Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies on wastewater discharge event duration monitors of the research by Jamie Woodward and others on Acute riverine microplastic contamination due to avoidable releases of untreated wastewater, published in Nature Sustainability on 13 May 2021.

The recommendations of the paper published in Nature Sustainability in May 2021 align with our policies to reduce microplastics in the water environment and untreated wastewater releases.

The Plan for Water sets out our commitments to reduce microplastics entering the water system, including our expectation for the industry to develop low cost, effective microfibre filters on washing machines and encourage their effective use.

Our Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan was published in August 2022. Our strict targets will see the toughest ever crackdown on sewage spills and will require water companies to deliver the largest infrastructure programme in water company history - £56 billion capital investment over 25 years. By 2035, water companies will have to improve all storm overflows discharging into or near every designated bathing water, and improve 75% of overflows discharging to high priority nature sites. By 2050, all remaining storm overflows covered by our targets will also have to meet the new requirements on rainfall and environmental impact, regardless of location.  In March this year, Defra and Ofwat announced £1.1 billion of new investment, starting in the next two years, to eliminate 10,000 storm overflow discharges a year across 10 schemes.