Water Quality: Sewage Discharge

Liz Twist Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Having discarded my carefully crafted speech, I will make just a few key points.

I think the Secretary of State fails to understand just how strongly our constituents feel about the issue of pollution in our waterways. It is one of the key issues that my constituents talk to me about and not just now—they have been doing so for a while. In April 2021, I had a Westminster Hall debate on this very issue as a result of that pressure from constituents, so this has been a consistent theme. That was followed by the many debates we had during the progress of the Environment Bill on the extent of action that should be taken on the issue, and we know how much public interest there was on the issue.

As co-chair of the all-party water group, I have the chance to speak regularly to water companies—not just my own—and to the regulators to find out what is happening, so I know about the changes that are being proposed. And that is as far as it goes. This morning, we had a presentation from David Black, the chief executive of Ofwat, explaining the current framework. But the fact is that the regulators—both the financial regulators of water, Ofwat, and the environmental regulators—are guided by Government action and Government decisions. Frankly, I do not believe we are going far enough or fast enough in resolving the issue of combined sewer overflows. How can it be right that there are another 27 years to go before we actually reach a stage where we have resolved the problem? Therefore, I think the Government plans are lacking ambition and should go further.

In the end, it is the Government who set the parameters of regulation and the fact is, as I have said, that they lack ambition. Our constituents want to see improvement much earlier than is being proposed. They want to be able to bathe in rivers and seas without fearing that they will be contaminated by sewage overflow and effluent. That is why I support Labour’s plan to act much more swiftly and to end this scandal of sewage discharges into rivers and seas. I hope the Government will step up their action to make sure that the scandal ends.