(St Austell and Newquay)
(Con):...Another thing that I want to talk about is sewage
discharge into our seas. We have made huge progress in cleaning up
our seas in relation to the amount of sewage that we pump into
them. One of the things I have been proud of in my time in this
place is that I have worked closely with the Cornish-based charity
Surfers Against Sewage whose main focus over many decades has been
to ensure that we clean up our seas, but the sad fact is that we
are still pumping too much untreated sewage into our oceans through
combined sewer outflows. We still have too many of these sewage
systems that combine household foul waste water—sewage—with
rainwater and surface water from run-off drains. When we have heavy
rainfall, all of that gets into the sewerage system and it just
cannot cope. Untreated raw sewage is therefore pumped into the
seas.
We have been monitoring this situation and we found that, just in
the recreational summer season last year, there were more than
1,700 discharges of untreated sewage into our seas across the UK,
10% of which were in Cornwall. It cannot be acceptable that we
continue to do that in this day and age. Yes, we are making
progress, but I believe we now need to press the water companies
to really up their game. They must take drastic action to get rid
of these combined sewers and ensure that we stop discharging
untreated sewage into our seas. Surfers Against Sewage has a
target that we will have stopped pumping raw sewage into
recreational sea areas by 2030, as well as a long-term plan to
ensure that we rid our seas of untreated sewage in any
circumstances. Again, I welcome the measures in the Environment
Bill that the previous Parliament began to consider; I urge the
Government to bring back that Bill in the near future and to
include real teeth in the new policy to ensure that we can hold
water companies to account and stop the pumping of untreated
sewage into our seas...
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