Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Robin Swann and Tim Farron

2nd reading
Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron]

Yes, to a degree. I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention; it is very welcome, as is the investment that is promised and the way in which it will be provided, but—and I am happy to be put right on this—I think the figure used by the Government is an additional 500 members of staff for the Environment Agency. That is one per constituency in England and Wales. That will not make a noticeable difference. In practice, the Bill could well permit a continuation of the current situation, where water companies will be setting and marking their own homework, with an Environment Agency without the capacity to even manage its current workload, let alone the new duties the Bill will give it to monitor masses of important overflow data. The regulator must be much better funded to do that well. Even then, the regulation rules must be watertight for the Environment Agency to ensure that the water companies cannot pick and choose which information they release or retain.

The Minister indicated that the data will be made publicly available and easy to access. I look forward to hearing more detail about how that will be done. That could be a positive move, allowing citizen scientists and campaign groups—such as the wonderful Clean River Kent Campaign group, the Eden Rivers Trust, the South Cumbria Rivers Trust and the Save Windermere campaign, as well as many others from other communities —to be able to hold the water companies to account to a greater degree. After all, knowledge is power. We are keen to encourage the Government to move forward with that.

We would also like to see water companies publish the volume and concentration of discharge from all emergency overflows, not just their duration and frequency. Will the Minister consider including that duty? And should we really have water companies installing and maintaining their own monitoring equipment? We believe that the Environment Agency or its successor should be doing that, with the full cost of that work paid for by the water companies.

The Bill makes almost no attempt to address the structure of finances and ownership of the water industry. The Minister has indicated that the Bill will seek to change the culture of the industry, which would be welcome, but cultural change will only come with a change to the reckless profiteering that has been the norm. As right hon. and hon. Members on the Conservative Benches have said, Lord Cromwell in the other place tabled an amendment requiring annual updates from water companies on any financial restructuring that they have done or plan to do. It cannot go unacknowledged that financial stability and good governance seriously affect the environmental standards that any water company is able to reach. I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Witney (Charlie Maynard) and for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) who made those points in relation to Thames Water.

I am grateful to my noble Friend Baroness Bakewell for tabling a Liberal Democrat amendment to the Bill in the Lords to create special status, with special protections, for Windermere as an exemplar of the standards we will expect in our waterways across the whole country. The Campaign for National Parks’ health check report, which was released earlier this year, found that only five out of the 880 bodies of water in the national parks of England and Wales met the highest ecological standards, and that every single one was polluted to some degree. Windermere itself received 140 million litres of pollution in the last two years. Amendments tabled in the Lords, which we will table here also, will seek to tackle that. Water industry leaders must be forced to take responsibility for the care of these world class lakes and waterways, and our amendments to the Bill would ensure that they do so.

Although the privatisation of the water industry was an incredibly bad decision and definitely did not happen on our watch, I am not convinced that renationalisation would be necessary or a good use of public money. I fear it would mean that we would have to buy the assets back, putting taxpayers’ money into the pockets of those who have already made so much money out of them, without a single penny of that money going into improving infrastructure. Instead, it seems wiser to move away from the current model and to ensure that water companies should be community benefit corporations, so that all revenue goes into keeping environmental standards higher and solving the long-term problems of our networks. None of our constituents should have to pay for company debt. These were business decisions, taken by those who took risks to make money, rather than to invest in our sewage systems; they should bear the consequences of those risks.

The current regulatory framework seems to leave water companies immune from the highest penalties, despite their repeated failure to meet their basic obligation to prevent sewage from being dumped in our lakes, rivers and coastal areas. The current rules mean that, under special administration procedures, to remove a water company’s licence to operator would mean the regulator serving a 25-year notice on them. That is why we are disappointed that the Bill does not go as far as we want, or as far as so many water campaigners have asked for it to go.

The Cunliffe review gives us hope of a more radical set of proposals to come later in this Parliament, but our communities are impatient for change—a change more radical than this Government are so far willing to offer us. Although we see nothing in the Bill to disagree with and much in it to commend, we are left frustrated that any radical transformation will be at best delayed until a second instalment, after Sir Jon Cunliffe’s review.

