Rivers, Lakes and Seas: Water Quality

Polly Billington Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Catherine Fookes]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I thank him for his intervention. That is exactly why the Government are taking action. I will come on to what the Labour Government are doing shortly. I was fortunate to meet Feargal Sharkey on the campaign trail. He endorsed my campaign, which means that I will be held to account. That is one of the reasons why this issue is so important to me and why I am pleased to have secured this debate.

I believe that the campaigning groups in Monmouthshire are some of the best in the UK. We have Save the River Usk, led by the inspiring Angela Jones, Friends of the River Wye, Save the Wye, the South East Wales Rivers Trust, the Wye & Usk Foundation and many more, and they continue to do excellent work to hold us to account.

We also have the Wye Catchment Partnership, which is a cross-border partnership of more than 70 members, including Natural Resources Wales and the Environment Agency and representatives of all the local authorities, the National Farmers Union and the environmental charities I have mentioned. It is a great partnership. As I have mentioned, the Minister recently had a meeting with the Wye Catchment Partnership to hear about the need for an action plan. I sincerely thank her for her engagement to get the Wye catchment plan phase 2 off the ground. That could be a brilliant pilot project, supported by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and consistent with the unfulfilled policy commitments of the previous Government’s plan for water. It shows how working with stakeholders across all counties and countries, and the regulators, could be a model for changing the face of our rivers. I hope the Government will support it.

Rivers know no boundaries. The Wye crosses four counties and two countries, so we need an integrated and coherent Wye catchment management plan that uses the best available evidence and a well-targeted programme of remedial measures to get our river cleaned up.

I said that Feargal Sharkey endorsed my election campaign, a key promise of which was to work in this place to clean up our rivers. That is why I am pleased that the Labour Government have done more on water in six months than the Tories and their coalition partners, the Lib Dems, did in 14 years. I am proud of the two main measures that the Government have already announced: the Water (Special Measures) Bill—I am proud to be a member of the Public Bill Committee—and the water commission. The Bill will enable the Government and regulators to block the payment of bonuses to water company executives, bring criminal charges against those who break the law, issue automatic and severe fines, and monitor every sewage outlet.

It is right that the Government have started work on cleaning up our water by tackling our water companies, which the Conservatives failed to do for 14 years, but the next big issue that we must tackle is the pollution in our waterways arising from diffuse agricultural sources. As the water commission’s remit is to look at how to tackle inherited systemic issues in the water sector to restore our rivers, lakes and seas to good health, I am sure the chair, the former deputy governor of the Bank of England Sir Jon Cunliffe, will include diffuse pollution from agriculture in his commission’s investigations.

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

I am keen to make sure that the water commission can tackle some of the most egregious failures of the water industry. For example, yesterday Southern Water dumped sewage into the sea alongside Ramsgate. This issue is fundamental to the environment and the economy in a seaside community such as Thanet, and it needs to be part of our overall drive for growth. The new independent water commission needs to explore different governance models and introduce local accountability, or the water companies will continue to fail as they have done up until now.

[Catherine Fookes]

I agree entirely. The Government’s mission is growth. We need to see the cleaning-up of our waterways as an integral part of our growth mission.

We know that tackling diffuse pollution from agriculture will be a hard nut to crack, with farmers already under pressure, but we have examples of good practice in the Wye. For example, Avara is already shipping out 75% of the chicken waste from its Herefordshire chicken farms along the Wye. That is to be welcomed, but it does not solve the long-term problems of too much phosphate in our rivers.