Bathing Water Regulations

Pippa Heylings Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing this critical debate.

While covid-19 undoubtably brought on many challenges, one positive outcome was the surge in open-water swimming. More people than ever before enjoyed blue spaces for recreational activities, reaping significant benefits for both their physical and mental wellbeing. However, many were more cautious about diving into freezing cold lakes, rivers and streams when they were aware of the level of bacteria and pollution present in our waters. As Liberal Democrats, we have long and passionately campaigned on this issue. Last year, the Lib Dems discovered that water companies had discharged sewage over 100,000 times in areas designated as current bathing waters, putting public health and local ecosystems at risk.

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

My constituency of Tiverton and Minehead neighbours the patch of my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos). Very recently, one of my constituents shared a harrowing story with me, in which his children fell seriously ill after swimming in a local river last summer. These public health risks are further exacerbated by bad flooding in our areas, as we have seen in recent episodes, which sweeps contaminants and overwhelms sewage systems into our waterways, degrading water quality. Does my hon. Friend agree that stricter regulations must be introduced in the interest of public health and to ensure that our bathing waters are safe for everybody to enjoy?

[Pippa Heylings]

I completely agree. I emphasise what my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington said: that is why we need tougher action on the water companies. We also need to take action on combined sewers and make improvements to the small sewage treatment works on many chalk streams, like in my constituency. However, today’s debate is about bathing site designation, which is one of the effective levers that can be used.

We are talking about the proposed reforms by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to bathing site designations. I would like to talk about the second core reform being proposed, which I am concerned would lead to a real reduction in the number of bathing sites being designated, rather than the increase that we should see, particularly for inland waters. The second core reform says that we should

“Include the feasibility of improving a site’s water quality to at least ‘sufficient’ as a criterion for final designation. This would avoid poor value for money, by limiting expenditure where water quality improvement is not feasible or proportionate.”

To best demonstrate why that reform would not only fail but could also damage water quality in our rivers, it is worth sharing the story of Sheep’s Green in my constituency. For centuries, people have been enjoying Sheep’s Green—a popular spot on the River Cam. It was at Sheep’s Green that we worked to bring in a bathing site designation, because of the poor quality of the water.

In October 2023, the Cam Valley Forum, a local voluntary organisation, submitted an application to DEFRA to grant Sheep’s Green designated bathing water status. That came after three years of hard work by local volunteers, which is truly commendable, and was based on the success of the River Wharfe. Sheep’s Green had been used for decades without official recognition, and the idea of getting it designated bathing status had widespread public support. Over the course of a 10-week consultation, the Cam Valley Forum received more than 500 responses, with an overwhelming 93% in favour of the designation. South Cambridgeshire district council and Cambridge city council also formally backed the proposal. Anglian Water, with whom I worked, also fully supported the designation application.

Once designated, as predicted by local volunteers and citizen scientists, Sheep’s Green was classified as having poor water quality. That triggered a statutory obligation for improvements to clean up the source of the pollution—the Haslingfield sewage works in my constituency. For years, local citizen scientists had suspected it was the culprit. Now, finally, Anglian Water was legally required to act.

Bathing water status also unlocked funding from Ofwat under the water industry national environment programme. Tens of millions of pounds vital for the infrastructure improvements needed to reduce the sewage discharges were made available for Haslingfield, with work expected to begin in the next two years. These improvements will not just benefit swimmers at Sheep’s Green, but have a wider impact on the ecological health of the River Cam.

However, had core reform 2 been in place when the Cam Valley Forum began its journey in 2020, there would have been no bathing water designation for Sheep’s Green. Without that designation, there would have been no investigation by the Environment Agency, no identification of Haslingfield sewage works as the source of the pollution and no legal requirement for Anglian Water to take action. The WINEP funding would not have been available and we would have lost the opportunity for water improvements and nature restoration in South Cambridgeshire.

In short, core reform 2 would have inadvertently blocked the clean-up of hundreds of rivers. Local organisations like the Cam Valley Forum are not just highlighting a problem with their concerns around core reform 2—they are demanding action. They are rightly pushing for bathing water status because it is a vital tool for driving cleaner, healthier rivers. We should be supporting these efforts, not hindering them.

