I begin by thanking all noble Lords for their contributions on storm overflows. I am grateful to those both in this House and in the other place who have dedicated so much time to giving this issue the attention that it rightfully deserves. We have listened to noble Lords and parliamentarians in the other place, and we are all united in our view that action is needed. This is why we have tabled government amendments to change the Bill.
I shall move Amendment 165, in my name, will commit government to produce a statutory plan to reduce discharges from overflows and the harm this causes by September 2022. Work is already under way
to develop the plan, including via the Storm Overflows Taskforce, made up of Defra, the Environment Agency, Ofwat, the Consumer Council for Water, Blueprint for Water and Water UK. I hope that noble Lords can appreciate that, if the plan is to deliver the change we want to see, it needs to be evidence based and developed in consultation with all key stakeholders. When we talk about stakeholders, that is not just the water companies but the NGOs and organisations battling to protect our rivers, as well as Members of this House and the other place. We need to get this right.
Government will be required through this new amendment to report to Parliament on progress towards implementing the plan. These reports will align with price review cycles so they can inform decisions about sewerage company funding. The amendment will also require water companies and the Environment Agency to publish annual data on storm overflow activity. This will improve transparency by ensuring that information on the activity of overflows is made available to the public, and ensure that Governments are held accountable for making progress.
I shall also move Amendment 300, which provides for the new clause after Clause 78, relating to storm overflows, to come into force two months after Royal Assent. Once in law, these measures will become an important step in tackling the scourge of sewage pollution in our rivers. I am pleased to say that they have been very warmly and enthusiastically welcomed by Philip Dunne, who tabled the initial Bill. The key word there is “step”—it is not the end of the journey but a step within that journey.
I turn to Amendment 161 from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. My amendments also impose similar requirements to publish information on the activity of overflows. They do not, however, include precise legislative provisions on how a reduction of discharges from storm overflows could be achieved. That is to ensure that options are not limited before due consideration is given to the most productive and effective approaches. However, the plan itself, which the government amendment will require us to publish, will include specific measures to reduce discharges and the harm that they cause. The Government will consider a range of options during the development of the plan, including many of those outlined in the noble Baroness’s amendment, and there will be many opportunities for stakeholders to feed into its development. It is for these same reasons that it would also be inappropriate to change the wording from “may” to “must”, as Amendment 168 from the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, proposes.
Amendment 169 was also proposed by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I would first like to thank the noble Duke and my noble friend Lady Altmann for taking the time to meet with me again last week. I want to put it on record that I and the Government absolutely agree that we should be making much more use of nature-based solutions, particularly with regard to storm overflows. Nature-based solutions can play a key role in meeting flood resilience objectives in addition to numerous objectives in the Government’s 25-year environment plan at the same time. The beauty of nature-based solutions is that, while they are deployed
to tackle one problem, they tend to answer so many other problems at the same time. They are not a silver bullet for all locations and all issues, and we will need to rely on a wide range of solutions to tackle the harm caused by storm overflows, including a combination of green, blue, and traditional grey infrastructure. But where a workable and appropriate nature-based-solution exists—I say this in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb—our view is that it should be the default option. Government and water companies are also already investing in nature-based solutions to deliver multiple outcomes for the water environment and for biodiversity.
For example, in the Hanging Langford flood alleviation scheme, the Environment Agency used innovative permitting to allow Wessex Water to discharge, on the requirement that it provide a reed bed to treat the overflows. As a result of this nature-based solution, these sewage discharges are treated naturally and have negligible bacteriological impact on the River Wylye. This is exactly the sort of scheme we wish to see more of, and we are working with the Environment Agency and Ofwat to encourage greater take-up of nature-based solutions. I might add that the process that I have just described on the River Wylye would not qualify as elimination of storm overflows, as specified in Amendment 166—it would be regarded as management—but it is absolutely the kind of solution that we need to back. We need many more such solutions, but the language there is key and I will come back to that later.
I also assure the noble Duke that the current duty in the Bill allows for the government plan to use nature-based solutions where they are the most effective tool. On this basis, the Government do not believe it is necessary to specify them as a requirement in the Bill.
The noble Duke’s Amendment 166 was addressed by most noble Lords who have spoken today. All discharges to the water environment, including from sewer overflows, require a permit issued by the Environment Agency. The Bill contains clauses to place a statutory requirement directly on sewerage companies to produce drainage and sewerage management plans. This will ensure they are able to better deal with sewage discharges and tackle future risks. The statutory plan introduced by the Government’s new amendment will be based on robust evidence and consultation with all stakeholders, as I said earlier. It will be vital to have that evidence base and stakeholder participation to make sure that we have a plan that really works. I promise the noble Duke that the intention of his Amendment 166 is one that I and colleagues in Defra firmly share. We will take it into account as we draw up the plan.
On the noble Duke’s Amendment 167, storm overflows are a last resort in modern sewer design, but the age of our sewerage system means that their complete elimination is a major undertaking. For example, I am told that replacing all combined sewers with a separated sewer system would cost in the region of £200 billion to £500 billion, and would not eliminate the need for overflows in the system to cope with emergency situations. That does not mean that it is impossible or that things cannot significantly improve.
