Philip Dunne calls on the forthcoming Planning Bill to include measures for the proper separation of surface and foul water systems for new developments and for the priorities of Ofwat to be adjusted to focus not just on leakage and keeping bills down, but on keeping sewage out of our rivers by investing more in the treatment network.
Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene; he is making a very important point about enforcement. On Friday of this week, Thames Water will appear in court—I will not go into the details, for obvious reasons—for a case that it has taken the Environment Agency five years to bring to court. It had known that it was serious enough to require prosecution. Why does it take it so long?
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I am very grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention and for his work in this area highlighting this issue. We have much to be grateful to him for. The point that he makes is absolutely right. We can have policies, but what good are they if they are not enforced or the water companies can factor into their spending plans that a fine of perhaps less than £50,000 is a small price to pay when they are able to dish out to their shareholders £2 billion in dividends each year?
Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)
I am very grateful to you, Mr Paisley, for allowing me to contribute briefly to this important debate.
Ian Paisley (in the Chair)
Well, you did write to me.
Philip Dunne
I was intending to intervene, but if I have a couple of minutes, I will take advantage of them.
The petition that the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) spoke to—I apologise to her for not being here for her speech—was stimulated by some of the campaign groups with whom I worked when I introduced my private Member’s Bill in 2020. It reflects, as Members have said, the widespread growing awareness of, and horror at, the state of our rivers as a consequence of the uncontrolled dumping of sewage in river systems by water treatment works and the water sewage system, which has been overwhelmed for a variety of reasons. I want to touch on two areas where it is really important that we take things forward, now that the Environment Act has become law.
I completely disagree with the description that the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), for whom I normally have a lot of time, gave of the amendment that was finally made to the Bill. He is simply wrong. The Act will lead to a progressive reduction in sewer discharges, and that will be enforceable in the way described by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), and as I described in the closing stages of consideration of Lords amendments.
I want to touch on two points, one of them raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke. We will have a planning Bill before us before long. It has to include measures for the proper separation of surface and foul water systems for new developments. Water running off hard standing in all new developments across the country can, through the right to connect, be connected to foul water drainage systems. That is what leads to an overwhelming quantity of water causing problems in the treatment works, which have not been expanded to cope with development over the last 60 or so years. It is a problem that successive Governments have contributed to by not investing enough in the infrastructure of our drainage systems.
The right to connect needs to be dealt with by our having the subsystem to require separation by developers. They should be required to contribute to the capital costs of infrastructure works under the ground; at present, they are not. They have to contribute to the connection charge, but not to the capital for works that would allow full separation for new developments, which is essential.
Finally, I encourage the Minister—I pay tribute to the work that she did to improve the Environment Bill, particularly as it went through the Lords—to adjust Ofwat’s priorities. She has the opportunity to encourage Ofwat, through its forthcoming strategic policy statement, to focus not just on leakage and keeping bills down, but on keeping sewage out of our rivers by investing more in the treatment network for which our water companies are responsible.
Philip Dunne
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to defend my remarks. I made no remarks on the subject of privatisation. As he has raised it and accused me of having done so, I ask him whether he recognises that the amount of capital investment by the water companies in the 10 years prior to privatisation was half the amount invested in capital treatment works in the 10 years post-privatisation.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
The right hon. Gentleman will have to forgive me. I was concentrating on other things in the 10 years before privatisation—I am not quite that old. If he shares the Opposition’s concerns about the quality of performance of the privatised water companies, I welcome that.