Environment Bill

Committee (6th Day)

My Lords, the Hybrid Sitting of the House will now resume. I ask all Members to respect social distancing.

I shall call Members to speak in the order listed. During the debate on each group, I invite Members, including Members in the Chamber, to email the clerk if they wish to speak after the Minister. I shall call Members to speak in order of request. The groupings are binding. Participants who might wish to press an amendment other than the lead amendment in the group to a Division must give notice in debate or by emailing the clerk. Leave should be given to withdraw amendments. When putting the Question, I shall collect voices in the Chamber only. If a Member taking part remotely wants their voice accounted for, if the Question is put, they must make this clear when speaking on the group.

Clause 78: Drainage and sewerage management plans

Debate on Amendment 162 resumed.

My Lords, I am pleased to be able to continue the debate that was adjourned on Monday. In proposing my Amendment 175A, which is to do with blue-green flood-risk management, I follow some excellent speeches on Monday evening, including ones from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, on nature-based solutions, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on grey water. Alongside blue-green, these solutions are all about the need for an integrated, holistic system of preserving the water supply and dealing with wastewater and storm-water.

It is obvious to say this: rain is valuable and belongs to nobody, but its supply is limited and therefore it needs to be used sparingly. It is sometimes used too much and sometimes used too little. There is too much of it and too little. In the home, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said—and I certainly support his amendment—separating grey water is a great idea. I have also heard that there is more to do because, apparently, some washing machine manufacturers refuse to guarantee machines if rainwater is used. Obviously, you would not use grey water, but it seems to me that rainwater could be used. Why is it not used? It is another source of water, rather than using processed fresh drinking water.

Putting rain into sewers, which then causes overflowing, adds massively to the carbon footprint with pumping and treatment. I spent some time in the last few years wondering why it was necessary for the Thames Tideway Tunnel to be built—not because I did not want the River Thames cleaned up, but because the evidence shows that the water in the Thames meets all the regulations now and, if it were to be started today, the tunnel would be found to not be needed. This is a £5 billion project and what nobody seems to remember or think is that pumping the water from very deep shafts, as they will be when they get to the end, and treating the water, which is mostly either flood-water or river water, creates an enormous carbon footprint. If blue-green had been started and was working by then, this could have all been avoided. Also, of course, it would have created quite a few jobs locally, less skilled than those needed for the tunnelling and all the other work that goes into the Thames Tideway Tunnel. We must always recognise that big contractors love these big jobs—a bit like HS2—and there is often benefit in having smaller work done by possibly less skilled and local workers.

I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I will speak to Amendments 192, 193 and 194 in my name and say a few words about the amendments in the name of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I am delighted to support Amendment 175 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, which I have co-signed, being an enthusiastic supporter of grey water. Amendment 194A, in the name of my noble friend Lord Caithness, has much to commend it. I think a combination of these amendments will achieve what the Government are trying to do.

I say at the outset that one of the reasons I ask in Amendment 192 for the right to connect to housing developments is that, at the moment, it is not generally recognised that water companies are not statutory consultees on major new developments of 10, 30 or especially more—200 or 300—houses at a time. If the Government are not minded to make them statutory consultees, I hope my noble friend will look at involving local authorities more actively in the drainage and wastewater management plans. I understand that my honourable friend in the other place, Minister Pow, confirmed at the Dispatch Box that all risk management authorities will be required to participate in the drainage and wastewater management plans. I hope my noble friend takes this opportunity to confirm that; otherwise, I might have to bring forward an amendment on it.

I would argue that my Amendments 192, 193 and 194 are supplementary or the other side of the coin to those of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I would go further, actually; the problem with the noble Duke’s amendments is that the major issue with infrastructure and engineering at the moment is that there is no obvious alternative to storm overflows. Huge investment and disruption would be required, even if no practical issues remained, to provide a solution in the timeframe that everybody would like to see. Closing storm overflows without such alternatives would mean a far greater likelihood of properties and businesses flooding during periods of heavy rainfall. I just recount the visits I have made to, among other parts of the country, my own area of North Yorkshire and Cumbria: it is only when you visit people in the midst of a flood that you see how it affects their health, welfare and well-being. Having sewage in your home through a storm overflow is absolutely disgusting.

I move on to sustainable drainage systems and natural flood defences. Either through the amendments I have tabled here or others I intend to bring forward on Report, I would like to see the Environment Bill amend Section 106 of the Water Industry Act to remove the automatic right to connect and impose the application of a drainage hierarchy, together with connection to a combined sewer identified as only the very last resort—which I think my noble friend set out in a Written Answer to me. I would rather not see them connected at all, but I would accept that as the very last resort, as long as they exist. That approach would ensure that surface water is kept separate from foul water and embed a natural-by-default approach to surface water drainage.

I would also like to go further and update planning guidance to make SUDS, sustainable drainage—a great passion of mine—the preferred option for managing surface water in all new developments, rather than just major developments of 10 homes or more, as at present. Accepting the recommendations made to Defra that non-statutory technical standards for SUDS should be mandatory, I would like to introduce a new right to discharge surface water to watercourses and empower sewage undertakings to discharge rainwater down pipes and into soakaways.

The single item that would really move things forward is ending the automatic right to connect. Water companies are powerless to prevent these spillages at the moment, because there is nowhere else for sewage overflows to go when there is immense rainfall, as we have identified. Surface water flooding has been recognised only since 2007. We are binding the hands of water companies behind their backs, and this is the time to end that automatic right. These are three little amendments: Amendment 192 ends the right to connect to housing developments automatically if the water companies cannot say that the infrastructure exists such that there is somewhere for the effluent and sewage to go; Amendment 193 asks for sustainable drainage systems and natural flood defences; Amendment 194 asks that water companies become statutory consultees on housing developments.

I end by recalling why we are here with this Bill. It is, in part, a response to the Pitt review of 2007. There are three key recommendations of that review that have not yet been implemented, whereas we have proceeded to make it easier for developers to build on flood plains and to roll out more houses, which the Government seem to think are priorities.

Recommendation 10 of the Pitt review was:

“The automatic right to connect surface water drainage of new developments to the sewerage system should be removed.”

Recommendation 20 was:

“The Government should resolve the issue of which organisations should be responsible for the ownership and maintenance of sustainable drainage systems.”

That goes to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on retrofitting. I am wedded to SUDS, but the issue of who is responsible for maintaining them is key to making sure they do not contribute to future spills. Recommendation 21 was:

“Defra should work with Ofwat and the water industry to explore how appropriate risk-based standards for public sewerage systems can be achieved.”

This is our last opportunity to make these recommendations real and end the dreadful experience of householders waking up to sewage because, in the current circumstances, there is nowhere else for the wastewater to go.