Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, (a) what estimate she has made of the proportion of the £104 billion investment package that will be funded through higher customer bills rather than through water company capital investment and (b) what safeguards will be put in place to protect consumers from bill increases linked to the £104 billion investment programme.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government has secured a record £104 billion investment package to upgrade England’s water infrastructure by 2030. This investment will be funded through a combination of water company capital investment and customer bills, but the precise split cannot yet be confirmed. Affordability must be at the core of any future investment plans, and proposed bill impacts will be assessed through the statutory impact assessment for the Water Reform Bill.
The Government have already taken action to protect customers. Funding for vital infrastructure is now ringfenced so it can only be spent on upgrades that benefit consumers and the environment. Where companies fail to deliver promised investment, they will be required to return money to customers through lower bills.
Alongside this, we are strengthening safeguards for households, including reforms to WaterSure, expanding social tariff support, and introducing a new independent Water Ombudsman to ensure complaints are resolved quickly and fairly.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when her department will confirm plans for the Environment Agency to hold a separate, stand alone bridges construction and maintenance budget to run alongside budgets for Locks & Weirs.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Environment Agency owned bridges along the non-tidal Thames are part of the overall Navigation infrastructure.
Construction and maintenance allocations for the Environment Agency’s Navigation assets has already been set for the current Spending Review period. This includes Locks, Weirs, Bridges and their associated assets. The Environment Agency is also developing a partnership funding mechanism to accelerate specific bridge refurbishment projects. This will increase the overall amount of bridge construction and maintenance that the Environment Agency can deliver and help towards creating a sustainable Navigation service.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to her Department's White Paper entitled A New Vision for Water, published on 20 January 2026, what assessments he has made of the potential impact of the proposed joined‑up local planning measures on the prevention of surface‑to‑foul water misconnections in new housing developments.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In the White Paper Defra has committed to delivering an enhanced, better joined up regional water planning function.
This will enable a more holistic, coordinated approach to water environment and supply planning which supports delivery of national strategic objectives such as the economic growth mission, housing building targets and nature recovery, whilst enabling regional and local priorities to be realised.
Defra is engaging a range of stakeholders to understand what works well, and where there are challenges with water sector planning, within the current river basin planning system. This engagement is helping us test emerging thinking, identifying opportunities to strengthen planning and delivery and ensure policy development is informed by practical experience as well as evidence and analysis.
Property owners are legally responsible for resolving misconnected pipework on their property; public misconnections are the responsibility of water companies.
Should misconnections not be resolved, the responsible party can be prosecuted; in some cases, local authorities and water companies can access private property to fix misconnections and then recover their costs from the owner.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what her proposed timeline is to enact Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government is strongly committed to improving the implementation of Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS).
In December 2024 we made changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) to support increased delivery of SuDS. The NPPF now requires all development to use SuDS where they could have drainage impacts.
We are in the process of consulting on a revised version of the NPPF, with new policies on local plans and national decision making, including flood risk and SuDS.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what her planned timetable is for the (a) white paper and (b) new government bill on water reform.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The White Paper will be published early this year.
These reforms will underpin a new water reform bill to be introduced during this Parliament, setting the foundation for long-term change.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the illegal waste dumped in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, whether the Government plans to increase enforcement funding.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We have increased the Environment Agency’s (EA’s) budget for waste crime enforcement by over 50% this year to £15.6 million. The EA-hosted Joint Unit for Waste Crime has nearly doubled in size thanks to our extra funding. The Unit brings together the EA, HMRC, National Crime Agency, the Police and waste regulators from across the UK to share intelligence and tasking to disrupt and prevent serious organised waste crime.
Overall, the EA has been able to increase its frontline criminal enforcement resource in the Joint Unit for Waste Crime and area environmental crime teams by 43 full-time staff. This will be targeted at activities identified as waste crime priorities using enforcement activity data and criminal intelligence. These include tackling organised crime groups, increasing enforcement activity around specific areas of concern such as landfill sites, closing down illegal waste sites more quickly, using intelligence more effectively, and delivering successful major criminal investigations.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will bring forward the implementation timing of policy proposals to strengthen controls on waste-carrier registration; and what steps is his department currently taking to prevent unregulated operators entering the waste sector and engaging in illegal dumping.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Work has begun to draft the necessary legislative amendments for reform of the carriers, brokers, dealers regime and these will be progressed as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Our planned reforms to the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime and the waste permit exemptions regime will make it harder for rogue operators to find work in the sector and easier for regulators to take action against criminals. Our planned digital waste tracking reforms will make it harder than ever to mis-identify waste or dispose of it inappropriately. In addition, the Environment Agency’s total budget for 2025 to 2026 has increased and includes £15.6m for waste crime enforcement. This is a more than 50% increase from 2024/25. Overall, the EA has been able to increase its frontline criminal enforcement resource in the Joint Unit for Waste Crime and area environmental crime teams across England by 43 full-time staff.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of exempting all small sites from biodiversity net gain on the UK's progress in meeting its legally-binding biodiversity targets.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) plays a vital role in protecting nature and the Government expects it to make an important contribution to meeting legally binding environmental targets. We have heard from developers, local authorities, and ecologists that BNG needs to work better for some of the smallest developments. Recently announced reforms will make the process simpler for small developers while maintaining nature recovery at scale. A full response to the BNG consultations is expected in the new year.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of biodiversity net gain on the UK's progress in meeting its legally-binding biodiversity targets.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) plays a vital role in protecting nature and the Government expects it to make an important contribution to meeting legally binding environmental targets. We have heard from developers, local authorities, and ecologists that BNG needs to work better for some of the smallest developments. Recently announced reforms will make the process simpler for small developers while maintaining nature recovery at scale. A full response to the BNG consultations is expected in the new year.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the feasibility test introduced under the Bathing Water (Amendment) (England and Wales) Regulations 2025 on the designation of sites.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This Government’s reforms introduce a feasibility assessment that will consider these factors ahead of formal designation. This will focus resources on sites where water quality can feasibly be improved to ‘sufficient’ standard and allow the public to make informed decisions before using sites.
This feasibility assessment is being designed by an external research organisation in partnership with Defra and the Welsh Government. Two workshops took place in November 2025 to capture stakeholder views.
This reform will come into force on 15 May 2026, and we will update public guidance before then, ahead of future applications being submitted.