Water Quality: Sewage Discharge

Robbie Moore Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)]

I am pleased to be here again with an opportunity to discuss this important issue. Improving water quality, be it of our river systems or coastal environments, is incredibly important and all of us in this House care deeply about it. That is why I was pleased to vote for the Environment Act, which put in place key mechanisms, one of which obliges all water companies to monitor water quality and publish real-time data on storm overflows. We are nearly at a position where we will have 100% data collection.

The second mechanism is investment, with a requirement on all water companies to deliver up to £56 billion of capital investment over the next 25 years in improving our water quality. Thirdly, the Secretary of State can issue a direction on water companies to ensure that they enact their ability to clean up our rivers. The fourth mechanism is immediate investment, with direct investment of up to £7 billion in the next 25 years.

All those are great measures, but it is has to be noted that the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens actively voted against them. They voted against direct investment of £56 billion to clean up our rivers. All of us should not forget that during this debate. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have also brought out the plan for water, with a requirement actively to reinvest all fines on water companies into schemes to improve our environment. I am pleased that the Conservatives have brought that forward.

Ilkley has the River Wharfe, the first river to be awarded bathing water status in the UK. That application was generated by the Ilkley Clean River Group, which worked incredibly hard to get it over the line. I had many a conversation with the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) and the Secretary of State on that. What does it deliver? More involvement in active monitoring and Yorkshire Water is investing up to £13 million in infrastructure work in Ilkley. All those mechanisms will help to improve the River Wharfe in my constituency.

So I am pleased about the Environment Act and the measures we have brought forward, but I am incredibly disappointed that the Labour party is using this opportunity to proactively do something that all Conservative Members are doing already: we are bringing forward positive measures that are going to help clean up our river systems. It is disappointing that once again the Opposition are choosing to play party politics with something that is much more important to our constituents: cleaning up our river systems.