Sewage

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I inform the House that the Speaker has selected amendment (a) tabled in the name of the Prime Minister.

16:28

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House regrets the persistent scandal of raw sewage being dumped by water companies into rivers, lakes and coastal areas; notes with deep concern that just 14% of rivers and lakes in England are in good ecological health; condemns the previous Government for letting water company bosses get away with the scandal while paying themselves millions of pounds in bonuses; further notes the potential benefits of Blue Flag status in improving responsibility and accountability from water companies, through compliance checks and stringent environmental standards; and calls on the Government to take urgent action to end the sewage scandal, including the introduction of a new Blue Flag status for rivers and chalk streams, to give them greater protection against sewage dumping and ensure the public knows when rivers are clean and safe.

It is an honour to open this debate. For me, serving the people of Westmoreland also means defending its natural beauty and purity, which are important to our national heritage, farming industry and tourism and hospitality economy. Our proposal aims to highlight the scandal of the pollution of our waterways and calls for practical solutions that will make a difference.

The Government’s recent Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 was a step in the right direction after the failure of the last Conservative Government to take meaningful action, yet it was surely also a missed opportunity to bring in the radical transformation of regulation and ownership that is essential if we are to clean up our waterways and clean up the water industry as a whole. Sir Jon Cunliffe’s review gives us hope that a second, more ambitious water Bill might be coming, but there is no guarantee of that, so our job as the constructive Opposition in this place is to hold the Government to account and urge them to make the big changes that Britain voted for last July.

The need for radical action was made all the more clear recently when the figures for sewage spills in 2024 were released. Those figures were horrific: a 106% increase in the duration of spills in our lakes, rivers and seas in just two short years.

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

Over Easter in Torbay, we had five sewage spills according to the Surfers Against Sewage app. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is extremely disappointing to say the least that, rather than colleagues just getting their cossie and towel to go swimming at their favourite swimming spot, they must now also check the sewage leak app? It is outrageous.

[Tim Farron]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a really good point about his own communities. That is what we are trying to address today by bringing practical solutions to prevent this outrage.

That 106% increase in the duration of sewage spills in just two years has been explained away on the record by water industry bosses as the consequence of climate change, because it rains more than it used to. Yes, that is absolutely true, but it did not rain 106% more in 2024 than it did in 2022—not even in the Lake district. The reality is that the failure of water companies to invest in their infrastructure and the failure of Ofwat to force them to do so mean that the scandal is set to continue despite the Government’s new legislation.

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

There were 754 spills in my constituency last year alone. We do not want to see those numbers anywhere, but in a constituency that does not have a major waterway, that is absurdly high. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we want to start genuinely holding these water companies to account, a great place to start would be replacing Ofwat?

[Tim Farron]

My hon. Friend anticipates where I am going next, but yes, it takes some doing to have such figures in a constituency lacking in water—certainly lacking in it compared to my neck of the woods.

I confess that I am doing this job not just because my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) asked me; I would volunteer for all this stuff, because for me and my communities water is seriously personal. We are home to much of the English Lake district —Windermere, Ullswater, Coniston water, Grasmere, Rydal water and many more—and to a beautiful stretch of Morecambe bay and some of the most ecologically significant rivers in the UK, including the Kent, the Eden and the Leven. Yet the data for 2024 shows that we are the third hardest hit constituency in England when it comes to the duration of sewage spills, with 55,000-plus hours of spills and 5,500 individual incidents.

The catchment of the River Eden going through Appleby, Kirkby Stephen and many beautiful villages saw over 7,000 hours of spills on 705 occasions. The River Kent catchment saw 5,300 hours of spills on 455 occasions. Windermere alone had 38 spills over 123 hours.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The “constructive Opposition” spokesperson—I do not know what that makes the Conservatives—is making a powerful speech. I look forward to having an opportunity to visit his constituency, because it sounds beautiful. Does he agree that it is disgraceful that while this sewage is being leaked, the chief executive officers of water companies are still paying themselves exorbitant bonuses?

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Member would, of course, be enormously welcome to visit the lakes and the dales. He makes a key point, which I will seek to address, about the injustice of people being paid huge bonuses for failure at the top of these organisations. That is also money leaving the system and the industry that could have been invested in putting some of this right.

I have talked about my patch, but colleagues across the House, from every party and from every corner of the United Kingdom, will have seen the data for their communities too, and they should rightly be outraged.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

rose—

[Tim Farron]

I am sure my hon. Friend is outraged.

[Jamie Stone]

My hon. Friend talks, quite correctly, about a beautiful part of England. I, too, represent a very beautiful part of the world. Here is an unbelievable fact for him—I have written it on my hand: in 2023, there were no fewer than 1,439 sewage spills in the highlands. What a disgrace that none of the Scottish nationalists, the governing party of Scotland, are here today.

[Tim Farron]

My hon. Friend makes an important observation from a constituency vast and rural—my constituency is the second largest in England, but it is bijou and compact compared with his. He makes a good point about the Administration in Scotland.

As the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) alluded to, sewage spills are not the only things that have increased; so too has the money leaking out of the system. Water company bosses received a total combined pay last year of £20 million and more, and the water companies responsible for these failures paid out £1.2 billion in dividends. Surfers Against Sewage, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), has led the way on this issue for many years, since before many others were even talking about it.

[Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)]

Talking about dividends, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is completely wrong that tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, also leak out on high interest on the internal shareholder loans of those who own the water companies?

[Tim Farron]

I will talk later about why privatisation of the water industry was such a colossal mistake, and that is one of the consequences—a predictable consequence. The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point.

Recent research by Surfers Against Sewage covers all the water companies, but I am bound to pick out United Utilities as an example. United Utilities paid out £320 million to investors last year, while its customers—my constituents—will pay 32% more in bills. By the way, 11% of every one of my constituents’ water bills is going to service that company’s debts—debts racked up in part by borrowing money in order to give huge, undeserved paydays to their investors.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

In South Devon last year, we had an astonishing 49,904 hours of sewage leaks, or 5.69 years-worth of sewage pouring into the glorious Dart and Avon and into the sea around South Devon. Meanwhile, my constituents write to me about bills that have gone up by as much as 50%. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is an outrage that the privatised water companies are able to carry on increasing bills, increasing dividends to shareholders and paying multimillion-pound salaries to CEOs while this obscenity of sewage pouring into our rivers, seas and lakes continues?

[Tim Farron]

My hon. Friend represents an utterly beautiful part of the country and she fights for it admirably; her constituents are lucky to have her. She makes an important point. I mentioned that 11% of the bills paid by my constituents in the north-west of England goes to service United Utilities’ debt, but that is one of the lowest levels. For many other colleagues on both sides of the House, their local water companies will be using up to 30% of the bills charged just to service their debt. The sewage scandal is an environmental scandal, but it is also a financial one—an affront to justice and fairness, as well as to our ecology.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

It is also a health scandal. What water companies are doing by allowing sewage to seep into our coastal waters and rivers means that many people who enjoy that environment for swimming and so on fall ill, and many of them lose days at work. As well as covering the cost to the taxpayer of cleaning up the environment, the water companies should really be making a contribution to the Exchequer to cover sick pay and the costs to the NHS.

[Tim Farron]

My hon. Friend makes an important point on behalf of his coastal and island communities in the far south-west. They are also very lucky to have him speaking up for them.

The Windrush Against Sewage Pollution and Save Windermere campaigns worked together on a recent report showing that the use of funds for capital projects by water companies around the country was at best wasteful and negligent and at worst, dare I say it, deeply suspect. They focused on the proposal by, again, United Utilities to spend almost £13 million of local bill payers’ money on an extension to a sewage outfall pipe into Windermere. WASP found this to be “excessive” and said it seemed unreasonable that 43 three-bedroom houses could be built for the price of putting a mere 150-metre sewage pipe into a lake. The report shines a light on what WASP considers to be inflated capital spending costs at water companies around the country, and it rightly asks what Ofwat is doing by signing this stuff off—signing off huge bill increases when water companies are not spending that money wisely.

[Freddie van Mierlo (Henley and Thame) (LD)]

My hon. Friend has outlined the outrage and the scandal of sewage leaking into our rivers, lakes and seas. It is also the case that sewage is spilling out on to our streets, and groundwater infiltration causes much of the problem. Thames Water in my area has so far refused to do anything about “Poo Corner” in the parish of Berrick Salome. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is another issue we need to address?

[Tim Farron]

Until now, I always thought “The House at Pooh Corner” was a good thing; obviously that would not be so in this case. I have seen the same thing in my own patch. In the village of Burneside we are finally, after 20 years of campaigning, getting some additional new sewage infrastructure, which will hopefully prevent poop literally coming up on to the pavements in light rainfall where the local kids catch the bus to go into Kendal to school, which is an absolute outrage. My hon. Friend is right to campaign, as he does very well, for his communities on this issue.

We should already know not to take water companies at their word, I am afraid, given their shoddy record on data transparency. For example, the chief executive of United Utilities, Louise Beardmore, among others admitted at the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee not very long ago that they had refused to release spill data until WASP appealed to the Information Commissioner. Furthermore, in 2022 United Utilities was listed as the best performing water company in England, for which it was allowed to raise its bills as a reward. However, the BBC reported whistleblowers at the Environment Agency claiming that United Utilities had been wrongly downgrading dozens of pollution incidents. So we can surely be forgiven for being a little cynical when those water companies propose huge sums for projects like the one I have just mentioned.

That is why our key criticism of the Government’s new water Act is not of anything that is in that legislation, but of what is missing from it. The situation whereby water companies can be responsible for record levels of sewage pollution and be shown to make bad use of bill payers’ money, with inflated capital costs and inflated dividends, could not happen if they were regulated properly, but they are not.

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

In my constituency in March, phosphate levels in the River Mole surged by 50% and nitrates doubled. This is pollution that can cause algal blooms and suffocate wildlife. Does my hon. Friend agree that we urgently need a clean water authority with real enforcement powers to protect our rivers, before it is simply too late?

[Tim Farron]

I completely agree, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that point, particularly given the experience she has in her constituency. She rightly fights very forcefully for her communities and to clean up her waterways. She will have seen, like all of us, that the principal problem is a failure of regulation. There has to be an answer to that and the Liberal Democrat proposal, which I will come to in a moment, would certainly make it more likely that this would be dealt with effectively—and if it solved the problem, that would be great.

The water industry regulatory framework is fragmented and weak. The regulators lack the resource, the power and the culture, it would appear, to make a serious difference. That is why the Liberal Democrats propose a new clean water authority so that water companies stop running rings around multiple regulators and begin to act in the interests of the British people and of the waterways that we love.

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

I represent a very beautiful part of the Yorkshire dales, in Wharfedale, and Yorkshire Water has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of hours of sewage spills into the rivers. It was fined £47 million by Ofwat for its poor performance in 2023, only for that to be repeated in 2024. Will the hon. Gentleman welcome the action that the Government have already taken through the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025—which is more than the previous Government ever did to tackle this disgusting problem—and also recognise that we do see the problems with regulation and the fact that we need stronger regulation of the water industry to protect the environment and public health, and that is the role of the Cunliffe review?

[Tim Farron]

I absolutely welcome the Act, as I said at the beginning of the debate. It is a step in the right direction; I just do not think that it is enough, and the hon. Lady makes the case as to why it is not enough. Her water company, Yorkshire Water, is one of four water companies that between them owe Ofwat £164 million in fines because of their failure, and Ofwat has so far claimed zero—none of that. There seems to be an awareness among water companies that Ofwat is not a regulator to be feared and therefore not one to be responded to. That is among the reasons why we need a new, much more powerful regulator that has the power, and uses it, to refuse to sign off on spending plans that prioritise the investor over the consumer and the environment.

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and his party for bringing the motion. It is important that we improve the quality of our rivers and seas. Does he share my concern that in the Water (Special Measures) Act the Government refused to allow local areas to retain the money fined from water companies to improve the environment in that area? Were they able to do that, that would lead to a real improvement in the quality of our environment.

[Tim Farron]

I agree, and the hon. Member can check the record and see us voting with the Conservatives in Committee. He makes a good point: the communities most damaged by pollution should be the ones that receive investment from the fines—if, indeed, Ofwat ever bothers to collect them.

Alongside the need for regulatory reform, we propose a radical transformation of the ownership model. Privatisation of the water industry has been an expensive failure—35 years of huge debts and payouts to investors, 35 years of inadequate investment in our infrastructure. The Conservative promise of Britain becoming a shareowning democracy has turned into the predictable nightmare reality of British public utilities owned by billionaires and foreign powers—what an absolute disgrace. The end result is the rivers, lakes and seas in which we swim, fish, canoe, sail, work and play polluted by an industry now owned by those who took but would not give. Water companies need new models of ownership, transitioning to public benefit companies that are focused on environmental good, not profiteering, with funds from customers’ bills pumped back into upgrading and repairing infrastructure, not draining away in dividends.

