Water and Sewage Regulation (Industry and Regulators Committee Report)

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I must first declare my interests as a farmer and chair of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.

Rivers are an important source of life. They host a huge range of species, both above and below the waterline—too many to list in a five-minute speech. They also have a life force of their own, having run through our landscapes for millennia. We are here today and gone tomorrow compared to these moving symbols of what should be our national pride. They are also a force for cohesion. The early Babylonian and Egyptian empires, for instance, were founded on their management of water. Even today—this is a topical point—with all the violence in Israel, there is a movement there called the Blue Peace, the theory being that the management of water is too serious an issue to be disturbed by nationalistic politics. People from all sides have indeed kept talking, whatever the extremists are up to.

I mention all that because I am trying to emphasise a point, well made in the report and by other speakers today. As a nation, we are currently failing our rivers and must now make more effort to all work together to ensure they are restored to the historic institutions they should be: places as sacred as our cathedrals, where nature and mankind should thrive together. It is obvious, as others have said, that we are currently failing to achieve that end. It is also obvious that any campaign for instant renewal of our rivers is way beyond the current resources of this nation or its water consumers, but we have to start now to turn the situation around.

First—this is a practical point—in order to make a realistically costed plan, which sorts out the essential from the merely good to have, we need a map of the detailed condition of all our rivers, from headwaters to estuaries. The only way we will achieve that is by testing all the waters on a more regular basis. Where possible, we should have remote electronic monitors up and down all our rivers. I know these monitors are costly at the moment, and slightly limited in the information they provide, but their efficiency will improve, and their price will drop if the quantity is guaranteed. I believe we need thousands of them.

Sampling by staff is an extremely skilled job and takes time. It is therefore expensive, so random sampling is rare. I have heard stories from farmers—possibly exaggerated—that the chance of their bit of river being randomly tested is less than once in 100 years. We need to know on a daily basis what is happening to our rivers so that we can decide what our financial priorities ought to be. Sampling by staff, for instance, does not happen at night, nor usually at that vital time when it is raining.

With money short and rivers below par, we need to know what our priorities should be. For example, are the phosphates too high in the night or the day, or before or after rain? Is it the nitrates or the microplastics, nanoplastics, chemicals or a lack of oxygen that is the more pressing problem in each river? You can find out more from continuous monitoring in two weeks than you will probably find after many years of random sampling. We need to know how and where to spend our money.

I will touch quickly on a couple more points. I strongly support the report’s emphasis on building up more water supplies through new reservoirs and water transfers. The less water we take out of our headwaters and iconic rivers such as chalk streams, the less will be the effects of whatever pollution is seeping into system.

Finally, we need everyone, led by the Government, to come together—it is that cohesion agenda again—to promote better behaviour by water users. Thames Water has said that 85% of the 75,000 blockages it clears annually are caused by things that should go in the bin. We all know about wet wipes, but the public also need to know about the dangers of antibiotics, medicines and other no-nos getting into the system. We need a campaign to educate the public about not using the sewage system as an alternative to rubbish collection. I can see it being quite an amusing and imaginative campaign.

It is going to take a lot of work, money and time to get our rivers right again, but that work has to start now. I thoroughly commend this report.