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

It is always a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John.

I feel that we are having a little bit of a love-in this afternoon, which is always a nice way to start. Of course I will be more than happy to pass on the thanks from the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), to the team who have worked on this issue. I thank the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing this really important debate. There is so much agreement in the room that I almost wonder whether we are still in the House of Commons. I will certainly try to cover most of the points that have been made.

Just to set the issue in context, we completely accept and believe that the water system at the moment is broken. That is why, when we first came into office, we changed the articles of association to put customers and their opinions into the water boards. It is why we are doubling the compensation for people who face water outages. It is why we have ringfenced money so that it cannot be diverted from infrastructure improvements and into bonuses. It is why we have the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, which just came into force and got Royal Assent last week—because we know that the system as a whole is broken. It is also why, just last Thursday, I was in Manchester with Sir Jon Cunliffe, launching the call for evidence on water. I strongly urge every Member here to respond to that call for evidence. There is a huge, 200-page consultation document that goes with it but, just because we are kind, there is a 20-page executive summary as well, so please have a look at that, respond to the consultation and make some of these points there.

Bathing waters in and of themselves are not under the water commission. The reason for that is that I wanted to do something on bathing waters really quickly; I did not want it to get delayed by the water commission when we already knew some of the things that we wanted to look at. I will quickly go over some of the things that we are looking at changing. At the moment, the regulations are one size fits all. I would like to reassure people talking about the dates around bathing waters. Obviously, we will officially respond to the consultation; there will be an official Government response, but so far I have yet to see put forward any evidence that seems to indicate that there is a wish to shorten the bathing water window. In fact, most people are advocating to keep it the same or extend it, recognising that some people go swimming all year round.

This is the perfect point at which to mention my mum, who has decided to do open water swimming and swims all year round, and now has her own wetsuit. I think it is amazing that she has discovered open water swimming in her retirement—slightly crazy, but definitely amazing. As I said, we will obviously have a formal response to the consultation, but so far I have not seen anybody advocating shortening the bathing season. I wanted to make a point of mentioning that.

On the de-designation points, I wholeheartedly accept the points made by the spokesman for the official Opposition and by the Liberal Democrats that it would be an incentive for companies not to invest in improving the water if they knew that after a certain number of years it would be de-designated—although of course I must add the proviso that we have not officially responded to the consultation. However, from looking at what we have had so far, that is certainly what I am feeling.

I also want to address this point. I am sure that it was not intended, but I wondered whether it was coming through that bathing water status is the golden ticket to improve the water in an area. I do not accept that, because if we are saying that bathing water status is the golden ticket to improve the water, that means that we are also almost accepting, on the flip side of that, that if people do not have bathing water status, we are okay with their water being completely polluted.

We are not okay with that. We want to clean up all our rivers, lakes and seas, and we have a plan to do so. We have £104 billion of investment going into the next five years. We are looking at what is happening in bathing waters, and looking at iconic sites around the country. The argument that somewhere needs to have bathing water status or its waters will remain polluted, is one that I challenge head on. That argument almost accepts that we are okay with things remaining polluted. No—we should focus on something much bigger than that, which is how we clean up all of our rivers, lakes and seas, especially looking at bathing waters.

There is a major public health aspect here. It is an important point, and it is why I am delighted that Sir Chris Whitty is one of the expert advisers on the Cunliffe review looking at this. An argument is being made that asks why we are setting a standard, as if to say, “If they are really poor, we don’t want to allocate them as bathing sites.” We should pause and think about that for a moment because, as was illustrated by the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), if we are saying something is a bathing site and we give it bathing water status, it implies that it is safe to bathe there. If we designate a site that we know will not be safe for many years to come, and would take a huge amount of investment to become safe, is it right to call that a bathing water site and imply that people are safe to bathe there?

So, I think the sensible and correct decision is to improve all our water everywhere through reforms, which is why we are doing the water review and why we passed the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025. Let us look at the areas that are likely to improve more quickly, and say to people, “You can bathe here, because it will improve more quickly and we can see rapid progress, but these other sites that you want to bathe in—if we think seriously—are not going to improve for a long time.” As a Government, we think that it would be irresponsible to call those sites bathing water sites when we know full well that there could be serious damage to public health.

