Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many samples taken by the Drinking Water Inspectorate did not meet regulatory standards 100 per cent of the time in each of the last five years.

The Drinking Water Inspectorate does not itself take routine samples. The water companies carry out a statutory sampling programme including randomly selected consumer taps and send all the results to the Inspectorate in a monthly return. The Inspectorate assesses compliance with the sampling programme and breaches of the regulatory standards for parameters. The annual breakdown of this total is as follows: