. Indeed, the Prime Minister served for two years as Environment Secretary—

[Julie Elliott (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Mick Whitley]

Sorry. The last thing I will say is: bring the water back into public ownership.

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[Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) for securing this debate; it is clearly much needed. I thank the 278 of my constituents who signed the petition and helped to bring this debate here today.

Last Saturday morning, hundreds of residents gathered at Gyllyngvase beach in Falmouth to attend an anti-sewage pollution protest. In Falmouth, we have had enough. This is affecting people’s lives and businesses, and it is not just in Falmouth; it is happening all over my constituency. In Cornwall, we do not just look at the waterways—we use them for recreation, we use them to fish for a living, we use them for exercise, and we swim in them. I have one of the world’s most sustainable fisheries on the River Fal, and we have a duty of care to protect that fishery and give it the best chance of life.

One of the most shocking figures I saw was that one storm overflow spilled 355 times, for almost 7,500 hours in our River Fal. Some simple maths shows that that particular outlet was discharging sewage for the equivalent of 312 days. Just imagine for a moment that sewage was being discharged all day and all night for 312 days in a calendar year. That did not literally happen, but it kind of did.

I recently met South West Water on site in Portloe, a beautiful, picturesque fishing village, to talk about the raw sewage overflow there. When the system overflows, as it often does in the summer, it squirts sewage up into the air and on to the foreshore, which is horrendous. It should not take the intervention of the local MP before something is done about that. Something has to change.

I have had the great privilege of sitting on the Environmental Audit Committee, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), and we have done some great work on this. I pay tribute to the work he has led—I have only been a small part of it. I work locally with people and stakeholders to do what we can to clear up the River Fal, in particular, and it is not just about the storm overflows; all sorts of other things go into the river. After two and a half years as an MP and much longer campaigning on this issue, I believe we really must do better. I have run out of time, so I will sit down.

[Julie Elliott (in the Chair)]

We have managed that on time. I call the SNP spokesperson, Alan Brown.

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[Alex Sobel]

Of course, there are not any shareholders in Welsh Water; it is owned by the people of Wales. On some of these issues, Welsh Water is performing exceedingly well as a water company. The hon. Lady knows that this is a devolved matter, so I will not comment any further on that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) made an excellent point about faecal E. coli and how that affects human and animal health. In my constituency, people have basically had to swim through sewage and dogs have unfortunately passed away because of exposure to it.

Over the last six years, Tory Governments have allowed a million discharges of raw human sewage into our watercourses. Last year, they were given an opportunity to place legal duties on companies to reduce discharges. It was just that—legal duties to reduce discharges. I know that there has been a lot of heat in this debate about this matter. The Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), was involved in that and he made an excellent speech today, as usual. Most of the MPs on the Government side voted against it, but I thank the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle and others present for being among the 22 Conservative MPs who voted with us for the amendment. There will be future opportunities to bring in that legal duty—if not in this Parliament, I certainly hope in the next one, when we will have a change of Government.

It is naive to think that these watered-down policies will be enough to end the epidemic that we currently face—an epidemic in which there is a sewage spill every two and a half minutes. We have been in this debate long enough for at least 30 spills. Crucially, if a spill is not monitored, a fine cannot be issued. Water bosses will continue to get off scot-free, with no incentive to install comprehensive monitoring. Yes, some discharges come as the result of storm overflows, but we know that others are a deliberate corner-cutting exercise by water companies that prioritise profit over the natural environment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) said that our rivers are now open sewers, and he is right. He made the excellent point that water companies are monopolies, but the Government treat water like a market. By contrast, the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), has clearly outlined Labour’s strategy for cleaning up our waterways. Under a Labour Government, there will be no hiding the problem. We will ensure that there are mandatory monitors on all outlets—every sewage works—and introduce automatic standing charges where this requirement has not yet been met. We will ensure that we get the real-time data that a number of Members have called for, and give the Environment Agency the power and resources to properly enforce the rules.

Again, I thank the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle for securing the debate, and I urge him to consider whether the current Government and his party are genuinely committed to dealing with the crisis. Are they serious about stopping more sewage releases on to Sussex beaches, Bexhill beach and beaches around the country, or are they simply rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic while water bosses laugh all the way to the bank? Some £72 billion in dividends has been given to those water bosses over the lifetime of the companies. These are the bosses who fail to properly invest in our water infrastructure yet still receive enormous payments and bonuses, all paid for by the customers—our constituents.

My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) made the point that many of our sewage treatment plants have insufficient storage. The current minimum storage that the Environment Agency stipulates is probably insufficient and, in many cases, is being breached. We need to see significant infrastructure investment in that storage, which will reduce overflows. My hon. Friend has also been a doughty champion of banning plastic wet wipes. When will we see that legislation introduced? I hope the Minister responds to her on that.

The Government make grand environmental claims, yet the Prime Minister did not bother to meet a single water company to discuss sewage spills during her time as a DEFRA Minister. Instead, she allowed water bosses free rein while cutting the DEFRA budget by £24 million, which could have been used for monitoring raw sewage. We saw sewage-dumping events skyrocket into the millions during that period. When Labour comes back into government, we will hold water bosses personally accountable. We will strike off directors who fail, and even introduce prison sentences for the most serious crimes. The Government have increased the fines, but we will introduce unlimited fines and cap bill increases to protect our most vulnerable citizens.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) made an excellent point when he said that we are seeing dividends being given out, debt being built up and our constituents’ bills going through the roof. I know that his water company has increased them significantly. Labour will ensure that any failure to improve is paid for by eroding dividends, not by adding to customers’ bills or cutting investment. We will fix the broken system whereby water companies rake it in while neglecting their customers and the environment.

Which plan will better protect beaches from sewage spills: ours or the current Government’s? How can we trust the Government to clean up our water, when their track record is one of allowing our rivers and beaches to be treated as open sewers? Only Labour can clean up our water. We will introduce a legally binding target to end 90% of sewage discharges by 2030, taking every necessary step to ensure a fairer, greener future for everyone.

[Julie Elliott (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister to respond, I remind her to allow time for Huw Merriman to wind up at the end of this extensive debate.