[Pippa Heylings]

I wanted to clarify that there are two bodies of argument here. Given that there has been a complete lack of regulations and ways to enforce the “polluter pays” principle with water companies until now, status has been seen as one of the only mechanisms to do it. However, I would like the Minister to recognise that these are already bathing sites because the criteria is that they have to show that they are already being used as bathing sites—that they are recognised as culturally and ecologically important. Given that, even though they are poor we should be investing in them to ensure that they continue. We know that if they are declared poor, people are warned of that and therefore do not swim. So we are not subjecting people to unsafe water; we are recognising that these are key bathing areas and have historical, cultural and ecological importance—now and in the future.

[Emma Hardy]

I do not disagree in the slightest. To be completely clear, sites that are already designated as bathing sites of course need enhanced investment and support to improve them, even if they are poor at the moment. I was addressing the point about when we are looking to designate new sites, and answering the question why we are looking at core reform 2.

Again, I stress that we have not officially responded to the consultation. If we are looking at a site that we wish to designate in the future, which is of a really low quality, is it irresponsible to designate that site knowing that it will not reach for five to 10 years the standard it needs to reach? Like everything, that is a question for debate. But for sites that are designated at the moment, I agree that we should be putting extra investment into them even if they are poor.

I do not want to rehearse the many debates and discussions we have already had. There were 36 amendments, I think, to the Water (Special Measures) Act on Report.

Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords]

Pippa Heylings Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis]

I agree with the hon. Lady. I hope her party comes to its senses at some point—maybe in the same way that my party needs to come to its senses—and accept that some form of public ownership will probably be the best way to resolve that.

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

Have you?

[Clive Lewis]

That is my personal view; I put that on the record.

These companies have legal obligations first and foremost to their shareholders, which means short-term profit maximisation. When water was privatised, to quote from Unison’s recent report on this matter, to

“ensure the commercial success of the companies, the government wrote off all the existing debts of the RWAs”—

regional water authorities—

“(£6.5 billion in total) and gave the private companies £7.7 billion of public subsidies in tax relief on profits.”

It has come to my attention that even some former chief executives of water companies fear for the future of the industry, because good investors have by and large exited it. It is now the Macquaries and vulture capitalists of this world that dominate shareholding.

This issue goes far beyond regulation. Indeed, our own regulator, Ofwat, has been found wanting, as its own growth duty prioritises business as usual. In other areas, the Government have quite rightly recognised and embraced the value of public ownership, such as in rail and with Great British Energy. Unfortunately, when it comes to water companies there seems to be an inconsistency in Government policy. Many of us on this side of the House ran on a manifesto commitment to reduce the cost of living, and that commitment is one that I think every Labour MP believes in. However, the cost of corruption and of extraction by a private water company should under no circumstances, as is currently configured in the Bill, land on the heads of our constituents should any of these companies go bust or be taken into special administration.

Water is a monopoly industry, which means that bill payers and taxpayers are the same. What message would it send to our constituents if they are asked to pay, via their bills or via tax, to make a payout for the mistakes and excesses of privatised water?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Hudson]

It has been a wide-ranging debate, although shorter than we had hoped for. I thank Members for participating today. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) for her passion for enhancing the accountability of water companies and protecting watersports, which we are all passionate about, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) for passionately advocating for the water restoration fund.

New clause 16 would establish the water restoration fund, to ringfence money from fines to restore local waterways, not to balance the Treasury’s books. This was a Conservative fund, and the Labour Government must not let ideology stand in the way of evidence-based policymaking. They must take the baton forward and ringfence this money, so that waterways can be restored locally.

[Pippa Heylings]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Dr Hudson]

No, I have no time.

New clause 19 is designed to ensure that fines on water companies result in equivalent reductions in customers’ bills. That is only fair, and we urge the Government to take forward the new clause.

New clause 17 seeks to strengthen the financial resilience of water companies by enabling the Secretary of State to stipulate the limits of borrowing, so that these companies do not leverage too much debt. That is an important new clause that needs to go forward.

