Sewage Discharges Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Margaret Greenwood
Main Page: Margaret Greenwood (Labour - Wirral West)Department Debates - View all Margaret Greenwood's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott.
Over the summer, we saw multiple news stories reporting that water companies were pumping sewage into the sea. There were numerous reports of people being warned to stay out of the water at popular beaches because of pollution risks and unsafe conditions. It is an issue that my constituents are very concerned about, particularly as I represent a coastal community. In August, the Government published their storm overflows discharge reduction plan, which requires water companies to reduce discharges into designated bathing water and high-priority nature sites by 2035, and into all sites by 2050. That simply is not good enough.
The Rivers Trust has criticised the Government’s lack of ambition and said that the plan is too little, too late, adding that it was appalled to see that the plan had not taken into account the thousands of responses to the draft consultation, which called for much more ambitious targets. It is very clear that the Government’s plan to tackle discharge just does not show the level of ambition that we need to protect and enhance the quality of our coastal waters and waterways.