My Lords, Amendment 390 in my name, supported by the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, seeks to address a missed environmental opportunity in Clause 153, which takes very welcome steps to address nutrient pollution. The Government should be congratulated on this, as this nutrient pollution, which comes from houses and from farming, is devastating our freshwater habitats.
The statutory requirement in the Bill is to meet this nutrient removal through sewage disposal works and plants. Frustratingly, the clause specifies that this upgrade should take place only in these areas and has missed
an opportunity to bring in nature-based solutions. The first reason this is a problem is that concrete-based solutions carry a really hefty price tag, as Wessex Water told me the other day, but they carry an even heavier climate cost. They have a very large carbon footprint. So what we have ended up with in the Bill is an environmental problem—nutrient pollution in our rivers—being addressed in a way that will create another environmental problem: significant carbon emissions.
There is an environmentally friendly alternative. This amendment suggests that water companies should also be given the option to reduce the level of nutrient pollution by using nature-based solutions, such as a buffer strip of forestry or wetland plants along the edges of a river. They all sound very nice and are often seen as a soft alternative. That is the real problem. There is now a really large scientific evidence base to demonstrate that such nature-based approaches are highly effective at reducing nutrient loads in rivers.
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In a review of current nature-based nutrient reduction schemes across Europe in 2023, 450 schemes were reviewed and every single one of them reduced significantly the nutrient loads in the river. I want to illustrate this point in the UK by looking at some outcomes from a nature-based nutrient reduction scheme introduced into the River Ingol in Norfolk in 2017 by planting wetlands, which included 25,000 aquatic species, and riparian woodland with 1,400 trees. The total cost of this scheme was £192,000, compared to the £2 million cost of putting in a water treatment plant. Understandably, water companies are particularly interested in nature-based solutions.
I will focus very briefly on outcomes in the past four years, which were published about two months ago in a top scientific journal. In this nature-based approach—we are talking about wetlands and buffer strips—there was a 72% reduction in nitrates, a 69% reduction in phosphates and a 53% reduction in dissolved organic carbon in the river. That is just from planting trees and creating an aquatic wetland, at a fraction of the price. It also produced only half the carbon emissions that would have been emitted if there had been a water treatment plant. Along with that, there are other stacked benefits. I do not need to repeat them, but there is much higher aquatic and bird biodiversity and corridors are created which link up habitats. This is one example; there are many others already demonstrating this in the UK and across Europe, but we still think of nature-based solutions as touchy-feely, nice, easy options that do not really deliver. They absolutely deliver.
I have talked to various water companies about this because I wanted their opinion on these options. One I spoke to in particular was Wessex Water. It told me that one of the real issues with this legislation as currently drafted is that these water treatment plants might not be cost effective for small catchments. They are too expensive to put in place for small catchments, so a nature-based solution is much better for Wessex Water; it is right behind this. It looked at the upgrades required by the Bill and thinks they would cost £400 million more than nature-based solutions, so it is right behind the idea of bringing in nature, with all the added benefits that we can get.
One problem the Government have suggested—I understand where they are coming from—is that, if we widen the options, it could allow water companies to evade responsibility for meeting these new legal duties to reduce nutrient pollution. We absolutely do not want to do that, so Amendment 390 takes direct steps to make sure that that cannot happen by establishing additional compliance checks on companies to ensure that nutrient pollution reductions are delivered whatever the mix of methods. That is the most important thing. Companies can have a nature-based system or water treatment plants, but they have to demonstrate what is happening at the end. This amendment would require companies to secure Ofwat approval for a compliance and investment plan before any upgrade is commenced and to report annually to Ofwat, the Environment Agency and the local planning authority so that they progress against an agreed plan. This comes back to all the discussions we have had about baselines and marking targets through time. I believe that this extra reporting duty will deliver these upgrades. In addition, if every small river catchment ends up with a nature-based solution it will greatly enhance our efforts towards reaching 30 by 30 because we will have these incredible corridors down rivers to allow biodiversity to move, which is one of the things we are really missing in so much of this discussion and legislation right now.
I would go so far as to say that, without this statutory backing, the theoretical consensus that nature-based solutions are the optimal method will remain theoretical. We really need to do this, and we need a clear legal duty to deploy them where possible. I strongly recommend this win-win method of pollution reduction. This would provide a clearer legal duty on the water companies to look at this issue and introduce these really effective ways of reducing pollution. I beg to move.