That this House has considered the matter of protecting and restoring river habitats.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank the Making Space for Water campaigners, whose tireless work in championing our riverways is exactly why we are here today in Westminster Hall. It is a privilege to open today’s debate and see it so well attended, as we make the case for practical solutions that will protect our riverways, restore river habitats and boost water quality in all of our rivers and streams.
It is essential that I outline the significant challenge facing both nature and rivers up and down the country. Unfortunately, most of our rivers are in crisis, plagued by pollution from both agriculture and sewage. Subsequently, they are on the brink of ecological collapse. Only a third of UK rivers are in good health, making our rivers some of the most polluted in Europe. Looking closer, 85% of the UK’s rivers and streams have been heavily modified, which is stripping away habitats and accelerating a big fall in biodiversity. Yet we all know that our rivers are crucial for both nature and communities. Riverways are a vital source of fresh water. They support wildlife, boost biodiversity and help to regulate the climate locally.
Take my home county of Dorset. Our county is fortunate to play home to one of the world’s rarest habitats: chalk streams. The high mineral content and year-round moderate temperatures mean that local chalk streams such as the Stour and Frome are home to a broad array of wildlife and habitats. I am so proud that on the Isle of Purbeck, in my constituency, we hosted the first official wild beaver release in England, some five centuries after they were hunted to extinction.
I commend the hon. Member on securing this debate. On the point about beavers, this week we have had massive flooding in the west country, in Dorset and in Devon. I am hearing from farmers in my patch who agreed to have beavers released into rivers on their farmland that there are complications. Does he agree that cannot be a one-off action, but rather needs sustained engagement from the Government as well as financial support such as the sustainable farming incentive?
I agree that a co-ordinated approach that works with farmers, landowners and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is required. That extensive work took place in my constituency, and it meant that the release was broadly seen as a success story. We would certainly like to replicate that across the west country and the UK.
To continue the saga of the beaver, their release in Purbeck has been a success story, and I am so pleased that the beavers can call the expansive freshwater and dense woodland at Studland their new home. Of course, that is also a good news story for restoring nature and boosting water quality. Beavers are nature’s engineers. By creating wetland habitats, they can help to retain water during floods and release it during droughts. Finally, they also help to filter polluted water and improve its quality further downstream. They play a crucial role in aiding nature’s recovery. However, the mighty beaver cannot and must not act alone. Like many Members present, I am committed to help restore nature across all our riverways, creating the conditions for wildlife and habitats to flourish in our rivers once again.
I commend the hon. Member for bringing this issue to the House; he is absolutely right to do so. The state of the waterways is a growing concern for us in Northern Ireland. Agricultural run-off, outdated waste water systems and storm overflows are putting rivers such as the Lagan, the Bann and the Foyle under pressure, threatening biodiversity and public health. We must improve water quality, tackle agricultural pollution and invest in sustainable water systems to ensure that our rivers and freshwater species are protected for future generations. That can happen through the Minister and the Government, but it can also happen across the regional Administrations. Does the hon. Member feel it is important to address the issue collectively across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention; it is almost as if he had an exclusive sneak peek at my remarks.
I will turn to the damaging role of water companies. Sadly, many firms have a sorry track record in protecting rivers and boosting water quality. For far too long, many water companies have profiteered, despite polluting our rivers and streams. Unfortunately, the previous Government did too little, too late to reverse the worrying trend. To name just one shocking example, Wessex Water, my local water company, killed some 2,000 fish in Melksham after a sewage pumping station failure. It was slapped with a fine for the damage on its watch, but by then it was too late, as untreated sewage had leaked into nearby rivers. I am sure we will hear many more horror stories in this debate, with failing water companies found culpable for environmental destruction within our rivers and streams. The days of water companies polluting with impunity and hiding behind weak regulation must end.
That is the mess we are wading through. Looking ahead, I am pleased that the Government are beginning to take all the necessary steps to clean up and better protect our rivers and streams. From the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, which finally gave regulators the power to curb water bosses from collecting undeserved bonuses, to the £104 billion secured in investment to start to rebuild water infrastructure across the country, the Government are beginning to get to grips with this scandal.
