My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point. It is the intention that the penalties will be put into the water restoration fund and used primarily in that local area and certainly not beyond the boundaries of the water company involved. If that is persistent, I would expect the Environment Agency to tackle the situation. It may be such a severe case that it merits criminal prosecution, but what we are doing today is enabling the Environment Agency, and indeed other regulators, to act much more swiftly to apply penalties that are a strong deterrent. I should point out that these new changes apply to all industries that operate under the environmental permitting regime, so the strengthened deterrent will also apply, for example, to waste site operators.
The regulations show that, yet again, this Conservative Government are taking action to improve our environment. I commend the regulations to the House.
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