We welcome the independent water commission chaired by Sir Jon Cunliffe, though we remain impatient given the time it will take to publish the commission’s findings, the further period of time it may take for the Government to do anything about them, followed by a legislative process and implementation period—we will be at the end of the Parliament before we know it. To be fair, with the commission the Government provide themselves with a second chance to bring in the ambitious changes that are needed, and we urge them not to miss this chance.

Ministers will remember with deep joy the 44 amendments that the Liberal Democrats proposed to the water Bill. In our submission to Sir Jon, I have sought to turn those amendments into a single set of proposals to restore our water industry to environmental and financial health, and to harness the amazing power of citizen scientists and volunteers up and down the country. It is why we called for the inclusion of water campaigners, such as WASP, Save Windermere, the Clean River Kent Campaign, Eden Rivers Trust and South Cumbria Rivers Trust, on water company boards. It is why we call for the Government’s welcome new sewage spills database to be a searchable tool, including retrospectively, so that we do not hamstring those brilliant volunteers who seek to hold the water industry and its regulators to account. Tens of thousands of people are giving their expertise, time and passion to clean up our waterways. Let us let them off the leash, equip them and empower them. I was sad to see Conservative and Labour colleagues refuse to support these measures during the passage of the Water (Special Measures) Act, but I hope that they will have a change of heart today.

In the motion before us, we specifically urge the establishment of a new system of blue flag status for rivers and chalk streams as a practical way to force water companies to be more accountable for the safety of the swimmers who use them and for the ongoing protection and flourishing of precious habitats and ecosystems.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Tim Farron]

I will give way first to the hon. Gentleman—and then to several others.

[Dan Aldridge (Weston-super-Mare) (Lab)]

Voting for the recent Water (Special Measures) Act and serving in Committee with the hon. Gentleman was one of the highlights of my first six months in this place. [Hon. Members: “Aw.”] For constituents in my coastal community, it is so important that we get this right, so it is right that we take a long-term transformative approach. Does he agree that it is not just the safety of residents and tourists that will benefit from the Government’s changes to clean up our water, but the selfless volunteers from organisations such as the RNLI in places like Weston-super-Mare, who deserve to do their vital lifesaving work in the cleanest and safest water possible?

[Tim Farron]

I completely agree—and the feeling is mutual. I appreciate that I am going on a bit and that a few Members wish to intervene. We will have to go by hands up. [Interruption.]

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making a typically good speech. Does he agree that water from areas where one cannot swim still ends up in areas where one can? The Roden and Perry rivers in my constituency suffered over 2,000 hours of sewage spills in the past year—the Perry is affected by a spill into the Common brook near Oswestry. Not only does that water go past farmers’ fields, but it ends up in Shrewsbury, where there is a designated swimming area. I want to swim in it. Does he agree that the blue flag status would clear up the whole catchment, not just the places where people go swimming?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Before you get back to your feet, Mr Farron, I remind you that you can speak as long as you want, but the longer you speak, the less likely it is that colleagues will be able to contribute.

[Tim Farron]

I appreciate your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I will allow maybe only two more interventions. I am coming towards the end of my remarks. I am trying to be not selfish but generous by getting the balance right. I do not want to squeeze people out altogether.

[Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)]

rose—

[Tim Farron]

I give my hon. Friend one of the last two berths.

[Manuela Perteghella]

Last week, I joined constituents involved in citizen science projects testing water quality in the River Stour. The findings were deeply concerning: the very high levels of phosphates and nitrates in the water are clear evidence of the ongoing damage to our waterways. Will my hon. Friend join me in commending the important work of volunteers in citizen science projects, and does he agree that the Environment Agency must be properly resourced to monitor water quality in our rivers, brooks, streams and seas?

[Tim Farron]

I agree. The Ministers are really lucky in so many ways. They are in the best the Department and—like few others in government—they have an army of volunteers to call upon who will be their arms and legs out in the community. We ask the Government to empower those volunteers even more. If there is one more intervention, I will take it. [Interruption.] No? Then I will now plough on to the bitter end, which is not too far off, I promise.

People have talked about blue flag status. That is one of the key proposals in the motion. The point of blue flag status for rivers, chalk streams and lakes is that it is a practical way of forcing water companies to be more accountable for the safety of swimmers and for the ongoing protection of precious habitats and ecosystems. We call on the Government to introduce a blue corridor programme for rivers, chalk streams and lakes to ensure clean and healthy water through the creation of a new blue flag status.

Many rivers and lakes have sites with bathing water status, including near Coniston and Windermere in my own patch, but what will surprise many people is the fact that having bathing water status means just that a location will be tested more frequently; it does not automatically mean that it is any cleaner. There were over 24,000 sewage spills last year into our bathing waters alone, for a duration of over 179,000 hours. Surfers Against Sewage found that the Government’s new bathing water feasibility test lacking. It said:

“This step could mean that sites that are deemed too polluted risk being immediately denied this designation, and therefore unable to receive the monitoring and investment needed to make blue spaces cleaner and safer”.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) pointed out recently, that gives water companies a loophole to get away without cleaning up a bathing site that people use regularly because it is too polluted anyway. If it is a popular swimming site, it must be cleaned up.

In contrast, blue flag status would be granted only at those sites where the data showed that the water is clean and safe. We would give swimmers and other river users proper evidence-based confidence in the safety of the water. If evidence were needed that our proposals are desperately needed, Surfers Against Sewage received 1,853 sickness reports from contact with our waterways in 2024 alone—that is nine years of sick days.

As a brief aside, because it is so important and central to what we are trying to achieve, we want to provide special protection for our chalk streams. They are rare, ecologically unique habitats that are often referred to as England’s rainforests, yet even they have come under threat from sewage dumping in recent years. Blue flag status for chalk streams would drive their recovery after years of abuse.

To conclude, to represent the precious lakes and dales of Westmorland and Lonsdale is a massive privilege, and it is also a huge responsibility. We know in our community that it is our collective calling to steward the epic slice of creation that surrounds us, including the stunning waters, meres and tarns of the Lake district, our coasts and our rivers. They are not ours to keep; they are ours to preserve for the people of these islands and beyond, and for the people of this generation and the generations that we shall never meet.

Politics is also a great calling. In this case, it allows us to establish the structures that will enable that stewardship of our waterways to be effective, to be more than just words and to mean practical change for the better. Our motion today gives the House the opportunity to do practical good, and to do so now, without further dither or delay. Residents in every community of our country want us to listen to them and to act to end the sewage scandal. We must not let them down.

16:56

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Reed)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to end and insert

“recognises that the Government inherited a broken water system, with record levels of sewage being pumped into waterways; welcomes the Government’s rapid delivery of its promise to put water companies under tough special measures through the landmark Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, which has introduced new powers to ban the payment of unfair bonuses to water bosses who fail to protect the environment and to bring tough criminal charges against them if they break the law; supports the Government’s work to secure over £100 billion of private sector investment to upgrade the crumbling sewage infrastructure; and backs the largest review of the water sector since privatisation, aimed at tackling inherited systemic issues in order to clean up UK rivers, lakes and seas for good.”

I welcome the chance to set out the action that the Government are taking to end the sewage scandal in our waterways once and for all. The staggeringly high level of sewage pouring into our rivers, lakes and seas is a national disgrace. The beach in Deal that I visited just a couple of weeks ago was forced to cancel its Boxing day swim because of toxic levels of sewage in the water. The world-famous boat race between the Oxford and Cambridge University boat clubs earlier this month was, yet again, overshadowed by concerns about water quality in the Thames, so much so that rowers were told not to throw their teammates into the river.

[Freddie van Mierlo]

The Secretary of State mentions the boat race, but in 10 weeks we will be welcoming the world’s rowers to the Henley Royal Regatta. Does he share my concern about the amount of sewage being dumped in that part of the Thames, which is blighting the event?

[Steve Reed]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I share his concerns. Wherever it is happening and damaging people’s ability to enjoy our rivers, it is a disgrace and a scandal, and we want to work across the House to put that right.

Parents across the country should not have to worry about letting their children splash about in the river or paddle in the sea on a sunny bank holiday weekend. I recently met campaigners at Windermere, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who told me that they are sick and tired of the sewage flowing into the iconic and beautiful lake on their doorstep and that, a few years ago, that sewage caused algal blooms that turned it bright green.

Up and down the country, the public are furious about water pollution. So am I and so is this House, so how did we get into this situation? I am afraid to say it is the toxic result of years of failure by the previous Conservative Government. Instead of fixing our sewage system before a problem turned into a crisis, the Conservatives stood back and let water companies divert millions of pounds of their customers’ money into the pockets of their bosses and shareholders. Over £25 million was paid in bonuses to water company chief executives during the last Parliament alone. The Tories left our water infrastructure to crumble into ruin.

[Suella Braverman (Fareham and Waterlooville) (Con)]

Putting party politics aside for a moment, I point out to the Secretary of State that Southern Water was fined a record amount of £90 million for dumping raw sewage in 2021. Last year, it received another fine for dumping sewage in rivers near Southampton. This year, bills have risen by almost 50% for residents in Fareham and Waterlooville. Southern Water now proposes to recycle effluent water in Budds Farm near my constituency, to distribute drinking water to residents in Fareham and Waterlooville. Will the Secretary of State do the right thing and reject Southern Water’s proposal, which is expensive, disruptive and dubious? I do not trust Southern Water, and my constituents do not trust it either.

[Steve Reed]

I hope that the right hon. and learned Lady will work with the Government and support the reforms we are bringing forward to improve the functioning and performance of the water sector and all the water companies up and down the country, so that we can prevent the kind of concerns she speaks about.

Let us look at the record of the past Government. If somebody sees a crack in the wall of their house and they leave it for 10 years, the problem gets much worse and it costs much more to put it right. That is exactly what happened with our sewage system. The result is that rivers, lakes and seas across this country are choked by record levels of raw human filth, and bills are rising to repair damage that could have been repaired at a much lower cost if it had been done earlier. I am afraid that the Tories polluted our waterways and left bill payers to pay the price for their failure. It is no wonder that they stand condemned as the sewage party.

[Sean Woodcock (Banbury) (Lab)]

My constituency is served by Thames Water, which is the largest provider in the country. Every week in my surgery, it is fair to say that I have people who have frankly given up on this issue ever being fixed. Will the Secretary of State provide my constituents and the rest of the country with the reassurance that this Labour Government will fix the issues left by the Conservatives?

[Steve Reed]

As my hon. Friend will have seen, we have already passed the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, which gives the regulators more teeth to enforce against the polluting water companies. We look forward to Sir Jon Cunliffe’s review for the Independent Water Commission; we will get the interim report next month and the final report the month after that, which will lead to further action to reset this sector once and for all.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

On the subject of the Act, it is wonderful to hear the Secretary of State say that he wants to take criminal action against water companies and water bosses, but I tabled an amendment to do just that that was rejected by the Government. Now that the Act has passed, it is interesting that the Government are so keen. Why did they not just accept my amendment, or a similar one? The Act does not mention criminal charges or what they will do, as my amendment did, but it passed without that measure being put in place. The Government are now saying from a point of retrospective gleefulness at the Dispatch Box that they would like to put that in. Is that actually going to happen?

[Steve Reed]

With the greatest respect, the hon. Lady’s party had 14 years to take action, and did nothing.

Although I am grateful to the Liberal Democrats for calling this debate, and I think there are many points of similarity between our approaches, I must gently point to some of the opportunities they missed to take action when they were in government. For instance, the Environment Agency had its funding cut by more than half between 2010 and 2019, leading to a fall in prosecutions against water companies and other polluters, and there were Liberal Democrats in the coalition Cabinet that started those cuts. The coalition Government published a report in 2011 that wrongly and, in my view, bizarrely concluded that water regulation

“works and is not fundamentally flawed”.

Of course, under that coalition Government, a Liberal Democrat Minister was responsible for the water sector between 2013 and 2015, and disappointingly they kept in place the very system of regulation that the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale quite rightly just criticised.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Would the Secretary of State recognise that the Budget papers for 2009 and 2010 show that the then Labour Chancellor was projecting bigger capital cuts in expenditure than were carried out under the coalition Government?

[Steve Reed]

I do not think that decisions taken by the coalition Government were the fault of the previous Labour Government. I am merely gently pointing out that the Liberal Democrats did have a chance to reset regulation in the way that this Government are now doing. Where they offer their support for that work, I am grateful for it; by working constructively right across the House, we can make sure that we now reset a water sector that has failed the public, consumers’ investment and the environment for far too long.

[Mr Joshua Reynolds (Maidenhead) (LD)]

In my constituency, the Cut runs from Binfield all the way through to the Thames. That river had 615 hours-worth of sewage pumped into it last year, and my constituent Danny’s dog had to be put down, having got so ill from swimming in that water. Does the Secretary of State agree that no matter how many fines we levy against Thames Water, which ultimately come back to our bills—we have to pay for them—they will do absolutely nothing to deter the shareholders and make them invest properly where needed?

