Environment Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, on his determination and persistence on this issue. Equally, I thank my noble friend the Minister, my honourable friend Rebecca Pow and the officials who have engaged so sincerely and robustly with us in exploring ways forward.

I am grateful for the progress we have made so far. However, before the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, laid amendments to this Bill, the Government seemed reluctant to place an actual duty on companies. I am hopeful that we can be extremely proud of the changes that we in this House have made in bringing this issue to the forefront of public opinion and prompting action from the Government.

I too express my abhorrence for any vitriol levelled against honourable Members in the other place. Have we not learned in recent weeks the dangers of that type of discourse and personal abuse? I implore noble Lords and those who may still have significant concerns about this Bill to accept that the progress we have made has been made in good faith by Ministers and officials who sincerely wish to make this a landmark piece of legislation—I believe it will be—and are committed to the environmental causes that are so important to so many of us.

Without the duty that the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, proposes, it is entirely possible that little or nothing would happen. That is not safe for public health. I declare my interests as in the register. I recognise the importance of private water utilities to many pension funds and institutional portfolios, which rely on their generous dividends. I have no interest in seeing these companies pushed into bankruptcy or public ownership, but I believe they have neglected their sewage overflow problems for years. They have failed to invest sufficiently to limit the problem and have even played fast and loose with the requirements to report overflows and allowed many illegal discharges. It is time to legislate to force them to spend significant sums to make up for past underspending and egregious behaviour, rather than relying on further promises which leave us with horribly polluted waters.

As the Rivers Trust said—I commend it on its work—more than half of Britain’s rivers are in poor ecological condition due to sewage discharges. This amendment does not call for the immediate elimination of sewage discharges but for ongoing reductions. Clearly, this will take time, but a new duty is so important as we have not really even started.

I noticed this afternoon that the Government have just announced and released on the Defra website plans to further strengthen the Bill with their own amendment to be enshrined in law, which I am led to believe will ensure that water companies have a duty to progressively reduce the adverse impact of sewage discharges from storm overflows. I sincerely hope that that is the case. For that to happen we will need to pass this amendment in this House tonight. I also congratulate my right honourable friend Philip Dunne and my honourable friend Richard Graham and others in the other place who have been working so hard behind the scenes to ensure that we move to a much better place on this amendment.

I therefore hope that noble Lords will support the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, in this important amendment, and I hope and believe that the Minister and the Government will take us to the right place very soon.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, in view of the Minister’s remarks, I should intervene briefly. The noble Baroness just made the crucial point that there appears to have been a major change of government policy. Let us not delude ourselves: that is because of the strength of parliamentary and public opinion. We have been doing our job in making it clear that the disgraceful situation which my noble friend Lord West, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and others have referred to, should not continue.

The Minister was so busy criticising me that he did not say explicitly that he is accepting the amendment in the name of the noble Duke. Are the Government accepting it? I see that the noble Baroness is shaking her head. Is it the case that they are not accepting the amendment? So we will have to vote. That is quite a significant point. The Government are still not in a situation where they are clearly accepting what the noble Duke said. The Government could, procedurally, accept the amendment in the name of the noble Duke, it would go back, and they could then move a further amendment.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I will give the noble Lord an answer. The Government encourage the noble Duke, the Duke of Westminster—I have done it again. I will go to jail voluntarily after this. The Government encourage the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, to press his amendment to a Division. The reason for doing so is because we will then be able to send it back to the House of Commons so that the Commons can then table our amendment in lieu. I would have thought the noble Lord would be aware of that and I suspect—in the same way that he continues to send absurd messages on Twitter in the last few minutes—that he probably already knew the answer.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I am well aware of the procedure of the House; I have been here rather longer than the noble Lord. The question is whether the Government are accepting it. Are they going to vote? No? So they are not voting. If they are not voting, that means that the amendment in the name of the noble Duke will go back to the House of Commons, and the right thing to do then is for it to be accepted or for them to move whatever technical changes they want.

On the substance of this issue, obviously the House congratulates the noble Duke on the stand he has taken. It is because of that stand that we are in this position this evening. On the business of criticisms of the Minister, let us make this very clear. Speaker after speaker in this debate has pointed out that unless there is this duty—an actual duty on water companies to reduce these illegal or unacceptable discharges—the current unsatisfactory position would not only continue but would probably get worse. The noble Earl referred to this.

With the scale of further development, the cutback of two-thirds in the Environment Agency—I am not giving way to the noble Lord; he can make his own remarks in a moment if he wishes to. I was criticised by the Minister so it is perfectly reasonable that I should reply. There has been a cutback of two-thirds in the staff of the Environment Agency over the last 10 years. In addition, the new guidance from the Environment Agency says that because of Brexit—yes, Brexit—where water companies cannot get the chemicals they need because of the HGV crisis, they are allowed exemptions from current rules. For all those reasons there is very good reason to believe that without the amendment in the name of the noble Duke, the situation would get worse and not better. My statement was clear, that without the change which the noble Duke is proposing, the situation over which the Government are presiding—the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, is the Minister responsible—would get worse.

