My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. I also add my appreciation of the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury.
I wish to speak about Part 5 of the Bill, in particular water quality in our rivers. This has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords, which I welcome. Although much has been done in recent years to clean up beaches around the coastlines of the United Kingdom, mainly under pressure from the EU, the state of our rivers remains very poor. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has already said, only 14% of the rivers in England and Wales achieve good ecological status under the European standard. In other words, 86% do not. Not one of the rivers in England and Wales has achieved an acceptable standard for the level of chemical pollutants.
These statistics are shameful and embarrassing, and I am certain that the people of this country would wish our rivers to be cleaned up. Now that we are no longer in the European Union, we are often told that we are free to set our own higher standards, so it is surprising that Ministers have not set as a higher priority the absolute determination to achieve good ecological status for all our rivers.
I have today introduced a Private Member’s Bill seeking to prevent discharge of raw, untreated sewage into our river systems. The Bill derived from one in the other place introduced by the right honourable Philip Dunne, Member of Parliament for Ludlow, to whom I of course pay tribute. The Minister stated at the beginning of the debate that the Government would table amendments to this Bill to require the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament by September next year a plan to reduce such discharges, but I suggest that a plan to reduce discharges over time is simply not enough. We must seek, surely, to eliminate them. I recognise that, of course, in an extreme flood it is possible for raw sewage to enter a river system, but it should definitely not happen during normal periods of rainfall.
In March, the Environment Agency reported, with surprising complacency, that raw, untreated sewage was discharged into English rivers 403,000 times during 2020. In Wales, Welsh Water reported 104,000 discharges. So between the two nations, there were more than half a million discharges, or over 1,350 every day. These are truly shocking figures. They do not receive the publicity they deserve—although there was an excellent BBC “Panorama” programme a few weeks ago—and I am sure that much of the population is simply unaware of the seriousness of the situation.
The Environment Minister in the other place, Rebecca Pow—whom I much admire—said in a debate on the Bill on 26 May:
“It is essential that we seize this opportunity to set our ambitions high and take action to deliver them.”—[Official Report, Commons, 26/5/21; col. 382.]
Given the undoubted determination of the Government to leave the country in a better state for future generations, cleaning up our rivers must be a high priority, along, of course, with the target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. I, and other noble Lords, will be tabling amendments to the Bill to require the Secretary of State to be more ambitious in cleaning the rivers by ending discharges of sewage and requiring the water companies and local authorities to upgrade the infrastructure for the handling of domestic and industrial waste. Many of the systems were built with insufficient capacity for the extra houses and commercial and industrial buildings added in recent decades. I accept that, for the water companies which are responsible for processing the waste, this is a large, hidden liability. Investment will be considerable and will probably have to be paid for by a combination of government grants, long-term borrowing by the water companies, a reduction in dividend payments and higher charges for all the properties connected to the sewerage systems.
All this is in somewhat stark contrast to the way that farmers are treated. They have been required to eliminate any leakage of silage effluent or other farm waste into water courses. Farmers cannot break the rules, yet water companies are allowed to make discharges continuously and seem to escape without penalty. The polluter pays principle does not seem to apply to water companies. I support the Bill, but I hope that Ministers will be prepared to make the cleansing of our rivers a much higher priority.
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