Water Companies: Sewage Discharge

Rosie Duffield Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for securing this debate.

For several years, Whitstable, in my constituency, has suffered from the effects of sewage leaking—or, in actual fact, being dumped—into our seas along a beautiful stretch of the east Kent coast. More than 111,000 people clearly feel as angry about this as the nearly 900 constituents in my area who have signed this petition do. In a seaside town, it should go without saying that so much of our everyday way of life revolves around the sea. We have a fishing industry, swimming groups, sailing and paddleboard schools, and, of course, tourism—the heart of our economy. We should not just have to get used to these increasingly frequent incidents that keep us away from our beaches. Not only are we unable to swim or sail, but basic everyday things such as hanging our washing, opening our windows—including in my office—and walking the dog are impossible on the worst days.

One of the loveliest aspects of living in such a beautiful part of the country is that, during the pandemic, our daily exercise was a walk around Whitstable harbour, taking the dog up to our local coastal nature reserve or just jogging along the seafront, and maybe picking up some locally caught seafood on the way home. Instead, we are now often avoiding a dip in the sea or a visit to the beach hut in case bits of human waste float past us. Instead of good, fresh, healthy sea air, our children have been gulping down lungfuls of foul-smelling polluted stuff that contains plenty of potentially toxic bacteria. No wonder my constituents have had enough.

In the summer I held a public meeting so that residents could demand answers and action from Southern Water, the company that is responsible for our water works and paid by us, for us, for the safe removal and treatment of waste. In July this year, Mr Justice Johnson handed down a record £90 million fine to Southern Water for thousands of illegal dumping incidents. That was just the latest in a list of fines dating back to 2007. One has to ask why, despite these frequent and increasingly huge fines, essentially nothing has changed. This is the greatest sewage scandal in this country since the great stink of 1858, which forced our predecessors in this place to take action and build the first public sewers. Could it be that a profit-driven private company such as Southern Water would rather pay fines than invest in expensive but completely necessary upgrades to the sewage infrastructure that would stop these incidents happening altogether? The damage to my community’s health, wellbeing and way of life is of far greater cost than that paid out by a private company. No wonder some of my constituents are now refusing to pay their water bills; they understandably feel that they have paid more than enough already.

I echo my hon. Friends the Members for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) and for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), and others, in their view that companies responsible for providing these services should be publicly owned and controlled—not primarily driven by making money for shareholders. Instead of swimming with sharks in the Cayman Islands, we need to enable my constituents to swim in clean waters.

Following the summer public meeting, I have continued to meet with Southern Water, as the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) has done. Individually, their representatives are good people who are willing to engage with groups such as the great Save Our Seas in Whitstable, and other Whitstable activist groups. It is the wider corporate attitude that urgently needs to change. We want to be able to swim, eat our shellfish and breathe healthy air. That should be something that we take for granted, instead of having to protest about it on a weekly basis.