My Lords, I welcome this debate as it enables us to consider where we are with the state of our rivers and seas. I pay tribute to my noble friend and congratulate him on the work he has done since we were on the Front Bench together—albeit in opposition—and the interest he has shown and the knowledge he brings to this area. I will make two brief points.
There is disagreement over why our rivers and seas are being polluted by sewage. I argue that one of the reasons is that we are building 300,000 houses a year—that is our aspiration and that of, I think, the Opposition Front Bench. There is nowhere for the sewage to go. At the moment, highways are excluded from the surface water run-off, which is compounding this, as was identified by Pitt in 2007. Surface water run-off is a relatively new phenomenon and it is combining with the combined sewers. That is adding sewage to our rivers upstream, way before it gets into the sea.
I welcome this opportunity strongly to urge my noble friend to respond urgently to the report into the review on SUDS. It has recommended that sustainable drains be added, exactly as they have been in Wales. I can see no reason to delay this, for the simple reason that, as the noble Baroness opposite said, we cannot accept this extra form of pollution: surface-water flooding into our rivers and seas. So I ask my noble friend to bring forward as a matter of urgency these recommendations, to ensure that there is an environmental impact assessment, that it is well costed, that highways will be added and that all new developments will be submitted to developers building sustainable drains in this regard.
My noble friend mentioned nutrients, which will cause an ongoing debate in the House. My noble friend is aware—I have registered my interest in this—that a study is taking place on the use of bioresources. Without putting too fine a point on it, we are seeking to take the solids out of the sewage—if noble Lords get my drift, without spelling it out—and, as other countries have done, recognise it as a resource, put a value on it and decide, with government advice and guidance, how it can best be used. There are two obvious ways to use it: putting it on the land, which they tried to do in north Yorkshire when I was an MP there—it got a very mixed response, but it is worth looking at—and using it to create energy, which I understand is happening in Denmark and other parts of Europe. We need to look at nutrient neutrality, as I think my noble friend called it.
Finally—I apologise to the noble Baroness opposite—when we come to the retained EU law Bill, I would like to consider why we would wish to remove the wastewater directive, the water framework directive, the drinking water directive, the bathing water directive and the urban wastewater directive when they are part of the reason why our rivers have recovered from the state they were in through the 1980s. I welcome this debate and look forward to hearing my noble friend sum up.