[Steve Reed]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very powerful case for why reform is so desperately needed. My condolences to the owner of the dog—that is a terrible thing to happen to anybody.

[Anna Dixon]

Bill payers in my constituency of Shipley are facing an 18% hike in their bills. By 2030, the increase could be as high as 35%. About 19% of those bills already goes towards servicing the debt of the holding company that owns Yorkshire Water. Is it not the case that our customers are paying the price for the failure of the Opposition parties—plural—to address the problems in the water industry during their time in government?

[Steve Reed]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am angry about the bill rises, as she is. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House are angry about them, but in a very real sense, people are being forced to pay the price for 14 years of Conservative failure.

Previous Governments let the sewage scandal spread; this Government will end it once and for all. That work began as soon as we came into office. Within one week of the general election, I invited the water company chief executives into my office, and I ringfenced money earmarked for investment in water infrastructure so that it can never again be diverted for the payment of bonuses or dividends.

[Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)]

I welcome the rapid action that this Government have taken to hold failing water companies to account. Does the Secretary of State share my view that it is simply disgraceful that water company CEOs such as Yorkshire Water’s Nicola Shaw—who paid herself a £371,000 bonus —were able to pay themselves multimillion-pound bonuses while overseeing record levels of sewage spills?

[Steve Reed]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, which is why we have given the regulator new powers through the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025. The Conservative party could have done so at any point during its 14 years in power, but at no point did it take that common-sense action. We passed that landmark piece of legislation, which became law in February. It gives the regulator tough new powers to hold water companies to account, bans unfair bonuses when water company bosses fail to meet high standards, and imposes stricter penalties—including up to two years in prison—if water company employees obstruct investigations by environmental regulators, as well as severe and automatic fines for wrongdoing. Environmental regulators can now recover costs for successful enforcement, meaning that the polluter pays and the regulators gain new resources to enforce more effectively.

[Jamie Stone]

I suggest to the Secretary of State that the problem may be more deep-seated than we realise. He mentioned algal blooms in the Lake district. Not only do those blooms turn the water a strange colour; they suck the oxygen out of the water, leading to the death of wildlife in the water. Furthermore, sewage contains heavy metals and other toxic substances that can kill fish or affect their ability to reproduce, so we may find ecosystems that have been damaged over a much longer term than we realise.

[Steve Reed]

I recognise the catastrophe that the hon. Member is talking about. It is not just that the water is polluted; the water becomes toxic, and it is killing ecosystems and damaging the wider environment. Those are all reasons that we need to move ahead quickly with the reforms that this Government are working towards.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Steve Reed]

I will give way two more times and then I had better make some progress, or Madam Deputy Speaker will chastise me as she chastised the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

The Secretary of State is right to outline the legislation he is bringing forward, but on the ground there is still frustration about pollution in rivers, such as in Botley in my constituency. We are still seeing overflows—not from sewage but from development pollutants going into the river—and parish councils are identifying them quickly and coming to me, but the accountability structures behind water companies such as Southern Water will not answer to elected Members like me. We are still not seeing the improvement that the Secretary of State is advocating at the Dispatch Box. Will he agree to meet me and my parish council to hear our concerns? Can he outline briefly how the sewage legislation that he has just brought forward will add to that accountability for parish councils and local residents?

[Steve Reed]

The hon. Member makes an important point. One issue that Sir Jon Cunliffe and the water commission are looking at is how we can increase accountability and responsiveness directly to customers and, indeed, to authorities such as the parish councils he has just talked about. I would be happy to arrange a meeting for him with the appropriate Minister.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

The Secretary of State referred to rare ecological rivers that can be damaged by sewage pollution. In my constituency, we have a very rare chalk stream, the River Ver. Thames Water says that many of the sewage spills happen because the pipes are old and porous. Part of the solution is to line them, but when Thames Water is lining pipes, it is not prioritising pipes that are close to rare chalk streams. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss my Chalk Streams (Sewerage Investment) Bill, which would make water companies prioritise those pipes that are close to chalk streams, because of their rare ecological status?

[Steve Reed]

I know the River Ver very well; I used to walk past it every day on my way to primary school at the Abbey primary school at the bottom of the abbey orchard. I would be happy to make sure that the hon. Lady gets a meeting with the appropriate Minister to raise those points.

The additional new resources that our reforms will give to the regulators are underpinned by mandatory monitoring of storm overflows and pollution incidents. Water companies in England and Wales must now publish information on the frequency and duration of discharges from every single storm overflow within one hour of the discharge happening. We have extended that to emergency overflows, so that all spills will be publicly reported in near real time. We expect water companies to monitor 50% of them by 2030 and the rest by 2035. Companies are now required to publish their annual pollution incident reduction plans and implementation reports to outline the progress they have made and show the public that they have a credible plan to end the scandal of water pollution. Those measures give the water regulators new powers to hold water companies to account and ensure that customers and the environment always come first.

We can and we will turn the water sector around. We have secured more than £104 billion of private sector investment in the water sector over the next five years. That is the biggest investment in our water sector in its history, and the second biggest investment in any part of the economy over the lifetime of this Parliament. It will build and upgrade water infrastructure in every single region of the country, cut sewage spills by 45% compared with 2021 levels and drastically improve the quality of water in our rivers, lakes and seas. It will allow us to move ahead with nine new reservoirs and nine large-scale water transfer schemes, and reduce leaks from crumbling pipes, so that we have a reliable water supply for the future.

This vast investment will create tens of thousands of jobs up and down the country, allow us to go ahead with building 1.5 million new homes, support 150 major infrastructure projects and power new industries with high water usage, such as data centres. This is the regional economic growth that the country voted for last year; this is the Labour party’s plan for change in action.

[Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)]

I think that Members in all parts of the House agree with much of what the Secretary of State is saying. I am fortunate enough to have the beautiful River Trent in my constituency, along with the Sow and the Penk, but new housing developments, which he mentioned, are a big issue, because the run-off from them is not properly attenuated. How could that best be dealt with? Building homes for the right reasons sometimes has unintended consequences.

[Steve Reed]

The right hon. Gentleman is entirely right, and I have asked Sir Jon Cunliffe to consider measures that we could implement to start to address that and, indeed, wider issues involving nutrient neutrality in our waterways.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Steve Reed]

I will make some progress, because I do not want to take up too much of the debate.

Last month the Water Minister and I toured the country to see where and how the investment will be spent—from Windermere to the Wye, from Hampshire to Yorkshire, and to Suffolk, Northumbria and Somerset. In Windermere, we are working with local groups and organisations to eliminate all sewage discharges into the lake. That includes schemes that allow owners of septic tanks to connect them to the mains sewer network so that they no longer discharge directly into the water. On the River Wye we are running a £1 million joint research initiative with the Welsh Government to tackle water-quality issues across the catchment. We are working with local farmers, environmental groups and citizen scientists to investigate the sources of the pollution so that we can tackle them effectively.

[Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Steve Reed]

I will make some progress, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind too much.

The south-east of England will face severe water shortages by 2030 if we do not act urgently, so we are supporting new infrastructure such as the Havant Thicket reservoir, which will store nearly 9 billion litres of water when it is completed.

This is just the start of our wider plan to fundamentally reset the water sector so that it is fit for the future. I am grateful to Sir Jon Cunliffe, the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, for undertaking the biggest review of the water sector since privatisation. He is supported by an advisory group of experts covering the environment, public health, investors, engineering, customers and economics. The failures of regulation and governance that allowed our water system to decline into scandalous failure must never happen again. This summer, Sir Jon will publish his findings on how we can build the robust regulatory framework that we need to clean up our waterways, build infrastructure for a reliable water supply and restore public confidence.

[Martin Wrigley]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Steve Reed]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will make a little more progress, because I have already taken up more than 20 minutes of other Members’ time.

Sir Jon is looking into how we can embrace a catchment-based approach to cleaning up our rivers, and our farming road map will help farmers to make the transition to more nature-positive farming methods that will reduce agricultural run-off into our waterways. I hope that many Members have shared their views as part of the Independent Water Commission’s call for evidence, which closes at the end of today. The Government will respond and consult on the commission’s recommendations, and we intend to legislate so that we can completely reset our water sector for the future.

The Water Minister has announced reforms to shake up our water bathing regulations for the first time in more than a decade, so that more people, whether they are swimmers, paddleboarders or surfers, can get outside and enjoy our waters safely. Our proposed measures would remove the fixed bathing season dates from the regulations to better reflect when people actually use our waters, and would allow greater flexibility in monitoring.

[Martin Wrigley]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Steve Reed]

I will this time, because the hon. Gentleman has been very persistent.

[Martin Wrigley]

I thank the Secretary of State. I have just been reading about his core reforms, and I note that, as he has said, core reform 3 changes the way in which the season for bathing is determined. However, it continues the principle that water is not tested by the Environment Agency throughout the year. This is an important omission that must be rectified. During a bathing season, the water can become polluted. Will the Secretary of State consider introducing all-year-round testing for our Blue Flag areas?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Before the Secretary of State responds, I would like him to consider the fact that more than 30 colleagues wish to contribute. The longer he speaks, the less likely it is that they will all get in.

[Steve Reed]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will not take any more interventions. I hear the hon. Gentleman’s point. Public health is a priority in the reforms that we are making.

The Environment Agency must consider public safety and the environment when it assesses applications for bathing waters, and remove the harmful automatic designation of bathing waters so that we can continue to invest in and improve these sites. Applications for new bathing waters will open next month, adding to the more than 450 bathing waters around the country. Details of how to apply are online.

The sewage scandal ends with this Labour Government. Our groundbreaking Water (Special Measures) Act will give the regulators tough new powers to hold water companies to account. They will no longer get away with polluting our waterways and rewarding themselves with undeserved bonuses for what they have done. This is a fresh start for the water sector—a fundamental reset that will clean up our waterways, create thousands of jobs, grow the economy and give us a reliable water supply for decades to come.

Exciting progress is already being made. The Thames tideway tunnel was fully activated in February—an amazing feat of British engineering and entrepreneurial spirt that will reduce sewage spills into the Thames by around 95%. Since coming into operation, the tunnel has captured enough sewage to fill Wembley stadium five times over and stopped it pouring into the river. I want to see innovation like that not just in London but right across the country, bringing investment, driving regional economic growth and cleaning up our waterways for good.

Many of us cherish memories from childhood of summer holidays on the beach, exploring rock pools or splashing about in the waves. Today’s children deserve to make the same magical memories. This is our moment to give our children back the future that is their birthright, to restore pride in our rivers, lakes and seas, to end the sewage scandal and to clean up our waterways for good. That is the prize, and this is the Government who will make it happen.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Because the Front-Bench contributions have been so substantial, Back Benchers will now be on a time limit of three minutes. I call the shadow Secretary of State.

17:22

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

I respect the fact that this is the Liberal Democrats’ Opposition day debate, so I have been cutting parts out of my speech. I therefore hope the House will forgive me if I do not take every intervention that is offered to me.

I thank the Liberal Democrats for choosing to debate this important issue. We all know and agree that there are fundamental problems facing the water and sewerage industry. A drainage and sewerage system that was first built in the Victorian era does not meet the needs of the population it must now serve, or the pressures of more frequent and severe weather events. To fix the problem, we must first diagnose it and measure it. That is why the previous Government took the essential step of radically overhauling the monitoring of storm overflows.

On previous occasions, the Secretary of State has dismissed the significance of that data collection and monitoring. That is unfair, because when we came into government in 2010, the Labour Government had left us and the Liberal Democrats in the coalition Government with a water system that was out of control; just 7% of storm overflows were monitored. In other words, people across the country were swimming and playing in water without knowing that it had been contaminated with raw sewage. I had the pleasure of going to school in Blackpool, and there were certain times of the summer season when locals would not venture into the sea, because we knew the consequences of daring to do so.

The point I would make to everyone in this Chamber is that this is a long-standing set of problems. To pretend otherwise—I know some people get a little carried away with their advocacy—does not do the public, our constituents or, indeed, our waterways the justice that they deserve. We are proud of the fact that by the time we left government we had met our ambitious target to ensure that 100% of storm overflows were monitored. The importance of that is emphasised—

[Mr Angus MacDonald (Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Victoria Atkins]

I will just finish this point, and then I will take the intervention.