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

The hon. Gentleman references Sir Jon Cunliffe, and I thank the Secretary of State for commissioning the review. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Sir Jon’s review should look across the United Kingdom, because Northern Ireland Water is both a Government-owned company and a non-departmental public body and I assure the House that the water quality in Northern Ireland, especially in Lough Neagh, is nothing to be celebrated either. Should not Sir Jon Cunliffe’s review look at how all bodies regulate their water systems, so they serve the public?

[Tim Farron]

I think two things. I respect the devolution settlement and think it is important that we do not overstep what we are called to do today. I also, however, agree that the waterways of all corners of our United Kingdom are precious and must be protected. I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that point.

To conclude, the job of the Liberal Democrats is to be the constructive opposition in this place, and to now use Committee stage to inject into the Bill the ambition and urgency that we feel is currently lacking. To millions of people out there who care deeply about our waterways, the problems are obvious and so are many of the solutions. We call on the Government to accept the amendments that we will table in Committee in good faith, to act ambitiously and comprehensively, and to do so without delay.

Farming and Food Security

Debate between Robin Swann and Tim Farron

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron]

I agree with that, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising Growing Well at Sizergh and Tebay, and the fantastic job it does in building mental health and connecting that with the countryside. I particularly want people who are not from rural constituencies to imagine what it is like in this time of flux and change, when people see the money going out the door and do not see it coming in. Typically, farmers are male. They will be my age or even older than me, and they will be perhaps the fifth, sixth or seventh generation who have farmed that farmstead. They see the very real prospect of being the one who loses the family farm. What does that do to someone’s head? We have heard the horrific consequences, and we need to love, cherish and care for our farmers, and recognise the terrible situation they are in at this moment of flux.

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

As a past president of the Young Farmers’ Clubs of Ulster I think the hon. Gentleman’s point is very apt. At this moment across the UK, 95% of farmers under 40 say that mental health is their biggest concern. It is not only about losing the family farm; it is about worrying where the next payment comes from. It is about relying on making that payment and about what they do for the next generation and the ones before and after. Mental health is a real problem, and I am disappointed that the Secretary of State did not go into any great detail on that issue.

[Tim Farron]

Hopefully we have established that we need to care for those who feed us and care for our environment. Farmers need friends, so let me mention one potential very important friend: the Prime Minister. People may be aware that during the general election, the Prime Minister turned up in my constituency. I have the claim to fame that mine is the only constituency in the entire United Kingdom where Labour lost its deposit —by the way, my Labour opponent Pippa was excellent, and it was nothing to do with her—but the Prime Minister came to the Langdale valley in my constituency. Despite the fact that I am a Blackburn Rovers fan, I was pleased to see Gary Neville there. People will remember the party political broadcast that Labour had during the election campaign, as well as the Prime Minister’s recent speech at the Labour conference, where he talked about the importance of the Langdale valley to him personally growing up and to the development of who he is. I was moved by that. As the Member of Parliament for the Langdale valley, I am grateful to him for saying that. Langdale needs friends, and this is a moment where Langdale could do with the most important of friends, particularly when it comes to spending money.

I will read out some words from a hill farmer related to the Prime Minister’s comments about his upbringing in the Langdale valley. He said that he was “moved” that the Prime Minister championed Langdale so well, but he then said that

“farming communities in Langdale and other upland areas are facing severe financial hardship with many wondering whether they will survive…they have now lost 50% or more of the basic payment scheme, an integral part of their business income, which will actually all be gone soon. These farmers are almost all in old environmental stewardship schemes, which means that they are hardly able to access anything from the new ELMS scheme and the sustainable farming incentive. Not because they don’t want to, but because of computer and agency issues in DEFRA.”

If the Prime Minister loves Langdale, will he please prove it by ensuring that we invest in hill farmers and in farming more generally? We have focused on what the last Government got wrong.