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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment the Environment Agency has made of the quality of recently obtained samples of Tees water in the context of recent findings of dead crustaceans in that river.

The Environment Agency routinely carries out a surveillance programme of monthly water samples in the Tees estuary. Monitoring data also exist for contaminants in blue mussels, fish, and sediments, as well as in the receiving waters of permitted water discharges.

The environmental samples collected as part of the investigation into recent crab and lobster mortalities have been considered against historic data for the Tees. Data and findings have fed in to a wider Defra-led investigation and have been reported via stakeholder briefings and within the final investigation report, available here (www.gov.uk/government/publications/joint-agency-investigation-into-teesside-and-yorkshire-coast-crab-and-lobster-mortalities). The Environment Agency data are also published as Open Data, available here (://environment.data.gov.uk/water-quality/view/landing).