We are doing the right thing in supporting the noble Duke. The House has shown itself in its best lights in supporting him so strongly, I am glad that the Government have come to this position and now, I hope, they will start moving in the right direction rather than the wrong direction.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, had any part at all in encouraging the deluging of some of our colleagues in verbal sewage, he should apologise.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, who I imagine has not read any of this, is making totally unfounded allegations and he should withdraw them.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I said that if the noble Lord has any part in it, he should apologise.

Environment Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 9th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to congratulate the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, on bringing us this far and I add my congratulations to my noble friend the Minister.

I want to ask two small questions. My noble friend said that he would look for the water companies to achieve a progressive reduction in the discharge of sewage over a period and admitted that this would go beyond one price review. As we are so far into the current price review, what will the level of expenditure be within this review, and does he admit that the majority of expenditure will probably fall in the next price review?

He is aware of my concern about the delay in introducing the regulations under Schedule 3 of the water Act 2020. Does he not share my concern that we will still potentially be front-loading raw sewage as surface water will be allowed to mix with the overflow from the combined sewers, pumping more raw sewage into the rivers? I am deeply unhappy that we have not yet fulfilled one of the outstanding requests of the Michael Pitt report from 2007, when surface water flooding first became an issue, and even after the awful floods that we have had since. We have not managed to achieve an ending to the automatic right to connect and, until these regulations are introduced, we will not do so.

Is my noble friend able to put a timetable on when these regulations will finally come into place, so that we can have a pincer movement on the raw sewage going upstream and downstream, as addressed by the amendments before us this afternoon?

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Motion C1. I know enough about military strategy to know that where a Duke of Wellington does not lead a forward manoeuvre, it may be unwise to try to advance when he is not leading. So I am very mindful of the views of the House, and other noble Lords will speak before I decide whether to press Motion C1.

The point he made, which I think still holds, is that, although there has been movement on the part of the Government, in two key respects—the scope of the duty on water companies and the timescale in which it is intended to be met and in which we are intended to see improvements—the amendment that the Government have moved is unsatisfactory. I think there is general recognition in the House that we are not talking about a minor matter. We are talking about 400,000 discharges of raw sewage into Britain’s rivers in the last year alone. All the evidence is that the number is increasing, not reducing. We are not moving in the right direction; we are moving in the wrong direction and indeed, because of the impact of Brexit and the supply chain problems and all of that, and the shortage of relevant chemicals, the Environment Agency has issued formal advice exempting water undertakings from having to meet their prior conditions.

The noble Duke’s first amendment referred to taking “all reasonable steps”, which would imply a short timescale, and my amendment refers to

“a period specified by the Secretary of State”

in which defined objectives are to be met. My question to the Minister, which I think will be of great importance to the House since there is no reference to any timescale in his amendment, is: in what timescale does he envisage that there will be significant reductions in sewage discharges?

The second issue relates to scope. The noble Duke’s amendment put a direct duty on water companies to improve the performance of sewerage systems to get at the heart of the problem—inadequate sewage treatment facilities to reduce discharges of raw sewage. Now, the Government’s amendment refers to reducing

“the adverse impact of discharges”,

which is an indirect duty and does not require at all, necessarily—but certainly not in a defined timescale—significant improvements in the performance of sewerage systems. I ask the Minister why the Government are so focused on the indirect impacts—which we accept are important, and the noble Duke referred to that—rather than a direct duty on water companies to improve the performance of their sewerage systems?

A final point of some significance is: who can enforce this duty? Because, as everyone has accepted, without enforcement the duty will probably go unfulfilled. Philip Dunne—to whom we pay tribute and who has done great work in the other place on this issue—in his speech yesterday referred to his continuing concerns about enforcement, particularly in the context of a cut in the Environment Agency’s staffing and budget of two-thirds in the last 10 years, which has dramatically reduced its capacity to enforce or indeed even to inspect—and of course, unless you have inspected, you cannot enforce.

The noble Duke’s amendments would have given any individual or body corporate the power to enforce or to bring enforcement action or legal action because of the non-fulfilment by a water company of the duty. I think in particular of local authorities. Of course, it is local authorities that best know what is going on in their area and have the professional staff who are able to make assessments. Under the Government’s amendment, only the Secretary of State and defined state institutions can hold water companies to account for the enforcement of their duties. That is a very significant limitation on the noble Duke’s amendment.

So my third question to the Minister is: why are the Government not prepared to allow local authorities and non-state bodies, many of which are highly expert in this area, to bring proceedings against water companies that are not fulfilling the duty that is now set out in the Government’s amendment?

To me, these are three very significant issues: timescale, the scope of the duty and enforcement. In all three respects, the Government’s amendment is wanting at the moment. It does not lead me to have any expectation that the noble Duke’s aspirations, which we all share, will actually be fulfilled, because the timescale for meeting these objectives could be inordinately long. I look forward to hearing the contributions of other noble Lords, and in particular of the Minister at the end of the debate, before I decide whether, even if the noble Duke himself is retiring from the field, others of us might feel that it is in the public interest that we should attempt to advance none the less.