The importance of that is emphasised by the interventions we have already had, because Members across this House have been citing the very stark and shocking statistics on storm overflows, sewage overflows and so on in their constituencies. They have rightly relied on those figures already in this debate, and I have no doubt that they will rely on them in their speeches as well. In the dark days before 2010, their predecessors would not have had that information. [Laughter.] I see a Labour Member—the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove)—laughing about that. I do not know why she is laughing at knowing more through data collection so that we can correct the situation.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

I thank the shadow Minister for giving way. Monitoring sewage overflows does not immediately improve the health of our environment or of the public. It is the first minimum step to be able to take meaningful action, but I am sorry to say that the previous Government failed to take meaningful action. Between 2021 and 2023, Dewsbury and Batley experienced a massive number of sewage spills, totalling 4,604 incidents with a total duration of a staggering 28,383 hours or approximately three and a quarter years. Does the right hon. Member agree with me and my constituents that the privatisation of the water industry has been a total and abject failure, causing significant harm to our environment, public health and wildlife, and—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. The hon. Member will know that interventions need to be brief, and should not be prepared and read out from a script.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who has in fact lined up the next paragraph my speech—it is extraordinary—because this improved knowledge must lead to action.

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Victoria Atkins]

No. I will come to the hon. Gentleman in due course. I have said that this is the Liberal Democrats’ Opposition day debate, and I will give them the respect that they deserve.

The improved knowledge must lead to action. As I am delighted the Secretary of State acknowledged, one of the most tangible improvements in the past decade is just a few metres away under our feet—the Thames tideway tunnel. Sadly, he did not have the generosity of spirit to acknowledge the role that the Conservative Government played in that. This multibillion-pound infrastructure project, announced and delivered by the Conservative Government, has already stopped 500,000 tonnes of sewage flowing into the River Thames since it started operating in February. Over time, the 16 mile pipe is expected to stop 95% of sewage spills that would previously have polluted the River Thames. That meaningful action is already making a real difference to our nation’s capital—built on the data that some laugh at—and I ask genuinely: where is Labour’s plan for more?

In government, we also wanted to clear up the water industry and our environment. It was the Environment Act 2021, passed by the last Government, that gave stronger powers to regulators and imposed strict demands for tackling pollution. We set legally binding targets to improve water quality and availability, and to reduce nutrient pollution. We rolled out catchment-sensitive farming to all farms in England. We stepped up the requirements for investment, including investment from water companies, and storm overflow improvements.

After 14 years in opposition, the Labour party should have come into office with a plan of what more needs to be done to fix this century-old problem and, what is more, have set that plan in action last summer with energy and gusto. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State is chuntering from a sedentary position, but may I say what a delight it is to see him in the Chamber? Normally, he is running frit from farmers. Instead of a plan, we have had an underwhelming trickle—a review, yet another talking shop forum that has done nothing other than have a meeting, and a Bill which, as we said during its passage, sets out much of what was already happening. As with every other part of this Government, Ministers had no plan, and they are now trying to come up with one.

[Dr Arthur]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Victoria Atkins]

I will give way in a moment.

For example, the Secretary of State recently pledged to clean up Lake Windermere so that only rainwater flows into it. It was a laudable ambition. Who can disagree with that ambition? However, he gave no timeframe and no plan for delivering this vision. I have also visited the constituency of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). I met local residents and farmers—something I do not think the Secretary of State managed to do—and business owners recently. [Interruption.] Well, they do notice. They are not holding their breath for action because, rather like his no farming policy, it is all talk and no action.

A significant amount of the Government’s supposedly groundbreaking water legislation, including the measures on monitoring, blocking bonuses, and fines, was already brought in by the previous Government. Sadly, they rejected our amendment to maintain the important water restoration fund to protect waterways, including chalk streams, many of which are in my constituency. I genuinely hope that they will reconsider that.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)]

rose—

[Victoria Atkins]

I am very happy to give way if the hon. Lady is going to support and carry on our work—delighted, in fact.

[Emma Hardy]

I would never wish to be impolite and I will not be now, but I think the right hon. Lady will find that our argument on the water restoration fund was that it did not need primary legislation to happen. What has happened since then, Madam Deputy Speaker, is that everyone who has been successful in applying for the water restoration fund has been contacted and the money has already been offered, so I think the right hon. Lady’s information might be slightly out of date.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am delighted to hear that. I gently suggest that that was not the response the hon. Lady gave when we were debating it and pressing her to put it in the Bill. It is precisely because we did our job of scrutinising the Bill and trying to improve it that, I am delighted to hear, she has now put that into action.

Another example—I am happy to take another intervention from her—is that we tabled an amendment to limit the amount of debt that water companies could accumulate, as well as an amendment to protect bill payers. Sadly, both were rejected. The hon. Lady is welcome to intervene. Is she doing that? No intervention. Well, we have not got that commitment. I am genuinely happy to give way to her, because I want to improve her legislation.

[Emma Hardy]

The right hon. Lady is rather keen to hear from me and I am happy to offer to intervene. The water commission is looking at levels of debt. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Dr Hudson), will know, because we had the conversation many times in Committee, that that is part of what the commission is looking at. I gently remind the right hon. Lady that, as much as I accept that she is super keen for us to have achieved everything she failed to do in nine months, she had 14 years to do it.

[Victoria Atkins]

Wow! Where is the energy? Where is the gusto? Rewriting history seems to be a theme this week for the Government, but there we go. That is a little bit delicate for Labour Back Benchers, given the discussions this week.

We banned bonuses for the bosses of water companies that have committed criminal breaches and water companies that illegally pollute our rivers can be prosecuted, making it clear that polluters will pay for damage to our natural environment. I hope that in her wind-up, the Minister will answer the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) about fines being ringfenced for local areas, and the important point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) about the amendment she tabled to the Water (Special Measures) Act.

The Secretary of State, as is his nervous tic, merely fell back on whatever they say about the past, rather than setting out his vision for the future. I can always tell when I am getting to him, bless him. We quadrupled water company inspections and set in place a plan to have 4,000 inspections a year by April 2025, increasing to 10,000 a year from April 2026. Will the Government commit to that vital work, or will the Chancellor cut the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs budget so starkly that they are cancelled?

[Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)]

We have the stunning River Derwent running through Derby, but it was polluted by sewage 2,675 times in 2024, lasting over 15,000 hours. I invite the right hon. Member to take responsibility for cutting the Environment Agency budget by half, leaving it without the powers and resources to combat this kind of sewage.

[Victoria Atkins]

It is a brave rural constituency MP who defends the activities of the Environment Agency. With some of the disappointments that local residents have had with the Environment Agency, particularly in my part of the world, there is real work to do there.

[Catherine Atkinson]

rose—

[Victoria Atkins]

I am still answering the hon. Lady’s first intervention. Of course, she is relying on the data—that is exactly the point. Again, I come back to the point—I am trying to be constructive and collegiate in the way I am dealing with this. [Laughter.] The public will hear the laughter; that is what Government Members do not understand. I am trying to be constructive. We managed to collect that data and we had significant infrastructure investment in the Thames tideway tunnel, as I have explained.

However, as I have always said at this Dispatch Box, there is more to do, so we genuinely will support constructive efforts by the Government. That is why we scrutinise their legislation so carefully and why we put forward perfectly proper amendments to the Water (Special Measures) Act. I am delighted that the Government have taken our suggestion on the water restoration fund so seriously and have enacted that. However, we must not conduct this conversation with quite the emotional distress that the Secretary of State seems to be in at the moment.

Of course, the Liberal Democrats know the scale of the challenge, as there was a Liberal Democrat Water Minister for a large part of the coalition Government. That fact seems to have been missed in their motion today—I am sure it was just an oversight. The Liberal Democrats want to see even more progress with the blue flag scheme, and we agree with them on that. Since 2010, the number of designated bathing waters has increased, and we have seen a significant improvement in water quality ratings, with more water rated as excellent or good, and an increase in blue flag beaches. As a proud coastal MP, I want to see many more blue flag beaches like Mablethorpe and Sutton on Sea on our glorious Lincolnshire coastline, and I will, of course, support meaningful efforts to achieve that.

If I may, I will just ask for a point of clarity from the Liberal Democrats. In 2023, they called for a ban on bank holiday sewage discharges—again, a laudable ambition. However, it was pointed out to the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) that this policy would result in burst water pipes and sewage backing up into people’s homes. When these laudable ambitions are put forward—indeed, we all want to see them—will the Liberal Democrats ensure that their own policymaking would not have unintended consequences, including, as I say, sewage flowing back up into people’s homes?

I will finish on this point, Madam Deputy Speaker. I emphasise again that we all care about the quality of our waterways. As we showed with the Water (Special Measures) Act, we will work constructively across the House to improve our waterways and the legislation put forward by the Government. I am proud to be leading the policy renewal work for farming, food, fishing, environment and water for the Conservative party with my excellent shadow ministerial team, my hon. Friends the Members for Epping Forest (Dr Hudson) and for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore). We will be watching and scrutinising the Government’s work on water carefully. The promises the Secretary of State is making now will be remembered by our constituents, by colleagues across the House and by voters, as, I am afraid, his promises are remembered by our farmers.

17:38

[Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)]

I thank the Liberal Democrats for securing this important debate. They are asking the Government today for three key commitments: to take urgent action to end the sewage scandal; to provide greater protection against sewage dumping; and to ensure that the public know when rivers are clean and safe. I have some great news for the Liberal Democrats, because we have pretty much delivered all that already.

This Labour Government acted urgently to bring forward the Water (Special Measures) Act—it was one of our first pieces of legislation in our first King’s Speech and became law this February—to end the disgraceful behaviour of the water companies. The legislation does exactly what it says on the tin: it puts our disgraceful water companies into special measures, just like a school that has failed its Ofsted exam. The Government are wading in to ramp up regulation and enforcement of these companies. We will ensure that their focus is back on consumers—their experience, their service level and their bills—so we have been working on additional regulation.

The Liberal Democrats talked about a lack of resourcing, but from what we have heard today—this is also in the Water (Special Measures) Act—it is very clear that the polluter will pay and that water companies’ fines will come back into the EA to put the much-needed resourcing where it should be.

[Sean Woodcock]

We heard the shadow Secretary of State bemoaning the laughter from Labour Members. I think the laughter was at the idea that people in this country should be grateful to the Conservatives for the condition in which they left our waterways. Does my hon. Friend share our amusement at that ridiculous thought?

[Victoria Atkins]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. The shadow Secretary of State will know that she cannot intervene on an intervention, which, by the way, was far too long. I think we will go back to Julia Buckley.

[Julia Buckley]

I thank my hon. Friend for his amusing intervention, but more important is the measure in the 2025 Act that bans bonuses when the high standards of our environmental protections are not met.

[Victoria Atkins]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Labour Back Benchers should know this by now. The hon. Member for Banbury (Sean Woodcock) fell into error—I will be kind to him—by mischaracterising the comment that I made about him and the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) laughing during the course of my speech, when I was talking about the importance of data monitoring. It was not in any way—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The shadow Secretary of State will know that that was not a point of order, but a point of debate. Perhaps we had best return to Julia Buckley.

[Julia Buckley]

I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your excellent chairmanship.

Our important Bill has not just banned bonuses, but introduced criminal liability, which will mean that, finally, chief executives and senior leadership figures can end up in prison for up to two years. We have also introduced mandatory electronic sensors, which monitor the overflows in real time. This is objective data that is measured in real time, and, crucially, as this is an important question from the Liberal Democrats, that data is available to the public.

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Julia Buckley]

Forgive me, but I must make some progress.

We have also forced the water companies to deliver on their five-year investment plans for sustainable urban drainage to rectify the inadequate infrastructure, which has not kept pace with capacity over the past 30 years. In Shropshire, which I represent, that means an additional investment of £500 million to rectify our sewage drainage over the next five years.

I have been an MP for only a few months, but in that short time I am proud of the Government’s swift and decisive action to immediately curtail the excesses of the privatised water industry. In my constituency of Shrewsbury, we have significant sewage outflows in the town centre, as the beautiful River Severn completely loops round the centre, with over 30 combined sewage overflows. Underground, we have inadequate Victorian infrastructure, which has been ignored under our cobbled streets. The Water (Special Measures) Act could not come quickly enough for my constituents in Shrewsbury. It has already delivered all three asks of the Liberal Democrats in today’s debate: we have taken urgent action; we have legislated to protect consumers against sewage dumping; and we have ensured that the public have the information they need. No one can question this Government’s commitment to cleaning up water. The only question is why the Liberal Democrats voted against this important Act.

17:43

[Brian Mathew (Melksham and Devizes) (LD)]

The pollution of rivers is an issue that strikes close to home for many of us. Just last November, Wessex Water was fined half a million pounds for pumping raw sewage into Clackers brook, a small river rising in Bromham and flowing 5 miles through Melksham in my constituency. This incident resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 fish, including all aquatic life within a 1 km radius of the leak. The systems in place simply cannot handle the pressure brought to bear by the increasing volatility in rainfall levels seen in recent times.

I have also been to visit the home of one of my constituents in West Lavington, where a manhole had been lifted from its housing as a result of a downpour. Toxic sewage then polluted a nearby chalk stream, damaging its unique ecosystem that is home to a variety of species, including trout. These kinds of incidents cannot be allowed to persist.

