Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-09-13
Topic: Environment
Rosalind Altmann (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 59 and 60, so ably spoken to by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, whom I hope I can call my noble friend. I am grateful to the Minister and his officials for the engagement and time they have given us in discussing these important amendments. I welcome the Government’s own Amendments 61, 62 and 63. Nevertheless, I hope that the Government might go further. I also commend the work of my right honourable friend Philip Dunne, in the other place, who has done so much important work on this issue As we have heard, there were 400,000 sewage discharges in 2020. This is not a rare occurrence. Water companies have underinvested in sewerage infrastructure. I hope that the Government can overcome their reluctance to impose a duty on them in this Bill to act and invest urgently, as is required. Without such a statutory requirement as specified in these amendments, water companies will continue to be able to put profits and dividends above public health and protection of our precious waterways. I recognise and welcome that the Government have strengthened the duties on these companies, and the expectations to address storm overflows in the drainage and wastewater management plans that will be statutorily required by Clause 79(3)(g). But these plans will not even be consulted on until next summer, let alone be introduced or acted upon. So far, according to a very helpful briefing produced by Defra, water companies have committed just £1.1 billion to investigate and improve storm overflows. This is insufficient for the scale of the problem to be tackled I welcome the Storm Overflows Taskforce announced last August, which "has agreed to set a long term goal to eliminate harm from storm overflows." This, too, is most welcome but, so far, this involves improving monitoring and transparency rather than meaningful action to reduce sewage overflows into rivers and waterways. So far, the Environment Agency has clearly struggled to assess compliance with discharge rules and impose enforcement action or fines to galvanise noticeable action and stop or reduce these overflows Research on sewerage from Professor Peter Hammond and Professor Jamie Woodward of Manchester University has found clear evidence that untreated sewage or wastewater are being routinely discharged outside the conditions allowed by the Environment Agency permits. It is vital that regulation of discharges of untreated sewage and wastewater are tightened, and these amendments would assist in this regard. The Government’s plan is to set targets on reducing pollution from wastewater, agriculture and so on, but setting targets is not an active reduction of this pollutant. I find it difficult to understand why the Minister and his department are so reluctant to put a duty now on the water companies directly to ensure they reduce and ultimately eliminate discharges of raw and partially treated sewerage into our rivers and waterways. The companies, represented by Water UK in an interesting briefing, have urged us to move focus away from end-of-pipe to look instead at the way surface water is managed, as my noble friend Lady McIntosh was commenting upon. It is true that developers are too often connecting to sewage systems that cannot cope, but this is only part of the problem, and it needs to be resolved by implementing Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. Of course, sustainable drainage systems are important, and connection to a public sewer should not be automatic and needs to be conditional on official approval I hope the Minister can provide the reassurances sought by my noble friend the Duke of Wellington so that he will not press Amendment 59. Amendment 60 places a duty "on sewerage undertakers to take all reasonable steps to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged" and "demonstrate improvements in the sewerage systems and progressive reductions in the harm caused." In this ground-breaking Bill, how can we not impose that type of duty? Of course, the amendment also requires the Secretary of State and director of the Environment Agency to "secure compliance." Too often, companies have been allowed to self-report. But, so far, the Government are saying they are fully committed to producing a report on actions required to achieve total elimination so they can fully understand the costs and impacts of doing so. But Amendment 60 would accelerate action on the ground. I hope that, ultimately, the Minister might be persuaded about the merits of supporting this amendment.