The agreed goal of the Storm Overflows Taskforce is to eliminate harm from storm overflows in the long term. The reason that the harm bit matters relates to the point I made earlier about the difference between appropriate management through nature-based solutions and elimination. The task force is working on options to achieve this goal and has commissioned research to gather evidence on the costs, benefits and feasibility of different options. This research project is due to be completed in early summer. The Government will take full account of the task force’s research findings and recommendations, other relevant evidence and views from the full range of stakeholders in drawing up our new statutory plan. We will decide on the precise details of our plan based on evidence and from weighing up the costs and benefits of all the different options. As I said when we spoke last week, I am keen to continue discussions with the noble Duke and other noble Lords with an interest in this, so we can discuss the options in more detail and look at them exhaustively.
On the noble Duke’s Amendment 170, the Government agree that transparency and monitoring are essential for creating a complete picture of the health of our water environment and to inform our decisions.
On the noble Duke’s Amendment 171, the Government also agree with the need for urgent action on this issue. To deliver a proper, comprehensive and robust plan, September next year does not feel like an exaggerated delay. We need to make sure that the plan is the best it can be, and is based on robust evidence, enabling all the appropriate consultation with all the relevant stakeholders and understanding the impacts of the plan on business, water customers and the environment. We do not yet know what the cost of the full solution would be, and we need to know that before we pass legislation.
On the noble Duke’s Amendments 172 and 173, the Government are already placing new duties on water companies and the Environment Agency to report on storm overflow activity. This includes information on investigation and improvement works. Clause 78 requires sewage undertakers to develop a drainage and sewerage management plan. These set out how they will maintain an effective system of sewerage and drainage and will include considerations of storm overflows.
Amendment 173, specifically, goes beyond information the Environment Agency currently owns, but additional transparency and reporting measures relating to undertaker performance will also be considered in developing the plan and through the task force. The Government do not feel it would be right to pre-empt this work by implementing additional reporting requirements at this stage.
The Government share the ambitions of the noble Duke in his Amendment 174. However, this amendment risks expanding the definition of “discharges” beyond the EA’s permits and creating confusion between the treatment of permitted and illegal discharges. The purpose of proposed new Clause 141E(2) is to define what a storm overflow is and this definition ensures that our amendments to prevent the harm caused by storm overflows apply only to permitted discharges. We already have a robust regulatory regime in place for tackling illegal discharges. They are subject to
enforcement and fines by the Environment Agency and therefore it would not be appropriate to bring them into the scope of this proposed new clause. As most noble Lords have said today, the key issue is not illegal discharges but what is currently legally permitted in our waters.
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Similarly, in Amendments 172A and 172B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, storm overflows occurring due to rainfall or snowmelt are permitted by the EA. The permits contain the necessary conditions to regulate the discharge and limit the impact on the water environment. They take into account receiving water and size and type of sewerage catchment. I reassure the noble Lord that creating a threshold for local rainfall is therefore not needed. Discharges that occur in dry weather are illegal and, as such, are not considered in the reporting. They are dealt with by the enforcement regime that I mentioned earlier.
Moving on to Amendment 170A, I value the contribution catchment-based partnerships make as convenors of local partners. We will, of course, continue to engage with them. The main strength of catchment partnerships is their convening power and work through consensus-building to deliver the necessary environmental improvements. Their non-statutory nature has allowed flexibility and fostered creativity in developing projects and responses to issues. Formalising catchment partnerships as managing committee structures risks ossifying them and stifling the attributes that make them such a success as the system currently stands.
On the noble Lord’s final amendment, Amendment 188D, the catchment-based approach is a framework for co-ordinating partnership action between the public, private and third sectors. Since its launch in 2012, the catchment-based approach scheme has grown from 25 pilots to more than 100 catchment partnerships. To support this, we fund catchment co-ordinators whose role is to facilitate this close working. We are already committed to this approach so that catchment partnerships can draw on the best available information, and we remain committed to catchment-based approaches. On that basis, while we welcome the intention, I am afraid we do not think that the amendment would add to the approach we already have in place.
Moving to Amendment 161A, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, for raising the important issue of septic tanks and cesspits. All wastewater systems, including septic tanks, are already subject to regulations to protect our environment. If a system does not meet the general binding rules, it will have to be replaced or upgraded or an environmental permit secured. If an individual chooses, they can request a connection to a main sewer through their local sewerage company. It is already the case that new developments must be connected to public foul sewers in almost all circumstances. However, for some isolated properties, the septic tank is the most appropriate method of safe waste management and it would be disproportionately costly and disruptive to create an obligation in the Bill to connect large numbers of remote tanks to the mains system.
Finally, regarding Amendment 161B, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, the Environment Bill creates a power to set long-term, legally binding environmental targets. It requires the Government to set and achieve at least one target in four priority areas, and one of those priority areas is water. In our policy paper published in August last year, we set out the objectives for targets currently under consideration in order to improve the natural environment. For water, a statutory target on overall water demand is being explored. This is a starting point from which specific targets will be developed by the Government to meet the criteria and principles outlined in that paper.
The proposed target objective for overall water demand is intended to address both household and non-household water consumption and leakage. Policy measures to reduce water demand were announced in a Written Ministerial Statement on 1 July 2021 to ensure that we are driving forward action on this key issue even while we are considering which targets to set on water.
I hope the government amendments and actions that I have set out today and the assurances that I have given alongside those actions demonstrate that the Government share noble Lords’ desire to tackle the harms generated from storm overflows. I reiterate my commitment to continuing dialogue with those noble Lords with a real interest and expertise in this area. Like noble Lords, I am committed, as are my colleagues in Defra, to delivering a solution that adequately addresses what is a very serious problem. I thank noble Lords for their contributions and I respectfully ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.