The current antiquated piping system does not satisfy modern demand. Water companies must update and future-proof these systems, and we need them to do so now. I was pleased to see Wessex Water—credit where it is due—invest £2 million in a sewage storage facility in Bradford-on-Avon to ensure that it can mitigate increased pressure on sewage pipes. However, it is clear that more must be done to protect our vital aquatic ecosystems.

We must be clear that this is not just a problem for water companies. Developments in farming practices have led to detrimental impacts on both soil quality and river health. Acreage dedicated to the production of maize trebled between 1990 and 2000, making it one of the UK’s fastest growing crops. However, maize allows for high levels of surface run-off, causing soil degradation and the pollution of our rivers. That makes it one of the most damaging crops.

The rise in intensive poultry units is another area of concern. Chicken manure contains far higher levels of phosphates than manure from other farmed animals, and it starves fish and river plants of oxygen. Run-off from chicken farms or indeed fields spread with chicken manure is catastrophic to our waterways.

We must expect better from our water companies. Investment in infrastructure must rise with the demands of the modern world.

[Dr Opher]

In Stroud, Severn Trent has invested £25 million to stop overflow of sewage into the River Frome. Together with natural flood management from our district council, we have made rivers cleaner, and as a keen swimmer I am grateful for that. Would the hon. Member acknowledge that some water companies have been investing heavily?

[Brian Mathew]

As I have just said, in Bradford-on-Avon, similar investments have been made—credit where credit is due.

I will come back to the important issues about farming. We should also approach the issue of river pollution in a far more holistic manner, acknowledging the various factors, including agriculture, that contribute to the fact that just 14% of our waterways are in good health.

17:47

[Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)]

We have had a wonderful surf around the UK’s rivers, lakes and seas this afternoon. Every single one of us in this House will have a waterway in our constituency, and we have all had to endure the worst impacts of the 14 years of negligence and failure that almost killed some of our rivers.

The Wye and the Usk, which run through my constituency, are two fantastic examples of waterways that sadly have been affected for too long. Run-off from agriculture, liquid waste from industry and sewage resulting from inadequate investment by failing water companies have all added up to increased phosphate levels in our rivers.

Tests in the Usk have shown scarily high levels of e-coli in the water, which made it unsafe for bathing and stopped local people enjoying the river in the ways they should be able to—sploshing through streams and jumping into the sea, as the Secretary of State spoke about earlier. We should all be able to swim, kayak and canoe without fear of nasty infection. Tourism has suffered, as have businesses like the one run by Angela Jones, whose livelihood depends on the river in Monmouthshire.

I want to pay tribute to the brilliant citizen scientists and campaigners in my constituency who tirelessly work to save our local rivers, including Friends of the River Wye, Save the River Usk, and the Wye Catchment Partnership. Members of our communities up and down the UK are testing and monitoring rivers for pollution and are coming up with innovative cross-border solutions.

The good news is that this Government have paid attention to people in Monmouthshire and all over England and Wales. The last Government had an unfunded, pie-in-the-sky action plan for the River Wye that only looked at England. Water flows across borders, and I am so pleased that, as the Secretary of State so eloquently mentioned, the two Labour Governments in Westminster and Cardiff have made progress and put £1 million into the River Wye so that we can clean it up once and for all.

The Water (Special Measures) Act has made extraordinary progress in making sure that polluters are accountable. It will strengthen Ofwat’s powers so that it can better hold water companies to account and bring tough criminal charges against those who break the law. This is only the beginning. We know that there is much more to do, and the upcoming Cunliffe review will help us to do that, but I am so proud that the Labour Government have achieved more in nine months than the previous Government did in 14 years—and, notably, more than the Liberal Democrats also did in coalition.

17:50

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

My constituency contains the source of the Thames, so I could, in theory, row from my constituency to the House. I would like to celebrate the opening of the Thames tideway tunnel, as mentioned by the Secretary of State. Back in 2013, I was campaigning for the tunnel, which included frowning at a sewage outflow under Putney bridge, so it could be said that I have been in the excrement for quite some time. Sadly, the situation has not improved in the 12 years in between. Just this morning, I had Ben Thornbury, an impressive young man, in my office to commend him on his work cleaning up the River Avon in Malmesbury. Sadly—let no good deed go unpunished—he had picked up sepsis from the pollution in the river. I am grateful to say that he made a full recovery, but, still, that is a sign of the times.

Perhaps surprisingly, I would like to use a word rarely heard in the context of the water industry: hope. I would like to highlight some ways in which good things are happening, largely at the grassroots level. First, there is citizen science. Eighty pollution incidents were reported by citizens just in my constituency in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire last year. Citizen science can often highlight pollution incidents up to three days before official sources of information.

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

In my constituency, I am lucky to have Friends of the River Frome and Frome Families for the Future who do lots of citizen science in testing the river, but does my hon. Friend agree that we should not be relying on such groups to test the water quality and that we need to empower and resource the Environment Agency to be doing that? We cannot rely on areas that are lucky enough to have these groups.

[Dr Savage]

I completely agree. Although I commend those grassroots efforts, that is not their job. I was delighted to hear from the Secretary of State that we will soon have real-time reporting on water pollution, and I look forward to seeing the visible—and smellable—results of that. It is also the Earthwatch WaterBlitz this weekend, so hon. Members may still have time to get their water testing kits do their own bit of citizen science.

Secondly, again, I applaud local efforts, and especially the Malmesbury River Valleys Trust and the Cotswold Lakes Trust, for doing such exemplary work in taking care of our waterways and our wetlands in the South Cotswolds. I recommend to hon. Members across the House that we use our power to convene to bring together people around these issues. In the South Cotswolds, we recently held two fruitful summits—one on the Gloucestershire side and one on the Wiltshire side—bringing people together on the issue of flooding. They yielded a lot of enthusiasm, expertise and actionable solutions. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) mentioned, we cannot leave it all to the grassroots. We have a deeply dysfunctional water industry in this country, and we need to get upstream of these problems to the source.

[Mr Angus MacDonald]

We have been hearing all about monitoring in one hour and the huge amounts of discharges. We do not have any of that information in Scotland as it is not a requirement for Scottish Water to release that and the SNP Government are not taking any steps to do so. We have no idea about the extent of the problem, but we know that it is substantial. Will my hon. Friend back me in supporting the cause for the Scottish Government to release the same information as there is England?

[Dr Savage]

I would be more than happy to back my hon. Friend’s calls for an equivalent system in Scotland.

Finally, I thank the Government for everything they are already doing to reform the water industry and look forward to seeing real results in our waterways. I will add that, while I welcome the Cunliffe review, I was disappointed to find out that the ownership of water companies is outside its scope.

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I sit on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and we are also making submissions to the Cunliffe review. I do not believe ownership of water is outside the scope of the review. It will be looking at how our water is owned—maybe not nationalisation, but certainly other methods of ownership.

[Dr Savage]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. That was not what I had been led to believe from a roundtable with Sir Jon Cunliffe, but maybe I misunderstood.

The truth is that the profit motive has no place in a vital public utility such as the water industry. We are one of only two countries in the entire world that has a privatised water industry, and clearly it is not working and needs to be reviewed.

17:55

[Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in such an important debate, particularly as I represent one of the most beautiful counties, and the largest constituency, in England—as the Lib Dem spokesman, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), has already hinted at. Rivers define my constituency and the county I grew up in. From the Tyne to the Coquet to the Allen Valleys and all the way to the River Rede, we cannot go throughout Northumberland without coming across rivers and the communities that are named for them and depend on them. They drive tourism, wildlife, and our local economies.

Protecting those rivers is not a luxury or a nice to have; it is a fundamental duty for those of us who represent those communities. I am incredibly proud to be the MP for such a vibrant and active constituency with such fantastic grassroots campaigners, including Dr Stephen Westgarth and the “Clean Tyne” campaign. Conservative Members will be aware that he was at one point a Conservative county council candidate—I enjoy working cross-party with people, although probably not quite as much in the week before the local elections as in the week after. I also pay tribute to a retiring Green party councillor in my constituency, Dr Nick Morphet, the councillor for Humshaugh. He has done an excellent job and, despite running against me in the general election, was always good company when I met him on the doorsteps.

Coming back to slightly hackneyed party politics, I recognise quite how much the sewage issue raises hackles and confirms just what a state of stagnation and decline the country has fallen into. During 2024, my constituency was polluted 3,991 times, with spillages lasting more than 27,000 hours. Dumping sewage is not waste management; it is environmental destruction and environmental vandalism, and it is particularly devastating in the rural north-east, where so much tourism relies on water.

When the Minister comes to wind up the debate—she is not in her place, but I hope she will hear this—I hope she will dwell on those communities that rely on water, particularly the really isolated communities such as those in Kielder, where they deal with the practicalities of living so sparsely. I often talk about Hexham having a very rural population, but when I go to Kielder, they look at me coming from Hexham as if I had come from Vegas. I was at a Kielder parish council meeting—it took an hour to get there—where one of the farmers said that if she is feeding her cows, she cannot have a shower. That is the kind of sparsity and rurality we are dealing with. I urge the Minister, when she comes to her feet, to address that point. If she came to meet the “Clean Tyne” campaign to discuss the difficulties it faces and the work it is doing to combat some of the challenges we face on the Tyne, it would be massively appreciated in my constituency.

17:58

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

It is wonderful to follow the hon. Member for Hexham (Joe Morris), who is my parliamentary twin, as it were. Our names are so similar that we often get confusing correspondence. He must love that as much as I do.

The sewage in our rivers is of great concern to my constituents in Beaconsfield, Marlow and the South Bucks villages, as well as to my parliamentary twin on the Government Benches. In my constituency, I have worked closely with local action groups in Little Marlow and Farnham Common to secure a planned sewage upgrade for the Little Marlow sewage treatment works, through persistent lobbying of former Conservative Ministers and current Labour Ministers. I have repeatedly called for criminal sanctions against water company executives for breaches of their duties, but I have always said that more needs to be done; in particular, I urge the Minister to look again at strengthening the protection for water sports.

Earlier this year, I tabled two amendments to the Water (Special Measures) Bill: one to introduce criminal sanctions for water company bosses who fail to report discharges and another to extend protections for water sports to match those for swimming waters. These are serious, meaningful changes needed to further strengthen our oversight of water companies and our waterways.

In my constituency, we are rich in water sports along the Thames. We have Marlow Rowing Club, Marlow Canoe Club and the Upper Thames Sailing Club, to name just three wonderful examples, and our local schools regularly use the river for water sports. My secondary schools are out on the Thames on a daily basis, including rowing and using the river, and it would be wonderful to have to protect aquatic sports in legislation.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

The wonderful River Nidd runs through my constituency, which similarly has paddleboarding, kayaking and all sorts of wonderful activities—including the Knaresborough bed race, which runs through the river at one point. Does the hon. Lady not feel regret that the Conservative Government did not take the steps she is outlining now?

[Joy Morrissey]

I have been lobbying for these changes for many years, and now that I am in opposition I have been able to table my own amendments, Lib Dem style! I was happy that the Lib Dem spokesperson spoke in support of my amendment during the Bill Committee. I love that cross-party support and am learning from their wonderful example of taking amendments forward when not in power; that is fun and enjoyable for us all. I did not table as many as their 42 amendments, but I did put forward two so I am working my way there.

I want to see the provisions I have mentioned move forward in any way possible, because they are so important for aquatic sports and for the rivers that we all benefit from and use. I want the same protections for water sports as those proposed for bathing waters, and I would like discharge from emergency overflows blocked within a 1-mile radius of areas used for aquatic sports, particularly by secondary schools and by children.

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech about water sports, but does she agree that angling is also vital for our rivers? I met members of the Farnham Angling Society on the River Wey some weeks ago, and they were obviously very concerned about the effects of pollution on the angling stocks, which are vital for our rural life.

[Joy Morrissey]

Angling is a very important sport that we should be protecting, including by making sure our waterways are clean. A key way to know if our waterways are clean is that the aquatic life comes back.

Clubs in my constituency would really benefit from the changes and protections I have mentioned. I would like to see them introduced and I hope that the Secretary of State will change his mind and adopt something similar to my amendment. The Government can feel free to take credit and pretend it is their amendment or change, but I would really like to see those changes brought forward. Unfortunately, my two amendments were not accepted, but I will continue to press for them, Lib Dem style, at any opportunity I can possibly find, because I believe that they would be good for the UK and for our waterways.

I hope the Government will look seriously again at protecting water sports. I would be delighted to work with them or any party to practically develop the legislative steps needed for that to happen.

18:03

[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

First, I should declare an interest: I have close relatives working in the water sector, although in science rather than in the water industry. I rise to speak in favour of the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and other Ministers. Our rivers have suffered from serious sewage pollution over many years and I am pleased the Government are now taking action to address this terrible problem. I want to discuss the nature of the action and to raise some important constituency matters.

