Water Quality: Sewage Discharge
Debate between Stephen Crabb and Thérèse Coffey(1 year, 7 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from
“an impact assessment of sewage discharges;”
to the end of the Question.
The public are rightly disgusted by the excessive sewage discharges from storm overflows, and so am I, my colleagues on the Government Benches and hon. Members across the House. So are this Government. That is why we have taken more action than any other Government on the issue.
We created our storm overflow discharge plan, with an impact assessment showing that it will require the largest ever investment by the water industry, up to £56 billion. Last month we set out our new comprehensive, integrated plan for water. That will deliver a clean and plentiful supply of water for people, businesses and nature, building on the significant investments and progress already made in cleaning up our waters since 2010.
Nearly three in four beaches are rated excellent for bathing, which is up from just half in 2010, when Labour left power. We have taken on the micro and single-use plastics that are a plague for marine life; we are supporting the super-sewer in London, which is taking over 10 years to construct; and there is consistent action, right across the country, on cleaning up our waters. That is why we are seeing much-loved species, such as seahorses, otters and seals, returning to our rivers and seas.
By requiring water companies to start monitoring, we unveiled the scourge of sewage. It was a Conservative Minister, Richard Benyon, who ordered that. By the end of this year, not by 2030, all combined sewer overflows will have monitors. Informed by monitoring, we are now in the situation where the water companies are under active criminal and civil investigation by the Environment Agency and by Ofwat, which is the largest investigation ever. That is why I move the amendment in my name and that of the Prime Minister, because this Government have already taken action.
With regard to this motion, we already have a target for a reduction in sewage discharges, which we will put into law; we have already consulted to remove caps on financial penalties; and we have already undertaken an assessment of sewage discharges. However, unlike the Opposition, we have a credible, costed plan to stop the scourge of sewage.
Today we have already heard a barrage of blame and finger pointing, but we have not heard a credible, costed plan to tackle the issue. I am used to the personal attacks, the diatribes and the cheap shots, but I can tell hon. Members that Labour’s plan is not cheap. My parents lived in Frodsham for some time, so I am very conscious of the River Weaver, and I grew up in Liverpool, so I am very conscious of the River Mersey, which has got cleaner and cleaner over time thanks to ongoing continued investment.
Frankly, we should be having a grown-up debate about the issue. A lot of the plan set out by the shadow Secretary of State is pointless because it is already being done. We were talking about food, and I guess the hon. Gentleman has taken up growing magic mushrooms: the Opposition did not publish the data, they were not monitoring it, they kept people in the dark and they fed them BS for all the time they were in government.
Stephen Crabb
Is my right hon. Friend slightly surprised by the tone that has been struck by the Opposition? Does she agree that they need to show a bit more humility, because if they were serious about these proposals being their official party policy, would we not expect to see some evidence of that being implemented in a part of the country where they are in power—namely, Wales—where there are no targets and no credible plan for tackling the issue?
Dr Coffey
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The shadow Secretary of State is ambitious to take my job in the future, but I am confident that the Conservatives will win the next election, partly because we are used to cleaning up this sort of rubbish when Labour leaves office.
I gently say to the shadow Secretary of State that Ofwat is a non-ministerial department and the Welsh Government provide a strategic policy statement to Ofwat for matters in Wales. It is a devolved matter. The hon. Gentleman is dragging the Welsh Government into the debate today, but he should be aware that in 2022 Wales had, on average, 38 spills per outflow, whereas in England it was down to 22 spills. Tackling the issue is not straightforward, but Wales is not doing well. I am not going to blame the Welsh Government out loud, but I am conscious that they would be better following us and having a credible, costed plan, instead of looking away from Westminster.
Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits
Debate between Stephen Crabb and Thérèse Coffey(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Dr Coffey
I am going to make some more progress and then I will come back to the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb).
Returning to the crux of the debate, the temporary £20 uplift was an important intervention to help people facing the greatest financial disruption to get the support they needed. It brought the universal credit standard allowance close to the level of statutory sick pay, the minimum amount required to be paid by employers for people who could not work.
In the Budget earlier this year, recognising that the country was still under restrictions, the Chancellor set out that we would continue covid financial support until autumn, several months after the country came out of lockdown. That helped many people stay on furlough and be connected to their employers as businesses gradually opened, and meant keeping that extra financial support for people on universal credit and tax credits for an extra six months. As our economy continues to recover, it is right that we are investing in jobs and skills to boost pay, prospects and prosperity for people right across the UK as part of our plan to level up and build back better.
Stephen Crabb
On universal credit, I have spoken to dozens and dozens of work coaches all over the country. Every single one of them has told me, without a shadow of a doubt, that universal credit is a better benefit than what was before. It is down to the enthusiasm and the skills of work coaches, to a large extent, that universal credit has been such a success during this very difficult period.
Dr Coffey
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We already had about 640 jobcentres. We are opening a further 200 by the end of the year, recognising that we need to support more people. Of course, work coaches do not just deal with helping people—people with disabilities and a limited capability to work—to get back into work. Work coaches do a wide variety of work to support some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable. Again, I thank him for paying tribute to our work coaches. They will play a key role in the time ahead. Perhaps the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth would like to intervene now?
