Economic Growth (Regulatory Functions) (Amendment) Order 2024

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Monday 15th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I speak at quite a lot of sewage rallies and in sewage debates and I always give him credit for leading the charge against the Government’s laissez-faire attitude to sewage. There is usually a slightly stunned silence that I am congratulating a Duke—but that is life.

We heard some very fine words in the opening statement about the environmental considerations not being affected and so on. I am really sorry, but it is nonsense. If you have growth, you are going to have environmental devastation. It is automatic; it happens everywhere. At the moment, we have torrents of sewage pouring into our rivers, on to our coastlines and into our chalk streams. But, instead of stopping it, this proposal aims to increase it; and instead of giving Ofwat tougher powers to regulate the water industry and turn off the tap of CEO bonuses and shareholder dividends, Ofwat is now being told that economic growth is more important than clean water.

Whenever this Government do anything, I always ask, “Who benefits?” Who benefits here, of course, are Conservative Party donors and the economic growth they are going to experience at our expense and, in this case, developers who provided almost one-third of Conservative Party funds for the previous decade. What the Government mean by “economic growth” is the ability of developers to build cheap, sell high and connect up a lot of new houses to sewerage systems that cannot even cope with existing demand without emptying the excess into our local rivers and streams.

The only way to ensure that new houses are connected to a modern, effective sewerage system is to have public ownership of water companies. The only way to ensure that our water bills are being used to build local sewers rather than offshore bank accounts is to have people in charge who work for the public good and not for private greed.

By asking Ofwat to consider economic growth, the Government are not asking it to make a judgment on whether that growth is desirable, yet a growth in pollution that requires millions to be spent on clearing it up is classed as economic growth. More money spent on medicines that fight off gastric diseases from polluted water is economic growth, as is money repeatedly spent on restocking the fish populations of rivers. Are we really saying to Ofwat that growth at any cost to the health of humans and nature is a desirable thing that it should promote?

Last year, this House defeated the Government’s attempt to allow developers to build new homes that would have added pollution to some of the most sensitive waterways in this country. From the Norfolk Broads to Devon, the Government hoped to let developers pass on the clean-up costs for pollution to local people paying their water bills. We in your Lordships’ House stopped them. I would have liked us to do the same today, but clearly it is not going to happen.

I know that I will be on the Opposition Benches pestering the next Government to change these rules back. It will not take legislation; it is something a Minister can do and I will expect them to do it. Back in 2021, when the Government stripped out the last of our amendments on stopping sewage in the Environment Bill, without timetables and targets, I said, Cassandra-like:

“This will come to haunt MPs”.—[Official Report, 9/11/21; col. 1161.]


As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned earlier, this piece of legislation is a gift to the three opposition parties. At the rally I was at yesterday, all three opposition parties had a very sympathetic hearing, but, I am afraid, the Conservative MP had a very tough time, even though she was clearly very concerned about the issue. This Bill is a vote loser and the Government should remember that.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his introduction to the order. I assume that one of the objectives it to try to bring some rationality to the different range of regulatory functions that exist between the different regulators. That is perhaps a laudable objective. But it is a missed opportunity in this case, as nothing is said in this order—nor has the Minister indicated that he would like to see this—about the regulators collectively trying to do what they can to ensure that the industries for which they are responsible operate so as to be resilient and able to deal with a variety of shocks. I declare my interest as chair of the National Preparedness Commission.

This is not just about environmental sustainability, although that is one element of it. It is about their ability as industries to respond to what may befall them. At a time of heightened international crisis—I appreciate that most noble Lords are here to discuss precisely that—it is extraordinary that the Government are not taking the opportunity to use the regulatory mechanisms to try to improve the ability of our critical national infrastructure to be resilient and to respond. I hope the Minister will be able to explain why the opportunity has not been taken to extend the remit to ensure that there is a broader definition—one not just about economic growth but promoting resilience. This has, for example, been taken on board by the UK Regulators Network as one of its longer-term strategic aims.