My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken and supported our amendment this evening. I also pay tribute to Surfers Against Sewage for its excellent campaigning role in highlighting the terrible current state of our water quality.
To pick up on some of the contributions, the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, rightly raised the environmental damage that can be done by septic tanks and the need to link them to the main sewerage system. As he said, their existence is a primitive legacy of a pre-industrial age and a symptom of a lack of investment in the infrastructure over many years.
My noble friend Lord Whitty has a considerable background in the water industry, and I bow to his greater knowledge on all of this. He rightly pressed the point that we need to reduce household consumption of water within a deliverable timescale. As he said, we will have a chance to debate some of these issues in more detail in one of the later groups, so I will hold many of my comments back for that. But I agree with him that a declaration about reducing water consumption at the front of this part of the Bill would be very important. Again, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, raised issues that are coming up in later groups but equally relevant to this one; we will come back to those.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for his thoughtful and detailed contribution. He raised the important point about the need to involve local catchment partnerships in preparing the policies to reduce sewage discharge and the need for stricter criteria on when such discharges should be allowed. He made the point that they could also have a role in designating bathing sites, and I am grateful to him for alerting us to the fact that 1.2 million people are involved in outdoor swimming. We all seem to know somebody involved in it these days, so its popularity is clearly increasing. It is obviously something to be welcomed in terms of health. We also need to know the adverse health effects if people are swimming in these waters. That point was also well made by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh.
The noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and I were in exactly the same territory. He echoed a number of the issues that I had raised about the government amendment. As he said, it is not good enough to reduce sewage discharges; we should instead resolve to eliminate them. That point was echoed right around the Chamber this evening. The noble Duke has clearly not been too impressed by the discussions that he has had with the Minister so far. His amendment would also improve other loose wording in the government amendment; again, his thoughtful corrections are very welcome. We could discuss tactics and the right way forward later but, whether we have one amendment or a number of smaller ones, I think the noble Duke and I agree on what the ultimate objective should be.
I welcome the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. She rightly stressed the context of reforms needing to be based on nature-based solutions, and her point was very well made. She and my noble friend Lady Young raised the importance of setting out as soon as we can to separate storm and drain water from the sewerage system, which would obviously alleviate pressure on some of the discharges.
The noble Lord, Lord Oates, made a very important point about why the exemptions which the Government currently have in their amendment simply should not be allowed to apply. His example of the discharges into the Hogsmill illustrated that very well.
I listened carefully to the Minister’s response. We obviously welcome the task force and the extra money that has been made available. I also agree with him that we owe a great deal of thanks to the engineers, who often battle with outdated plant when they come out in difficult circumstances and weather conditions and at all times of the night. It is not an easy job, but their job would be considerably enhanced if they were able to deal with more modern equipment. I will need to consider the Minister’s points, which he raised primarily in response to the amendments of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, in detail, because I know that he went through them point by point.
However, none of this captured the urgency of the situation and the need to get a better grip on the performance of the water companies. This is at a time when they are still paying huge bonuses to their executives, rather than fixing the outdated sewerage infrastructure in a timely way. So I reiterate that the solution to our amendment would be for the Government to table a revised and improved amendment which more clearly matches what was originally put forward by Philip Dunne, which my colleagues in the Commons certainly felt was destined for the Lords and to be in the Bill—so there is disappointment in that Chamber as well as this one that that is not where we are at the moment.
I would be happy to have further discussions about this, if that can be arranged. There is a solution to be had here but, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.