Through amendments 26 and 27, we want to protect customers in different parts of the country so that they do not have to pay for the misdemeanours of water companies that do not serve them. We urge the Government to take forward our amendments and make this Bill stronger, so that we can improve our precious waterways.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Hardy]

Let me try to get through my remarks.

If it becomes feasible in future for companies to install monitors more quickly, they will be encouraged to do so. In addition to reporting requirements for emergency overflows, other measures in this Bill will ensure that water companies have robust plans to reduce pollution incidents and empower the regulator to punish wrongdoing effectively. This includes requirements to produce pollution incident reduction plans and implementation reports, as set out in clause 2 of the Bill, and requirements for water companies to consider the use of nature-based solutions in the production of their drainage and wastewater managements plans, as set out in clause 4.

The transparency provided by these measures will drive a culture change ensuring that water companies have the right incentives to reduce discharges of sewage into our precious rivers, lakes and seas. Let me be clear that the Bill also provides comprehensive powers for Ofwat to enforce the requirements introduced by the Bill to increase transparency, including through use of significant fines. I can reassure the House that where discharges are found to have breached permit conditions, the regulator will not hesitate to take action. In relation to new clause 14, I also make it clear that Ofwat has a duty to secure that companies are able to finance the delivery of their statutory obligations, including meeting pollution targets.

The Government are committed to acting as fast as possible to reduce sewage pollution in our waterways, and already have stretching pollution targets in place, informed by detailed analysis and extensive engagement. These targets will drive £60 billion of investment between 2025 and 2050, and almost £12 billion of that investment will begin this year, improving 2,800 storm overflows by 2030. I hope this reassures the House that, where water companies do not comply with requirements around pollution incidents and the reporting of those pollution incidents, the regulator will not hesitate to take action.

[Pippa Heylings]

The water restoration fund was created by the previous Government, yet not one penny of the £11 million levied on water companies between 2022 and 2023 reached any restoration of the waterways. Does the Minister agree that our precious chalk streams could be helped by the water restoration fund being continued?

[Emma Hardy]

As I have mentioned, I am a huge fan of our chalk streams. The hon. Member is right to point out that the much-lauded water restoration fund that some Members are so keen to talk about was established in November 2022, yet 18 months later the grand total of the number of projects supported by it was zero.

A number of hon. Members have also put forward suggestions to improve information and data sharing more broadly. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) has put her name to some of these amendments. Although the Government do not think it necessary to bring forward legislation in this space, we are actively considering ways of making data more accessible to the public through non-legislative means. This includes information on water companies’ performance and data on local sewer networks in map form, which must be made available free of charge under the Water Industry Act 1991.

Climate and Nature Bill

Pippa Heylings Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Carla Denyer]

I would like to finish this point. If the Government really think that they can look their constituents and their children in the eye and say, “Look, we couldn’t help it; there was party politics; I had to think of my career,” I say to them, “Go ahead.”

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

I, too, have seen “Kyoto”, and I have spent 20 years attending all the climate negotiations. Given that the hon. Member has spoken about cross-party consensus and the need to build the necessary political momentum, will she show respect for the huge efforts made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage)? She did receive commitments that will enable us to move forward—not at the pace that we want, but together—and I am very worried about the way in which the hon. Member is undermining the efforts that have been made to move forward with this.

[Carla Denyer]

I do have a huge amount of respect for the hon. Member for South Cotswolds, who has worked incredibly hard over the years—decades—as an environment campaigner, and for months since she first proposed this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Charlotte Cane]

I agree entirely that we need to retrain in order to ensure that everyone can benefit from this transition.

[Pippa Heylings]

Does my hon. Friend agree with my constituent Freya, who says: “I am 15 and I am afraid. I can do things in the community, but unless we have joined-up Government action, we have no hope”? We have various Ministers here as a result of this private Member’s Bill, which addresses the yawning gap between Departments.

[Charlotte Cane]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. Freya and the many other constituents I know have written to all of us should be assured that we are working together across this House.

In conclusion, I support the Bill entirely. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds for working hard to get concessions from the Government and to get cross-party consensus. I ask hon. Members to hold that together and support the different aspects of the Bill.