As we have heard this afternoon, for far too long water companies have ignored residents’ concerns and continued to pump sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas. Reading is particularly badly affected because it is downstream of many of the pumping outlet stations further up the Thames, as colleagues from the Thames valley area have hinted at.

I strongly support the measures taken in the Government’s Water (Special Measures) Act, which tackles the issue. The legislation received Royal Assent on 24 February, and introduces tough new penalties, including imprisonment for water company executives when companies fail to co-operate or when they obstruct investigations. Notably, it also bans bonuses for CEOs and senior leaders within such companies unless high environmental standards are met, consumers are protected and the company is financially resilient. The Act ensures that each emergency sewage overflow outlet is independently monitored, which is an important step forward. That will make it quicker and easier for regulators to investigate and punish wrongdoing. The measures will increase transparency by requiring water companies to publish real-time data for all emergency overflows in England—again, a clear and important step forward.

We heard earlier—my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) from the Select Committee mentioned further details—that the Government have commissioned the Cunliffe review, which is another important step forward in tackling these problems. It will look in much greater detail at how companies are held to account for non-compliance and at a number of other matters.

I am conscious of time, but I would like to raise some local examples of sewage pollution and other matters related to waterways in the Reading area. I have seen—as I spoke about during the debate on the water Bill—some appalling incidents of sewage pollution in my area, including seeing a tributary of the Thames turn a lurid green after a sewage incident in Hampshire, which fed into Foudry brook, which is a tributary of the Kennet, which ultimately flows into the Thames.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

On Friday, I will be testing the water quality in Christchurch harbour because we need a conservation policy there, as suggested by the Christchurch Harbour and Marine Society. I am also concerned about the River Stour in my constituency. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Environment Agency could set higher standards for water quality and, in so doing, help to establish the data that shows where areas are falling short? I am particularly concerned about the River Stour, but I know he too will have rivers that he is concerned about.

[Matt Rodda]

I would of course like to see further work carried out by all agencies. My hon. Friend makes a good point about the river in his constituency. In my own constituency, there are a number of rivers, including the Thames and the Kennet. Many flow through heavily populated areas and places where people enjoy walks by the river, and—as the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) mentioned—rowing, swimming, sailing and many other activities.

I have also seen the way that sewage pollution can interfere with wildlife. In one case, I saw the stark and appalling contrast of visible pollution in the river—foam from sewage and other nitrate pollution—next to a kingfisher. It is sad to see the way that these beautiful rivers are polluted by appalling outflows.

[Sean Woodcock]

Like me, my hon. Friend will receive hundreds of emails and bits of correspondence on the performance of Thames Water. Does he agree that that company in particular should take the Act as if they were being put on notice and that further action may follow if necessary to improve standards?

[Matt Rodda]

My hon. Friend is right on cue and entices me to the next area I want to talk about, which is the general problems with Thames Water. Those of us who represent constituencies in the Thames Water area know that it is an appalling company. I do not want to criticise individual members of staff—the head office is in my constituency and many local people work hard there—but, in my experience, the company is poorly managed.

I was going to mention a number of other incidents, including two where water was cut off to large parts of Reading’s suburbs and where residents are still waiting for compensation. I have had to write to Ofwat to ask it to investigate. I have had other incidents, including the creation of a sinkhole due to a water leak, which has caused severe distress to residents; I appreciate that that is not sewage, but it is part of the wider water provision network, so I hope that it is in the scope. In this case, residents are having to wait for concrete to be pumped into the chalk in order for the road next to their homes to be stabilised. I have seen a series of wider problems with flooding and other concerns about watercourses not being maintained.

[Tom Hayes]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Matt Rodda]

Of course.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. The time limit has been reached. The hon. Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda) ought to have concluded his remarks rather than taken another intervention from the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes).

18:09

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

We welcome the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, but we urge the Government to go further, particularly with regard to the protection of chalk streams. That is very personal to me and to many Members across the House. I have campaigned for many years to stop the dumping of raw sewage and for the better protection of our chalk streams, alongside campaign organisations, the Cam Valley Forum, and the many local river action groups for the Mel, the Granta, the Shep, the Rhee, the Wilbraham, the Orwell and the Cherry Hinton brook.

Some progress has been made locally, with the hard-won award of a bathing water designation for the Sheep’s Green section of the River Cam. That has secured much-needed financing for clean-up actions by Anglian Water of the small sewage treatment work upstream in Haslingfield. However, not all our chalk streams can have bathing water designation as a mechanism of protection, especially when they have to struggle and suffer with overwhelmed small sewage treatment works as a result of unprecedented housing growth and development in our area. That is why I bemoan the fact that the 2025 Act and the Planning and Infrastructure Bill do not get rid of the damaging automatic right to connect for developers, which means that water companies cannot say whether they have the capacity to manage sewage in the area.

[Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)]

My hon. Friend talks about overwhelmed sewage works. The Markyate sewage works in my constituency has now had 3,000 hours of non-stop overflow, including sewage, which enters our precious chalk streams. Does she agree that that is why it is so important that we have blue flag status to increase the responsibility and accountability of water companies, which should not take our chalk streams for granted?

[Pippa Heylings]

I agree. In my South Cambridgeshire constituency alone, rivers and streams were polluted by sewage 728 times in 2024, lasting over 9,700 hours. That is the disgraceful legacy of the last Conservative Government. We need the protection that my hon. Friend mentions.

We bemoan the fact that the Secretary of State and the Government got rid of the chalk stream recovery pack. That is distressing to all those who care for chalk streams, and it is why we need practical measures such as the blue flag status, and for rivers and chalk streams in a blue flag corridor and water catchments to have the protections they need. That would give the public confidence in water quality and would enable regular water testing, biodiversity checks and better community involvement, boosting transparency.

[David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)]

Statistics published last week show that Welsh Water—the supposedly not-for-profit Welsh water company—had the highest number of sewage discharges across the entire UK, despite charging some of the highest prices for its water, in a country that has some of the lowest incomes in the UK. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Welsh Government must stop letting Welsh Water off the hook? It must take responsibility for its actions.

[Pippa Heylings]

My hon. Friend makes such a compelling argument for the protections and accountability that are needed in Wales.

We need better protections for our chalk streams, which are unique habitats for nature. The Liberal Democrats will continue leading the fight against this sewage scandal. We will continue standing up for nature, our rivers and our chalk streams, so that everyone—us and generations to come—can enjoy them.

18:13

[Claire Hazelgrove (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Lab)]

The future of our rivers, lakes and seas could not be more important, not just for us but for future generations, but after 14 years of Conservative failure to act—for a time, propped up by the Liberal Democrats—their future was looking lost at sea. I am proud that taking action to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas and to hold failing water bosses to account through the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 was one of the first actions taken by our new Labour Government, and I was proud to serve on the Bill Committee.

I know the issue is hugely important to fellow residents across my Filton and Bradley Stoke constituency. Locally, we care deeply about our litter, our environment and the future that we are forging for the next generations. Walks along the River Frome or the Bradley brook should not only be safe and healthy, but enjoyable for all.

Our new Labour Government inherited a broken water system, with record levels of sewage being pumped into our waterways in towns, villages and cities across the country and along our glorious coastline. That has impacted health, tourism and how we see our places—declining and unloved by the previous Government, as profits only grew. This Labour Government are taking action and will continue to do so to turn the tide.

I find it remarkable how little was actually done—not talked about, but done—when the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats were in government together, yet how willing they are to claim credit for the actions taken by this new Labour Government, while confusingly seeming to say that not very much is being done. They cannot have it both ways.

Our Water (Special Measures) Act has introduced new powers to ban the payment of unfair bonuses to water bosses who fail to protect our environment, and to bring tough criminal charges against them personally if they break the law. The work of our dedicated Ministers has helped to open up over £100 billion of private sector investment to upgrade crumbling sewerage infrastructure. On top of all that, I was glad to hear the Secretary of State announce last autumn an independent water commission. The Cunliffe commission is the largest review of the water sector since privatisation. It is worth mentioning that anyone can contribute their views to the commission until 11.59 pm tonight, including people at home and Members of the parties on the Opposition Benches—

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

Including the Liberal Democrats.

[Claire Hazelgrove]

Indeed. Listening, acting and thinking of future generations: this is clearly a new Government. Our plan for change will build the infrastructure that Britain needs to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas for good, and I look forward to supporting that every step of the way.

18:16

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

I thank the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for bringing this important debate to the House. As the Secretary of State said, we are all in furious agreement that the condition of our rivers, lakes and seas is an absolute scandal. It would be remiss of me not to point out that the problem is not just due to sewage, as the Minister knows. As colleagues have mentioned, agricultural pollution is a key factor in the condition of our rivers, lakes and seas, and we cannot fix the problem without addressing both sewage and agricultural pollution together. However, today’s subject is sewage, so I will focus on that.

Turning to the motion before us, I am not against introducing a blue flag system for rivers and streams, but that is just tinkering around the edges of a broken system. A shortage of flags and targets is not the problem. Last year, the Environment Agency gave the water companies a collective target of a 40% reduction in sewage incidents, but what did we have? A 30% increase. Monitoring and targets are not enough if there is no meaningful action or sanction. I understand that the water companies have well over 1,000 criminal convictions between them—some companies have over 100 convictions—but they are still getting away with it.

At the same time, bills are going through the roof by an average of over 20% in a single year, and by even more for rural constituents, including mine. It is the bill payers, not the shareholders, who are paying the price. Customer bills provide an average of 35% of company revenue to pay the financial costs—the dividends to shareholders and the interest on loans—of the privatised water and sewerage companies in England and Wales. In the case of Scottish Water, a publicly owned company that may have other problems, those costs amounted to just 8% of revenue from consumer bills.

[Mr Adnan Hussain (Blackburn) (Ind)]

In my constituency, raw sewage discharge increased by 75% in 2023, yet there are plans to raise bills by 32% in the next five years. It is clear that the British public are being ripped off. Does the hon. Member agree that while better regulation and investment rules may fix some of the issues, the only way to solve the whole problem is to bring the water supply back into public ownership?

[Ellie Chowns]

I completely agree. That is precisely the thrust of my argument.

Over the last three decades, shareholders have extracted £83 billion in dividends. They have invested effectively less than nothing, because the share capital and retained earnings in those companies are now lower than they were at the time of privatisation. The capital investment has been taken out of customer bills, yet customers are still paying through the nose. A professor at the University of Greenwich—I have his report here—has shown that the cost of the investment needed in the water industry would be much lower under public ownership than under private ownership. It is clear that, ultimately, public ownership is the only way to gain the control needed to ensure that this essential public utility works for the public benefit, yet the Labour party is unfortunately not willing to consider it.

The Government have the power to bring failing companies into special administration via the High Court, but during the passage of the Water (Special Measures) Act, the Minister said:

“Special administration must be a last resort, as it has significant consequences for a company’s investors.”––[Official Report, Water (Special Measures) Public Bill Committee, 14 January 2025; c. 96.]

That speaks volumes about who the Government think our water industry is for. It is not for those so-called investors—actually extractors—who have taken out so many dividends paid for by debt while neglecting our infrastructure and killing our waterways with sewage. There should be significant consequences for them. The people of this country—the British people—do not want their water to be investable: they want it to be clean, reliable, affordable and in public hands. Public ownership is the key element of the solution to the sewage scandal.

18:21

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

As hard as it may be to believe, on Saturday I went surfing at Gwithian beach—well known to the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George)—in my constituency of Camborne, Redruth and Hayle. I was invited to surf with the Wave Project, which is a national programme offering children with mental health challenges the chance to use the power of the ocean to lift spirits, build their confidence and chase away some demons. It was an incredibly rewarding experience overall, even for someone whose surfing skills were last on show more than 30 years ago. It was really sad that when we arrived I was informed that the only place we could use was on the western edge of the beach; the rest of the beach was too polluted with sewage.

Across the central and western area of Cornwall, 10% of all the Wave Project’s sessions have to be cancelled due to sewage pollution. All along the north coast of my constituency, in Portreath, Porthtowan, Perranporth and St Agnes, which is the location of the head office of Surfers Against Sewage, we are regularly polluted. According to the House of Commons Library, in 2024 there were 142 spills at Portreath, lasting more than 2,500 hours. In total, there were 975 spills last year in my constituency, lasting for an estimated 8,847 hours. Those numbers are shocking to me and to my constituents, who have a right to clean bathing water and a safe natural environment.

However, I am delighted that this Government are taking action through new, tougher penalties for water executives, a ban on bonuses for senior leadership failing to meet standards, mandatory monitoring and reporting, and a model for cost recovery to better resource the Environment Agency, which had its funding slashed under the Tories. Although many discharges still go unpunished, we are acting to clean up the Conservatives’ foul, stinking mess while the Liberal Democrats carp from the sidelines, making cheap but transparent pre-local election political points and stating the blindingly obvious as though it was some sort of political revelation, with the indignation of a party that has never had to worry about actually making Government policy. It is under this Labour Government that the Conservatives’ sewage scandal will end.

