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

What steps her Department has taken to reduce storm overflows in North Devon constituency.

We are requiring water companies to deliver their largest ever infrastructure investment worth £56 billion over 25 years. South West Water are now required to undertake improvements to storm overflows in your constituency for example by increasing capacity of storm storage. I have also asked every water and sewerage company in the country to provide an action plan for every storm overflow, including South West Water.

We are driving increases in monitoring across the country with coverage increasing from 7% in 2010 under Labour to around 90% today, and 100% by the end of this year.