Asked by
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have, if any, to
require water companies to monitor the volume of sewage
discharged into water courses and not just the frequency of such
discharges.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs () (Con)
My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register. The
volume of storm overflow discharge is not directly proportional
to its harm as the concentration of sewage in discharges depends
on the volume of rainwater it is mixed with. Therefore, we have
taken a more effective approach to place a duty on water
companies in the Environment Act to directly monitor the impact
of discharges on water quality upstream and downstream of
overflows. This monitoring system will identify harm from storm
overflows and ensure that water companies are held to account
through enforcement action.
(Lab)
I thank the Minister for that response, but the Environment
Agency has already said that there has
“been widespread and serious non-compliance with the …
regulations.”
How can it be expected to act if water companies do not have to
measure the intensity of polluting sewage being discharged. Of
course there is a cost, but we have always known that more
investment is essential to tackle this problem. The Commons
Environmental Audit Committee has already recommended installing
these monitors, so why are the Government siding with the water
companies against the interests of the public, who are rightly
outraged at this ongoing scandal?
(Con)
The Government are very much not siding with the water companies.
The level of storm overflows into our rivers is totally
unacceptable. That is why we are publishing on 1 September this
year our storm overflows plan, which will give details of how we
will monitor this. We have measures within the Environment Act
which give new legally binding targets and measures which we will
bring into force. We have the 25-year plan commitment and our
strategic policy statement for Ofwat, which gives a very clear
direction. We also have our requirements to the Environment
Agency on enforcement, which will hold water companies that break
the law to account.
The (CB)
My Lords, as the Minister has just said, the Government recently
published a draft of what they describe as the storm overflows
discharge reduction plan. That draft was published and
consultation was invited. In that plan there is a target of
reducing discharges of sewage over the next 18 years by only 40%.
Does the Minister agree that the public expect a much more
ambitious target than that?
(Con)
The public are right to feel very strongly about this and we try
to reflect that in the priority we give to this. The target will
be to concentrate on bathing waters and special environmental
waterways, such as chalk streams. They will be the Government’s
absolute priority and by 2035, under our plans, we will have
eliminated nearly all outflows into those waterways.
(Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend accept that if he introduced
Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, the amount
of discharge would be immediately reduced? What plans have the
Government got to do so?
(Con)
From memory, I think that Schedule 3 refers to water companies
being statutory consultees. I am very happy to follow that up
with my noble friend in the near future.
(LD)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that last year South West Water
discharged raw sewage into rivers and beachfronts 43,000 times
over a period of 350,000 hours, including for 3,709 hours into
the River Otter in Honiton, for 1,872 hours into the River Exe in
Tiverton, and for 1,482 hours into the River Axe in Axminster?
Will the Government end this scandal by imposing a sewage tax on
water company profits to fund necessary upgrades, and will they
ban water company bosses claiming bonuses until that is done?
(Con)
I think that was a very good choice of geography. The noble Lord
will accept that this is an absolute priority for this
Government. People who live in that part of the world, in places
such as Tiverton and Honiton, are right to want a Government who
will clean this up, but who have a plan to do it without raising
their bills to unaffordable levels. That Government are this one.
(GP)
My Lords—
(Lab)
My Lords—
Noble Lords
Labour!
(GP)
We have better policies than Labour, do not worry.
I am really sorry to hear that these volume monitors are so
expensive, but let us remember that the water companies are not
short of a penny or two. For example, Liv Garfield, the CEO of
Severn Trent, has just been paid £4 million a year; Anglian Water
has just today paid shareholders a £92 million dividend; and of
course £72 billion was paid out in dividends by water companies,
while also raising bills by 31% and cutting investment in
infrastructure by, in some cases, almost 40%. These are all facts
and figures from Feargal Sharkey, and I thank him very much. Can
the Minister tell me how much these volume monitors cost?
(Con)
I cannot tell the noble Baroness precisely. I can tell her that,
11 years ago, the then Water Minister was quite stunned to
discover that we knew of only 10% of sewage outflows into rivers.
He required all water companies to identify them and, by the end
of next year, we will have identified 100% of them, with
real-time monitors, so that the public will know. I know who that
Minister was, because it was me.
(Lab)
My Lords, the Minister has just said that he found out about this
11 years ago. What have government and the regulator been doing
since then? Quite frankly, I think the regulator needs sacking
and the Minister needs sacking. Perhaps if he brought my good
friend Feargal Sharkey in as a regulator, things would happen.
(Con)
The noble Lord is not the only person who refers to Feargal
Sharkey as his friend. He is someone I know and worked with when
I sat on the board of River Action, which was set up to clean up
rivers such as the Wye, part of which is ecologically nearly
dead. That is why there is an absolute priority in my department
and in this Government to make sure we are making these changes
and restoring our rivers.
(Con)
My Lords, have my noble friend or his department seen any
assessment of the impact on rivers or consumers if, as some in
this House want, the water companies were nationalised?
(Con)
I have. An independent piece of research said that water bills
would be considerably higher if we had not privatised all those
years ago. We know that if water companies were in public
ownership, the heads of those utilities would have to sit in the
queue behind the health service, education, the police and all
the other priorities of public spending, and our environment and
water customers would get the crumbs at the end of the queue.
(Lab)
My Lords, as somebody who drinks water from Scottish Water, I am
pleased to tell noble Lords that it is of excellent quality, our
water bills are very reasonable, and the water is owned by the
people who use it. I would like to follow up the question from
the noble Duke, the , because I do not think
the Minister gave him an adequate answer. It is not good enough
to say that the Government are prioritising one type of water
over another when by the time most of us here will be long gone,
we will still have only a 40% reduction in sewage in our water.
(Con)
I very much hope that I and the noble Baroness are spared until
2035, so that we can see that priority waters—those for public
bathing and those which we mind desperately about, such as chalk
streams and other very special environmental ecosystems —are
prioritised. That is what we are intending to do. Our ambitions
are both high and achievable.
(CB)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned the River Wye, yet the rivers in
the west of England are largely polluted through industrial
chicken farms. Can the Minister enlighten the House on what
regulation the Government might take to stop this form of
pollution?
(Con)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right that the problem does not
just exist with water companies. Agricultural activities in
certain parts, particularly the Wye and Usk catchment, are
detrimental to water quality. We have to make sure that, for the
phosphates that are run off from the chicken and poultry farms in
that area, there is more join-up to protect waters. This is not
just an agricultural issue; it is also a planning issue. There is
an added problem, in that that river catchment runs across Welsh
and English boundaries, and so we have to work with the devolved
Government as well.