18:24

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for opening this debate for the Liberal Democrats, and I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am an office holder in the all-party parliamentary water group.

It is one day short of nine months since the first Prime Minister’s Question Time of this Parliament. On that day, it was my privilege to pose the first question to the Prime Minister, and I asked him about the levels of sewage being pumped by Thames Water into the River Evenlode in my constituency. He said that

“Customers should not pay the price for mismanagement by water companies”,

and added that

“it falls to this Government…to fix the mess of that failure.”—[Official Report, 24 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 661.]

However, since that date, Thames Water has pumped sewage into the Evenlode for a further 1,050 hours, while hiking bills for my constituents by over 30% on 1 April. As such, I regret that I cannot see that the plan put forward by the Government is yet working. I urge them to work with we Liberal Democrats to go further and faster.

The problem is that pumping sewage into our rivers and waterways is now routine—indeed, it is so routine that it happens even when there has been no excess rainwater or storms. On the River Ray, for example, there were seven and a half hours of sewage-spilling on 9 April. There was no rain that day, and neither had there been any in the previous week. This so-called dry spilling shows that the regulatory arrangements are a joke. My constituents were shocked to learn from Lib Dem freedom of information requests that Ofwat had not issued a single fine to water companies for their management of sewage treatment since 2021. In the past year, I have joined local residents and campaigners to participate in citizen science projects with the Evenlode Catchment Partnership and RiverWatch to look at the quality of our water. On every measure, the Rivers Evenlode, Ray and Cherwell are severely contaminated.

At the same time, Thames Water is failing its domestic customers in my constituency. These include Mark Hamilton in Garden City, Kidlington, who purchased pumps to try to keep sewage out of his and his elderly neighbour’s home, but they were not enough; Colin Fletcher in Bladon, who had sewage flood into his garden in September and still awaits a repair from Thames Water; Ros Frangopoulus in Chesterton, who saw sewage lap against her house walls and was left with faeces and toilet paper in her garden when the water receded; and Martin Johnson in Yarnton, who could not use his toilet as it routinely overflowed into his home with sewage and now has a tanker stationed next to his house, loudly pumping 24/7 while Thames Water takes months to agree a sewer repair.

In short, we have a company that pollutes our rivers and waterways and the homes and gardens of its customers, while all the time rewarding its executives handsomely and spending an increasing share of billpayers’ money to service excessive debt. The Prime Minister told me that his Government would fix this mess, but I regret that the Water (Special Measures) Act does not go nearly far enough. We need a powerful, effective and public-interested clean water authority to clean up the water companies’ act.

18:27

[Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for bringing this debate to the House. I thought it might be helpful to give some context to the debate; it does not start with the last Conservative Government’s 14 years of failure, which we have heard so much about. I want to talk about the 1980s, when—gripped by ideological fervour rather than the national interest—the Thatcher and Major Governments set off on a sales binge of our strategic assets and infrastructure. All these years later, that has left us almost uniquely exposed among the G7 to global events.

Only two weeks ago, this Government recalled Parliament to save British Steel, a vital strategic asset—not just for our economy, but for our security and defence. The Conservatives fragmented British Rail, which this Government are now taking back into public control piece by piece. Most relevant to today’s debate, they privatised our water, not into a market of competing firms but into private monopolies, shielded from scrutiny and driven by dividends. In selling off the family silver, those Governments wreaked havoc on our public services. To be generous to them, at least they had a vision, which is more than can be said about the last 14 years of the Conservatives. For those 14 years, the Conservatives were asleep at the wheel, and sadly for five of those years, the Lib Dems were snoring away quite happily in the passenger seat. While raw sewage poured into our rivers, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives allowed cash to pour into the pockets of the wealthy through shareholder payouts and executive bonuses. While the Environment Agency cried out for resources, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems cut its funding by half. That was into the River Wye, the River Etherow, the River Noe, the River Derwent and Blackbrook, and equates to a sewage spill every five hours. That is a damning indictment of the failures of successive Governments.

As a consequence, just before the election, we in High Peak saw sewage pumped into our rivers 1,653 times.

By contrast, this Labour Government have passed the Water (Special Measures) Act, which introduced criminal liability for company executives who obstruct investigations. We have banned their bonuses, and we have given regulators the power to recover the costs of enforcement, ensuring that polluters, not taxpayers, foot the bill. We have mandated real-time public reporting of sewage spills. That is only the start. We know that wider reform is needed, and that is why we have launched the largest review of the water sector since privatisation. We know the size of the challenge to halt the decline, and we are the only party with a serious plan to do so.

18:30

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

In West Dorset, we are proud of our natural environment, but that pride is undermined by the relentless dumping of raw sewage into our waterways. In 2024, there were 4,196 sewage spills in West Dorset. Across our rivers and coastlines, that added up to more than 48,000 hours of raw sewage discharge. In 2019, just four of the 36 monitored water bodies in West Dorset were rated as having a good ecological status. While that all happened, water company executives paid themselves £51 million in pay and bonuses, and it is our communities who pay the price.

West Dorset’s economy relies heavily on tourism. In 2022, tourism brought in more than £300 million to our local area, supporting more than 5,200 jobs.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

Chichester harbour in my constituency is the largest recreational boating harbour in Europe, but the damage being done to its ecosystem is stark. A recent study by the Clean Harbours Partnership found 105 pharmaceuticals, pesticides and recreational drugs in the water, with the amounts going up 100 times directly after a sewage spill. Does my hon. Friend agree that tourism is incredibly important for areas such as his and mine, and that therefore we must have clean water?

[Edward Morello]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. As I said, those 5,200 jobs in West Dorset represent hundreds of families who depend on visitors choosing to come to Lyme Regis, West Bay, Burton Bradstock, Abbotsbury and any of the other numerous beautiful towns and villages that we have. How can those visitors do that with confidence when there is a real risk that they will arrive to find sewage warnings at the beach, and when residents and tourists alike have to check an app to see whether the water is safe to swim in?

In West Dorset, we are lucky to have some of the UK’s rare chalk streams. Some have been mentioned already, and we have the River Piddle, the River Frome, Wraxall brook and the West Compton stream. They are home to delicate ecosystems and species such as the Atlantic salmon, which is in worrying decline. As it stands, even when new homes are built near these rivers, water companies do not have to be formally consulted. Making water companies statutory consultees on new housing developments is basic common sense. It would mean proper planning, proper accountability and the chance to avoid even more pressure on an already failing network.

The Liberal Democrats have been clear: we want stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we want water companies to take responsibility and reinvest in the communities they have neglected. We are calling for the introduction of the blue flag status for rivers and chalk streams, just as we have it for our best beaches. That would mean clear standards of cleanliness, proper testing and consequences when companies fall short. It would also help the public to understand when a river is clean and safe, and not just when it has been tested. We also welcome the speeding ticket fines that the Government have introduced, with automatic penalties when water companies break the rules, but those fines need to be ringfenced to go straight back into the communities affected, such as in West Dorset, to fix the infrastructure, restore habitats and protect the public. We need action, we need proper regulation and we need a Government who will support rural communities.

18:33

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his opening remarks and the speed with which our Government are implementing these vital changes. It is welcome to have an opportunity to speak again on an issue that matters to me and my constituents in North West Leicestershire. Sewage and pollution feature in many discussions on the doorstep, and this issue was the subject of one of my personal pledges to my community. It will continue to be so until the improvements from the Water (Special Measures) Act are felt. In my community, I regularly check in with those who have been adversely affected by sewage outflows, and I know how much it impacts on them day to day.

I also know how long it has taken for some of the issues to be resolved. For example, a sewage-related case in my constituency recently ended with Severn Trent offering an enforcement undertaking and giving the Trent Rivers Trust £600,000. That will support the restoration of the habitat and the natural environment, but it took two years to reach an outcome from such a significant spill—which is not really surprising, because on the watch of the coalition Government the Environment Agency’s budget had been cut in half since 2010, leaving the agency without the necessary tools and funding to fight the skyrocketing sewage discharges. My constituents are angry, and they have every right to be.

I have said this before in the House, and I will say it again. In 2023, sewage poured into our waterways in North West Leicestershire for 15,000 hours—a 54% increase on the previous year. What a legacy; and still the Liberal Democrats voted against the Water (Special Measures) Act, which will provide the largest investment in water infrastructure in history, ban unfair bonuses to polluting water bosses, and help to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas.

Labour is the party that is fixing this mess. I was proud to serve on the Committee considering the Water (Special Measures) Bill and even prouder to vote for the Bill—and it is just the start. Our Government commissioned Sir Jon Cunliffe to undertake a review of the water sector, and if Members are quick, they can get their responses in by tonight. In a statement that he made after being asked to undertake the review, Sir Jon said that in his first job in the civil service, 45 years ago, he had worked on the issue of the industrial pollution of water, at a time when the UK was generally regarded as “the dirty man of Europe”.

[James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)]

I am a neighbour of my hon. Friend. She will know that Severn Trent received an £18 million reward for the quality of its PR19 plan, but in its “Water Quality Report 2025”, Surfers Against Sewage says that it failed to meet its targets every year in that period. Despite that, it has been awarded £93 million for its PR24 plan. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is vital for Severn Trent, which serves both our constituencies, to be held to account properly in the PR24 period?

[Amanda Hack]

As my hon. Friend says, Severn Trent serves both our communities, and yes, it must do its bit to clean up our waterways.

I was a child of the 1980s, although I know my hon. Friend cannot believe that. I grew up by the seaside, and I remember the impact that our polluted seas had on our local community. I saw the changes that a clean-up made, but we are back to that place again, where families cannot enjoy the seaside or the waterways. Sadly, after 14 years our communities are devastated by the quality of their water. I was therefore proud to vote for a Bill that would enable criminal charges to be made against persistent lawbreakers and introduce severe and automatic fines for offences. I was proud to vote for the independent monitoring of every outlet, ensuring that there would be an unprecedented level of transparency, so that the public could hold water company bosses to account. That is the difference that a Labour Government can make, and I will support our amendment.

18:37

[Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)]

I am pleased to be able to bring the House’s attention to my constituents’ concern about the continuing discharge of raw sewage into our local seas and other bodies of water. In my constituency, we saw 529 such discharges in 2024 from just 14 storm overflow points. These incidents continued for a combined duration of over 6,200 hours. That is simply not acceptable. It poses a serious threat not only to public health and the environment but to our local tourism and marine economy, on which so many of my constituents depend. We must act decisively to improve our ageing water infrastructure, enforce stricter regulations and demand transparency from our water companies, from Ofwat and from the Environment Agency.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

The hon. Lady has mentioned Ofwat. Last August, it recommended penalties for four water companies amounting to £168 million, but so far it has not collected one penny. Does she agree that Ofwat needs to be scrapped?

[Alison Griffiths]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s diagnosis, but I do agree that the fines need to be collected and distributed.

The other issues that have been identified in my constituency—I imagine that they are wider issues, too—are illegal misconnections and cowboy builders, which we must crack down on. Without addressing those issues, we will not get the results that we need, and constituents need to know what is being done to stop them.

Since being elected, I have had constructive engagement with Southern Water and the Environment Agency’s local team and head office. Having visited Ford wastewater treatment works and done a shift with the misconnections team in Bognor Regis, I know that work is being done to upgrade the network, but this issue requires a strategic, cross-agency approach—one that considers the serious impact of the Government’s continued pursuit of house building on our floodplains on flood resilience and sewage discharges. When schools in my constituency are taking children to the beach and being told that they cannot swim in the sea, it is not just disappointing; it is disgraceful. It is not the legacy that we want to leave for the next generation—we owe them better.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

That brings us to the Front-Bench contributions.

18:41

[Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)]

I am delighted to speak on the issue of how we can fix our broken water and sewerage sector, and get serious about cleaning up our rivers and lakes. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for securing this debate.

My constituency of Witney, in west Oxfordshire, has borne the brunt of the sewage scandal. Many beautiful rivers flow through it, and the Thames bisects it. We have the Windrush and the Evenlode, Shell brook to the north, and the Ock to the south. They are all heavily and frequently polluted.

I welcome the calls from colleagues to introduce a new blue flag status so that we can guarantee that a river is clean enough to swim in. That would help to restore people’s confidence in swimming, and the bathing place in Witney would be a fantastic example. It is just north of Early’s mill, where generations of people have spent their summer swimming but no longer do so.

We know what a car crash our sewerage network is, thanks to the many campaigners who have gone to so much trouble in their own time, and often using their own money, to bring this issue to our attention. At the top of the star is WASP—Windrush Against Sewage Pollution—which is run by Professor Peter Hammond, Ash Smith, Vaughan Lewis and Geoff Tombs, who have worked tirelessly for the last five years to highlight what has gone wrong. I thank them and all the other citizen scientists in my constituency and beyond, who have done so much to bring this issue to national attention. We owe them all a huge debt of gratitude.

