Water Quality: Sewage Discharge

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

The debate provides a welcome and much-needed opportunity to set the record straight on sewage and what the Government are doing. Not only are we taking this issue extremely seriously, but we are and have been acting. We have a realistic, costed plan to clean up our network of rivers and coasts, and it is already in operation—and what a tide of positivity we have heard from the Conservative Benches today.

There is general consensus among all our colleagues that this Government have a pragmatic, practical, costed, reliable and comprehensive plan. Those words have been used by all colleagues, and we are all pulling together to understand this issue. Those colleagues included my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald), my hon. Friends the Members for Keighley (Robbie Moore), for St Ives (Derek Thomas), for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker), for Gedling (Tom Randall), for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory), for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart), for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) and for Ashfield (Lee Anderson)—plain speaking, as ever—as well as my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra), my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) with her wonderful adaptive surfing centre, my hon. Friends the Members for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes) and for North West Norfolk (James Wild) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), who systematically unpicked the Labour party’s plan by himself.

Following today’s debate, I cannot help but feel that for the Opposition this is nothing but a political game to fire up those outside this place with a view to making some sort of gain. Labour’s plan is completely superfluous. Where have Labour Members been? We are doing all these things they are asking for, and more. It was this Government who uncovered the scandal of storm sewage overflows being used far too frequently, because it was this party that increased the monitoring of storm sewage overflows. We have ramped it up from a paltry 7% under Labour to 91% now, and it will be 100% by the end of the year. It was also the Labour Government who were taken to court for pollution, so where the idea of all those clean rivers comes from, I do not know.

What did we discover from all our monitoring? We discovered that water companies were indeed using storm sewage overflows far too frequently, and that is completely unacceptable. So what did we do? We acted. We brought in the Environment Act 2021 to require a new storm overflow discharge reduction plan, fully costed and with a clear impact assessment, delivering up to £56 billion of capital investment to revolutionise our Victorian infrastructure. We are consulting on lifting the cap on fines entirely so that the Environment Agency can issue potentially unlimited penalties on water companies, in addition to Ofwat’s existing powers to fine companies up to 10% of annual turnover.

Ofwat has strengthened its powers on executive pay awards so that if water companies want to pay bonuses even if environmental performance is found wanting, their shareholders must pay for that, not their customers. Through the new water restoration fund, money collected through fines will be spent on improving water quality. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) needs to get with the programme: we have already done what he asked. Our Treasury friends who sit here agreed to it. We are also bringing in new monitoring requirements under the Environment Act for near real-time reporting on storm overflows. My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth asked if we could do more. Yes; we are going to increase water quality monitoring upstream and downstream.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

I am not going to give way, because there simply is not time.

I note that the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) likes our monitoring ideas in the Environment Act so much that he has put our monitoring framework from the Act into clause 1 of his Bill. Marvellous! We also recently published our integrated plan for water. This includes an announcement that we are accelerating £1.6 billion of investment in reducing storm overflow discharges, upgrading wastewater treatment works and bringing in measures to improve drought resilience. The whole issue is extremely complicated, and that is why I made this a priority when I came into the Department. Our plan for water sets out how we will deliver the improvements we need across all matters connected to water, including all forms of pollution.

I ask people to remember that no Conservative Member has ever voted to allow raw sewage into our rivers. We voted for measures to clean up our rivers, and the Opposition voted against them. We have produced much cleaner water since Victorian times. We have almost the highest-quality drinking water in the world, and 93% of our bathing waters are excellent.

How could we take Labour’s suggestions on sewage seriously? Labour’s plans would potentially require enough pipes to be dug up from our roads to go around the globe two and a half times. Can anyone imagine the disruption that would cause, not to mention that it is totally impractical? We have heard no clear indication of how Labour’s plan would be paid for. Would it be added to customers’ bills? The shadow Minister could not answer that question on Sky this morning, and I did not hear the answer this afternoon. As for the Lib Dems, it is really not worth commenting on what they say.

The scale of this Government’s ambition cannot be highlighted enough, and I urge all colleagues to support the Government’s amendment.