Environment Bill

Rosie Duffield Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Commons Chamber

It will be impossible to have clean rivers with the pedestrian approach that Ministers are currently taking, which is why the cross-party concerns that we have heard during this debate and throughout the passage of the Bill should be taken more seriously. However, it is not only Ministers who are to blame for the poor state of our rivers; we must hold water companies responsible too. Research by The Guardian has found that raw sewage was discharged into rivers across England and Wales 200,000 times in 2019, for a total duration of 1.5 million hours. I think we would all have sympathy with the Minister’s argument that in extremis, in the event of severe weather, raw sewage discharges into rivers should be permissible, but we need to ensure that that happens only in extreme circumstances. This is a daily, regular, continual occurrence, and it is unacceptable.

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

Would my hon. Friend agree with me and my beleaguered constituents in Whitstable that this is not an unusual occurrence, and that it is happening more and more frequently? On the Whitstable coast, for example, it is ruining the lives of kayakers, sailors and swimmers and ruining the tourist industry. The removal of the lines in the amendment that have teeth would be a real disappointment.

[Luke Pollard]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. As a regular wild swimmer myself, I recognise that this is a concern not only to people who swim in our nation’s rivers but to those who value their biodiversity. I think that the Minister has underestimated the strength of feeling in this area.

There is a way through this, however. There is a route that could result in progressive improvement in the reduction in the number of raw sewage discharges, that could simultaneously collect the required data and that could protect our environment without big increases to bills, with appropriate investment and a sense of urgency from Ministers. There is a route for that, and I suspect that further compromises will be necessary on this point when the Bill returns to the House of Lords and then comes back to us. I do not think we are yet done with this.