Dr Coffey
I think it is fair to say that in the letter I saw that my six predecessors had signed—they are magnificent people and it is an honour to follow in their footsteps—they were keen to have the extra financial support that has gone into aspects of the welfare system and to help people in that way. It was not specifically about the £20 but about recognising, as has been said today, that there may be better ways of using that financing. I am conscious that the media may have reported that in a slightly different way and I am not going to put anybody on the spot. However, I think they valued the extra money that went in, and I want to continue to support people.
Stephen Crabb
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way again; she is being incredibly generous with her time this afternoon. The central argument of the letter that we sent to the Secretary of State and other colleagues in Government was about trying to retain the investment in universal credit. There are different ways to spend that money. All the evidence that I have seen suggests that investing in the standard allowance gives us more bang for our buck in protecting families against poverty. It was really a last-ditch attempt by me and a number of my colleagues who had served in that Department to persuade the Government to hang on to the crucial extra investment that had been put in at the start of the pandemic and which has made such a powerful difference to so many poor families up and down the country over the last 18 months.
Dr Coffey
I thank my right hon. Friend. Anybody who has served in this office, including the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), will recognise, for the people we meet daily, as other hon. Members do in their constituencies, what a difference an intervention from a work coach or a decision maker can make to really boost people when they are at their lowest ebb. I do not know whether any hon. Members watched the series “The Yorkshire Jobcentre” on Channel 4. Our social justice team there go above and beyond in trying to help people who have been rejected by the rest of society to get their lives back on track. That is the sort of work we can do. I understand why my right hon. Friend is keen for the welfare budget to still be substantial in supporting such people.
Pensions Update
Debate between Stephen Crabb and Thérèse Coffey(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Dr Coffey
I thank the hon. Gentleman for having read the statement and for recognising some of the challenges that we face. I accept that it is his role and that of the Opposition to suggest that the Government are not taking the right course of action. However, this is where I disagree with him. He referred to the earnings link that was dropped in, I think, the late ’70s or early ’80s. It was not reinstated by the Labour party until the late noughties and was not commenced until the coalition Government were in place. That is why we have followed the triple lock policy for the last decade, recognising that we wanted to restore the earnings link and to see an increase in pensions overall. We have made good progress on that, as I set out, with the £2,050 cash-terms increase in just over a decade.
We have used the earnings link since the policy came into effect a decade ago, and we have done this on the same basis. As for trying to mess about with different bits of earnings, the Office for National Statistics produced some data but we did not find it necessarily reliable, in terms of what could be considered as a substantiated basis to make the change. I have made the recommendation to the Government—that has been endorsed today and I hope that the House will endorse it in the forthcoming legislation—to set aside the earnings link, as we did last year, recognising the challenges of covid and the implications that that would have had last year directly on pensioners. There is the same fairness of approach here.
I do not intend, as is usual, to publish legal advice. That legal advice is quite straightforward. I would summarise it as “The best way to introduce this temporary set-aside is through legislation, just as we did last year.” I intend to take this forward on that basis.
As for making comparisons with other countries, I am conscious that we have a substantial amount of occupational pension here. We also have a whole fringe of pensioner benefits alongside it that are not necessarily available in many other countries. Just this year alone, which is about to come to an end, while the pension cost is about £105 billion, we are spending about £129 billion directly on pensioners. We have genuinely shown a measured approach to supporting pensioners during our time in office. We think this is a sensible thing that will be broadly welcomed by the public, recognising the balancing act that we continue to face.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Government Members should be incredibly proud of the state pension triple lock. It has transformed the state pension landscape for retired people—no more derisory 75p pension increases, as we saw when Labour was in government—and it has become a key part of the defences that we have built around pensioners to protect them from poverty. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the triple lock that we put in place was never designed for a set of fiscal events of the kind that we have been through over the last 18 months? The difficult decision that she has come to is the right one. When I talk to pensioners in my constituency and elsewhere about the difficult challenges that we face, they understand that. We just need to explain it clearly and with compassion.
Dr Coffey
My right hon. Friend is right that the triple lock policy was never anticipated for these extraordinary times. He will know that, as a former Secretary of State. The Lib Dem Pensions Minister, who served a five-year term, has also publicly said again today, as well as recently, that it was simply not designed for this sort of situation. I believe that the pensioners in our country are wise people. They will recognise that a statistical anomaly is not the basis for the uplift this year. Some people will of course be keen to encourage more people to take up pension credit. We estimate that only three in four of the people who could get the benefit are taking it up, in terms of the income guarantee, and we will continue to encourage people to do so. Nevertheless, this is a sensible approach and I thank my right hon. Friend for his support.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Stephen Crabb and Thérèse Coffey(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Dr Coffey
My right hon. Friend is right to point to the creation of the shared prosperity fund. Discussion is ongoing within the Government. I know that the Wales Office is already engaged in conversation; we will engage in due course, once we have got through the initial design internally.