Sewage Pollution Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Rebecca Pow
Main Page: Rebecca Pow (Conservative - Taunton Deane)Department Debates - View all Rebecca Pow's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(2 years, 2 months ago)
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George Eustice
Our Environment Act addresses all the substantive points that the hon. Gentleman raised. As I said in my statement, Ofwat is currently consulting on an ability to regulate the dividends that companies pay and to link that to their environmental performance.
I would simply repeat that this is the first Government to prioritise this issue. These are long-term challenges. We could argue that the coalition Government, and Governments before them, could have acted on this issue and had a different strategic policy statement. There were Liberal Democrats in that Government. They chose to prioritise other issues, such as the alternative vote and Lords reform.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
I will cry in a minute! Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is this Government who have prioritised this issue of tackling sewage discharges, with the monitoring, the reporting and the big investigation under way; and that, contrary to what we have heard from some Members, the Liberal Democrats actually voted against all those measures in the Environment Act? So they could have helped.
Crucially, would my right hon. Friend, who has himself done so much on this issue in the Department, agree that what is important now is that the regulator uses the power it has and uses its new directions; that the EA takes forward prosecutions following this intensive investigation; and that the water companies do not pay huge salaries if they cannot demonstrate that their house is in order?
George Eustice
I commend my hon. Friend for her role in progressing this agenda and for the work that she did on the Environment Act, which sets out all the new powers that we need to address this challenge. She is absolutely right: we introduced powers under the Act to give Ofwat new abilities to scrutinise and to change dividend awards. It is consulting on measures to do that now. It is because of the work of my hon. Friend and others in government and in the Department that we have the powers under the Environment Act to finally tackle this long-standing challenge.