Pope Francis said in 2015 in his encyclical, “Laudato si”:
“The earth, our home, is beginning to look…like an immense pile of filth.”
He was not wrong when it comes to the rivers in the UK. I thank my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for coming, along with my hon. Friends the Members for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western) and for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), to a meeting at Jackson’s Boat, on the trans-Pennine trail, on the River Mersey in my constituency. We met Jamie Woodward, the physical geography professor from Manchester University who is doing so much work for us on the Mersey in our local area.
When we met, we were so pleased to see how well the Mersey was being used by cyclists, walkers and kayakers. However, according to the Environment Agency data, in my constituency United Utilities is the worst offender for dumping sewage into our local rivers and coastal waters. It pains me to say that, because I generally have a great relationship with United Utilities—it helps with my cost of living events all the time—but it had almost 70,000 discharges into our regional waterways. The smoking gun or incontrovertible proof is the loo roll, sanitary ware and baby wipes that bedeck tree roots, branches and plants along the course of the river. I cycle along it from my constituency to Stockport, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra), every week and see this with my own eyes.
I may have misheard the Secretary of State, but I cannot go along with her idea that the River Mersey is getting cleaner. Greenpeace recently said that it is more polluted than the great Pacific garbage patch, as a result of a recent scientific investigation that it carried out.
The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), who is sitting next to the Secretary of State, has done great work on floodplains and flood alleviation, so I am not just making a party political point.
The River Mersey rises in Stockport and heads through the north-west to Liverpool bay. In 2022, it was 70 miles of pollution, with raw sewage being pumped into the water 1,187 times, with the pumping of untreated human faeces and urine happening for 3,346 hours. This issue is too important for us all. There are existential consequences for our environment, for our public health and for businesses that rely on the beauty and nature to attract business and investment. These waters are the same ones that the children of United Utilities staff and its shareholders wade through. It is unconscionable that it continues these practices in full knowledge of that. I urge it and its pension funds, Lazard Asset Management, BlackRock and the Vanguard Group, not to sanction this any longer. I urge them to do the right thing today.
2.15 pm