I will focus on failures of regulation—specifically, Ofwat’s failures. Ofwat is responsible for holding water companies accountable against the terms of their operating licences. DEFRA has oversight of Ofwat, sets the policy framework and provides strategic guidance to Ofwat on key environmental and social policies. As many Members have said, Ofwat is clearly failing on pollution. The Environment Agency’s own data shows that Thames Water discharged raw sewage for almost 300,000 hours in 2024—up by almost 50% on the 196,000 hours in 2023. That is well known.

Ofwat is also failing to enforce financial viability. Just like every other water company in the country, Thames Water, which serves my constituency, has to have two investment grade credit ratings, but it has not done so for nearly a year. It has been beaten with limp celery, but that is about it. It has £19 billion of debt and is quite possibly heading towards £23 billion of debt, and it has cash flows of just £1.2 billion. That obviously makes no financial sense, yet Thames Water is allowed to breach the rule with impunity. I have no doubt that other water companies, and companies in other sectors, take note of what Thames Water has been allowed to do and say, “We, too, can cross that line in water and other regulated sectors.” How is that good news? It introduces a moral hazard that does enormous damage to our country. Who is ultimately paying the cost of all this debt, and the enormous interest and advisory fees that go with it? Of course, it is the bill payers.

Ofwat fails to provide value for money. As per the Water Industry Act 1991, it has a statutory duty “to protect the interests of consumers” and “to promote economy and efficiency” on the part of water companies. As WASP’s recently published note on water companies’ capital project costs states, the costs that companies are proposing are extraordinary. In some cases, they are almost an order of magnitude higher than those in comparator companies in countries such as the USA and Denmark. Why is this, and why is it being allowed to happen?

Why are our costs so much greater? Is it because our regulatory capital value pricing model is based on asset values, and therefore gives an incentive to water companies to boost their asset bases? They do this through extraordinarily long depreciation periods for network assets such as pipes, which were installed 50 years ago, but somehow have depreciation periods of 100 years and are leaking like sieves. It also gives them an incentive to pour really expensive concrete. Why is it that something built over here costs eight times the price in Denmark? Why has, say, the Oxford sewage treatment works gone from £40 million to more than £400 million in planned spend in the last four years? What sort of inflation is that?

Ofwat fails to provide fair pricing. Water companies have a requirement to demonstrate fairness, transparency and affordability to customers, which, again, Ofwat is supposed to uphold. Water companies have been allowed to hike bills this year—in the case of Thames Water, by 31%, although some of my constituents have come to me and said they have received increases of 50%, 70% or even more than 90%—and what are bill payers getting for that? This is not fair when more than a quarter of the bills in Thames Water’s case are just paying the interest—not paying down the debt, but just paying the interest. Again, Ofwat is continuing to allow the pockets of water company creditors to be lined at the expense of ordinary households.

Ofwat fails to be awake. It has a responsibility—bear with me on this one—for tracking who are the ultimate controllers of the water companies. That should be pretty simple; there are not many of them. In Thames Water’s case, it is taking wilful ignorance to an extreme of utterly determined ignorance. Last May, Thames Water’s largest shareholder, OMERS, wrote its stake in Thames Water down to zero and pulled its directors off the board. This has been widely reported in the press—it is not secret—yet I got a letter from Ofwat last month confirming that it believes OMERS is still the ultimate controller of the company. Why is Ofwat ignoring this, and why does it matter? Being the ultimate controller of the company means it has certain responsibilities. Those responsibilities are just being ignored, and Ofwat, which is exactly what is supposed to be holding the company to account, is hiding under a stone somewhere. It needs to stop doing this.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

My hon. Friend says that Ofwat has failed to regulate the water system effectively, and is failing on environmental, public health and financial interests. In my constituency, Wessex Water leaked sewage for over 400,000 hours last year alone. Does he agree that the water regulator should be replaced with a clean water authority, which would bring together the environmental and financial regulation of water companies?

[Charlie Maynard]

I thank my hon. Friend, and, yes, I absolutely do.

Ofwat is also failing to innovate. It appears to do little, if anything, to push companies to do this. This is so critical because, if we are going to increase capacity in sewage treatment works, there are many better ways of doing so. There is a host of new technologies out there from leak detection, pipeline monitoring and predictive maintenance equipment to trenchless pipe repair and pressure management technologies. Yet I have heard from firms in my constituency that it is easier to sell sewer technology solutions in the US and Europe than in the UK. This is where the issues of the dire state of water companies’ finances and the sewage scandal intersect, because companies cannot make basic repairs, let alone properly innovate and improve, when so much of their revenue is going straight out of the door in interest payments.

The previous Government have a lot to answer for. It was on their watch that dumping sewage in our rivers and lakes reached record levels, as water companies piled up billions in debt. All the while, bosses rewarded themselves with generous bonuses for mismanagement and failure on so many levels. Many people who work so hard in those companies suffered under that mismanagement.

There is only so much point in looking backwards. What I am appalled by is that the new Government, who came into power with promises to get tough with the water companies and sort out the scandal, have so far shown themselves to be about as tough as Ofwat. The Water (Special Measures) Act—by the way, I say to the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack) that it was not voted on by us—was, well, just about nothing. Government Members and Conservative Members rejected a whole host of basic common sense steps, proposed as amendments, which could have made the legislation genuinely impactful. I will give some examples.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I would just like to suggest that the hon. Gentleman bring his remarks to a close rather than give us some examples, because we want to hear from the Minister. He has 30 seconds at most.

[Charlie Maynard]

I will make that three. Thank you very much, and over to you.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Over to her. [Laughter.] I call the Minister.

18:50

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)]

Thank you so much, Madam Deputy Speaker, and can I say that you are doing an incredibly awesome job in the Chair?

I would like to thank—if I can call him this—my hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for bringing forward this debate from the Liberal Democrats. I am really glad to have this opportunity to close this important debate. I pay tribute, if I may, to all environmental groups, all citizen scientists, and all those involved in campaigning on this important issue up and down the country. I would also like to pay tribute to and thank the people who work in the water industry; the people who have to go out and deal with sewage overflows, working on the frontline and sometimes facing appalling levels of abuse for doing the job they do.

I welcome the engagement we have had from across the House on the Independent Water Commission. As we have heard, the sewage spilling into our rivers, lakes and seas is a national disgrace. It is the result of years of under-investment by the Conservatives. They left us with crumbling water infrastructure and a broken water system. Instead of fixing our water system, they let water companies use customers’ money to pay out unjustified bonuses to their polluting bosses and shareholders. We will never let that happen. This Labour Government are turning the tide on sewage once and for all. Those are not just words. In this debate, we set out exactly how we will do that. Within days of coming to office, we ringfenced money earmarked for investment in water infrastructure so it cannot be diverted for bonuses or dividends. Where the money is not spent, it will be returned to customers.

[Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

The Minister will remember that I recently raised with her the concerns of Staffordshire Wildlife Trust regarding the fines issued to Severn Trent Water in 2024 for its huge sewage leak in Strongford in my constituency. Does she agree with me that the Water (Special Measures) Act will make water companies pay for the damage they have caused, and that it is just the start of this Government’s work to clean up our waterways?

[Emma Hardy]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She is quite right: the Water (Special Measures) Act is a landmark piece of legislation, but it is just the start of what we want to achieve. It will give Ofwat new powers to ban unfair bonuses. It will introduce stricter penalties, including imprisonment. It will enable the regulator to impose automatic and severe fines for wrongdoing, and it will involve cost recovery and the mandatory reporting of emergency overflows.

But, Madam Deputy Speaker, we do not just want to give you that; we are going to give you so much more—more and more. We are going to go even further with the Independent Water Commission, because, as we heard from hon. Members across the House, that is not the extent of the Government’s ambition. Sir Jon Cunliffe is currently undertaking the biggest review of the water sector since privatisation. He will be making recommendations to deliver long-term benefits, restore water bodies to good health, provide a reliable and efficient supply of water in a changing climate, and, ultimately, serve both customers and the environment. The independent commission will look to reset the water industry and tackle systemic issues to fundamentally transform the sector. The recommendations will form the basis of further legislation—I am already anticipating the amendments from the Liberal Democrats—to attract the long-term investment to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas for good.

In addition to such measures, Ofwat has announced £104 billion of private sector investment in the water sector over the next five years to build and upgrade water infrastructure in every region of the country, cutting sewage spills, improving water quality and giving us a reliable future water supply. It will also create tens of thousands of jobs around the country, help us to build our 1.5 million homes, support major infrastructure projects and power new industries. This is regional economic growth in action—the cornerstone of our plan for change.

I turn now to the contributions from my hon. Friends. My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley), who is a champion in her community and has raised with me her concerns around both flooding and water pollution, highlighted the importance of the “polluter pays” principle and how that money can be returned through to the Environment Agency. Of course, I share her love of SUDS.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes) for her work on the Water (Special Measures) Act and for the kind and persistent way she has lobbied me about the River Wye—she always lobbies so gently, Madam Deputy Speaker, with a smile on her face every time she sees me. That is why I was so pleased that DEFRA and the Welsh Government were able to give £1 million for research to understand pollution and the other pressures and to develop a plan to tackle the issues in the Wye catchment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris), who is somewhere in the Chamber—[Interruption.] There he is! He is testing my eyesight this evening. The Minister for Nature, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh), will be happy to visit his constituency to look at all the work he is doing up there to clean up in his area.

The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) is sadly not in her place—

[Joy Morrissey]

I’m right here!

[Emma Hardy]

Oh, there she is. Again, this is testing my eyesight—it is confusing me. I hope that the hon. Lady has seen and welcomed the changes we are introducing around bathing waters and the definition of a bather, and how that definition could also people involved in water sports. That is something she might be interested in.

[Gideon Amos]

Will the Minister give way?

[Emma Hardy]

I will not, only because I have just three minutes left.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda) again for his support of the Water (Special Measures) Act and the commission, and for highlighting the impact that pollution has on wildlife and the importance of cleaning up our rivers. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove), too, for her support for the Act. She is right to highlight the awful inheritance we received and the action we have taken.

My hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) talked about the Wave Project, which provides mental health support. I am really keen to hear about that project, and I commend everyone involved for their work. It sounds like a wonderful—[Hon. Members: “He’s not here; he can’t hear you!”] He will hear me by osmosis.

My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Jon Pearce) highlighted that cuts have consequences, and indeed they do. Slashing the Environment Agency’s budget by half certainly has had a consequence. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack) again for her work and support on the Water (Special Measures) Act and for championing those cleaning up our water. Of course, I also love being by the seaside, which is why I have to say how delighted I am that our mayoral candidate for Hull and East Yorkshire is championing a plan to provide free bus services to coastal areas during the summer holidays so that people can enjoy the countryside—vote Labour.

We have reset the water sector. We are stopping the sewage scandal and transforming the water industry from one of decline to one of opportunity. We are seizing the opportunity to restore national pride in our rivers, lakes and seas and to secure a reliable water future supply for all. We are delivering our plan for change to create a better future for our country.

Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.

18:58

Division 172

Ayes: 77

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Liberal Democrat: 64
Green Party: 4
Plaid Cymru: 4
Independent: 3
Reform UK: 1
Democratic Unionist Party: 1

Noes: 302

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Labour: 300
Independent: 3

Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the proposed words be there added.

19:12

Division 173

Ayes: 301

---

Labour: 297
Independent: 3
Ulster Unionist Party: 1

Noes: 69

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Liberal Democrat: 61
Independent: 3
Reform UK: 2
Democratic Unionist Party: 1

The Deputy Speaker declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to (Standing Order No. 31(2)).

Resolved,

That this House recognises that the Government inherited a broken water system, with record levels of sewage being pumped into waterways; welcomes the Government’s rapid delivery of its promise to put water companies under tough special measures through the landmark Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, which has introduced new powers to ban the payment of unfair bonuses to water bosses who fail to protect the environment and to bring tough criminal charges against them if they break the law; supports the Government’s work to secure over £100 billion of private sector investment to upgrade the crumbling sewage infrastructure; and backs the largest review of the water sector since privatisation, aimed at tackling inherited systemic issues in order to clean up UK rivers, lakes and seas for good.

[John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. At Prime Minister’s questions earlier, the Leader of the Opposition said that Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader

“was whipping his MSPs to get male rapists into women’s prisons”.

That is categorically and utterly untrue. Scottish Labour MSPs repeatedly called for the Scottish Government to ensure the safety of women prisoners. Please can you advise me how I can ensure that the Leader of the Opposition corrects the record and withdraws this disgraceful slur?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I thank the hon. Member for giving notice of his point of order. He will know that Members are responsible for the accuracy of their remarks in this Chamber. He has none the less raised his concerns and I am sure they will have been heard on the Opposition Benches. If the Leader of the Opposition wishes to correct the record, there are mechanisms available for her to do so.