Rivers, Lakes and Seas: Water Quality

Pippa Heylings Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Dowd. Like our rivers, lakes and seas, our chalk streams are choked with a cocktail of chemicals and sewage. Water shortages are already becoming critical. That is the case in my constituency, which is home to precious chalk streams that are under threat.

The Conservative Government failed to stop water companies dumping raw sewage, and Ofwat continues to fail to regulate them. There was some hope that river basin management planning would achieve an overview and a strategic framework for managing our waterways’ different uses and challenges. However, as has been mentioned, the Office for Environmental Protection was clear that there are not enough specific, time-bound and certain measures in the river basin management plans to achieve environmental objectives, and that there had been insufficient investment in measures to address all major pressures. Yesterday, the Government said in their response to the OEP’s report on progress in improving the natural environment that the issue will be addressed by the independent commission into the water sector regulatory system led by Sir Jon Cunliffe. It is critical that the commission takes a holistic look and includes chalk streams in its review.

Storm overflows and untreated sewage regularly make headlines, but they are just part of the problem. As we have heard, phosphorous pollution is the most common reason why water bodies in England fail to achieve good ecological status, with over half of rivers failing targets. Phosphorous in the water environment comes largely from the continuous discharge of treated wastewater by the wastewater industry, with that effluent responsible for around 70% of the total load. That is endangering our chalk streams, which are a natural treasure and among the rarest habitats on earth. They are our unique heritage—as precious as the Great Barrier Reef is to Australia or as the Amazon rainforest is to South America.

The rare and beautiful chalk streams in my constituency are like a song, and the singers are the river groups that protect them: the friends of the Rivers Mel, Rhee, Granta, Shep, Orwell and Wilbraham and of the Cherry Hinton Brook, and the Cam Valley Forum. These chalk streams are under siege. Enough is enough: we need to give them specific protected status now.

Rural Affairs

Pippa Heylings Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

Rural communities are proud communities, and our farmers work tirelessly around the clock not only to put high-quality food on our plates but, through their businesses, to help to keep our rural economy going—as, indeed, do many other rural businesses, as Members on both sides of the House have recognised.

I congratulate the hon. Members for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), for Hemel Hempstead (David Taylor) and for Stirling and Strathallan (Chris Kane) on delivering their maiden speeches. I know Stirling and Strathallan very well, having been born in Stirling—I am a proper Unionist—which gave me my red hair. Each spoke proudly on behalf of their constituents, and I welcome them to this place.

We are just a few months into this Labour Government and, following a string of broken promises and damaging cuts, trust among our farming community is now at an all-time low. Why are this new Government, across every single Department, deciding to sideline the voice of our rural communities?

We have heard that the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero is ploughing ahead with his plans to replace productive agricultural land with solar panels, and to replace protected moorlands with wind turbines—all against the consent of local people. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government is taking away from local people the power to decide how they would like to see their rural communities expand, while providing no commitment whatsoever to improve services and infrastructure alongside any increased demand. The Secretary of State for Transport is scrapping the £2 bus cap, which the previous Government introduced as a vital part of the rural transport plan. Labour’s change leaves many people in remote rural communities paying even more to get to work or to visit friends and loved ones.

The Chancellor is stifling rural growth by hiking national insurance for small business owners, who are the backbone of our rural community, alongside her disastrous changes to inheritance tax relief through the ill-thought-through cap on agricultural property relief and business property relief, which will affect not only multigenerational family farms but trading businesses with assets valued well over the Government’s ridiculous £1 million cap. The Chancellor is also taxing double-cab pick-up trucks, as well as increasing the fertiliser tax, which is expected to increase costs by up to £50 a tonne.

Then, of course, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has willingly sold off his own budget to the Chancellor and broken every pre-election promise that he and his Government made to farmers, and then had the cheek to tell them to do more with less. That is all while he is dramatically reducing the delinked payment rates, which take effect next year, despite many farming businesses already having factored the income into their cash-flow forecasts. It is quite simple: this Labour Government do not understand rural communities and, what is worse, do not even appear to want to listen to them.

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me and David Walston from Thriplow in South Cambridgeshire that the impact of house prices and infrastructure means there is a complete disconnect between land value and income, which is affecting—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order.