I have received many letters from my constituents about the Environment Bill and the Lords’ Amendment on the issue of untreated sewage in our waters. I responded to an earlier campaign on this issue in a post on the 25th of October where I laid out the important reasons why we voted down the opposition amendment to simply ban water companies from discharging sewage. This Lords’ amendment proposes the same thing and falls into the same trap of trying to solve this problem without providing a practical, feasible, enforceable solution.
Claims that failing to support this Lords’ amendment means a vote in favour of sewage discharge are simply wrong. As I said in my last post: of course we don’t want sewage in our rivers! The question is how best to work with water companies to reduce sewage discharge and neither the opposition amendment in October, nor the recent Lords’ amendment offer the best way forward.
Instead, the Government has tabled its own amendment that is not weaker or less substantial than the Lords’ amendment, as some have claimed. This amendment will require water companies to progressively reduce sewage discharges and their impact on the environment and public health. That means they must reduce the operation of storm overflows. This is a legal duty, which will be delivered through a new requirement already in the Bill, for each water company to publish a formal plan every five years to show how it will achieve and fund reductions in sewage discharges each year. There is also a power of direction for the Government to direct water companies in relation to actions in those plans if they are not good enough. Furthermore, there will be additional oversight and accountability from our new enforcement body, the Office for Environmental Protection, that will hold Ofwat, the Government and other regulators to account in matters of environmental law.
This amendment is robust and enforceable, whereas the Lords’ Amendment does not include any workable enforcement mechanism.
This is the first Government to take action on sewage, but it won't be solved overnight, and it will need significant investment. The amount of sewage which is pumped into our waters is unacceptable, so I am glad that the Environment Bill will play a key part in solving this problem.