In Wessex Water’s case, Government action led to a £500,000 fine—the second largest ever issued to a water company—for the Melksham sewage failure. It also led to a ban on Wessex Water bosses receiving their undeserved bonuses. The water White Paper, released just last week, further strengthens the regulation of the big water firms. I welcome the Government’s commitment to create a single, integrated, tough regulator, which will replace the current patchwork of regulatory bodies and hopefully deliver a more proactive, targeted and rigorous way of holding water companies to account.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank the hon. Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) for securing this debate and all colleagues here today. As the Minister is well aware, protecting and restoring river habitats is a subject very close to my heart and the hearts of my constituents in North Herefordshire; I am delighted to have an opportunity to speak about that further today. I thank the organisations behind the Making Space for Water campaign, too.
Our rivers must not be seen as drains. They are the veins and arteries for what is the lifeblood of our land and everything that lives on it. They are integral to our collective health, our communities, our environment and our economies. They are essential channels for the circulation of that lifeblood of fresh water. We ignore them and pollute them at our peril. If we make space for water, we get multiple benefits. It helps us to be resilient to flooding, protects us from the risk of drought, helps farmers to deliver food security—crucial for us today—and, of course, helps to boost nature and biodiversity resilience.
I will speak first about flooding. That affects my constituency of North Herefordshire horrendously frequently and it is only going to get worse. I have already spoken numerous times in the House about the fact that climate change is increasing the severity and frequency of flooding incidents. If we make space for water, if we give room to our rivers, we will of course enable ourselves as communities to be more resilient. We saw the devastating effects of the floods last November in Monmouth and Skenfrith, just over the border from my constituency. We know that if we invest in Making Space for Water and looking after our rivers, that will have numerous protective benefits for us all as an economy.
I have seen that in practice myself, on an Environmental Audit Committee visit last year to the Netherlands. People there are really innovative on this issue. They have a huge project called Room for the River, through which they have taken it hugely seriously. They have started by identifying the problem and what the solutions could be, and then ensured that there is public support and Government commitment behind that. I have strongly urged the UK Government to take a similarly strategic approach to managing water and flood resilience in our communities, because this problem is only going to become more and more challenging. It has devastating effects on people’s lives.
I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton)—my Dorset neighbour—for securing this really important debate. This issue matters an awful lot to him, and he represents it perfectly on behalf of his constituents. I note that this is the debut of the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, my good friend the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour), who is responding to the debate. I am pleased to see her in her place and look forward to hearing what she has to say.
This is a timely debate: in the last day, a severe flood warning has been issued for the lower Stour at Iford Bridge Home Park and across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, due to Storm Chandra. The levels of the River Stour are rising rapidly. I put on the record my thanks to my constituents, who have put up with Storm Chandra and the disruption involved. Many of them have had to be evacuated, and they have been stoical.
My constituents’ lives have been made harder, though, because the electrical supply was unsafe at Iford Bridge Home Park, which is what forced evacuations. That was avoidable: the power supply was left unprotected by the owner, Hampshire Mobile Park Home Enterprises Ltd. It was fined over £27,000 last summer for failing to carry out 33 required actions that would, among other things, have improved electrical safety, but it has also failed to do that since. I will be seeking a response from the owner and pressing for answers, because my constituents deserve to feel safe in their own homes—always.
Equally, there needs to be greater maintenance of our rivers. We need to dredge up and get rid of everything that raises the river bed so that, when flooding happens, what washes through streets is not detritus and sewage, which make people’s recovery from flooding so much harder. I thank the BCP council’s teams, and the Environment Agency, for responding and standing alongside my constituents in that difficult time.
At the risk of delivering more “flim-flam”, I should say that the hon. Member has just told us that it was the Water (Special Measures) Act that announced the ban on company bonuses. Would he concede that that was actually introduced, in regulations, by the last Conservative Government? In fact, his Government have just put a regulation into statute; that did not actually change the law at all.
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I think that is a perfect example of leading with one’s chin; there is a little bit of brass neck involved in that. When we speak with our constituents and with the water sector, they are abundantly clear about the difference that this Labour Government, and these changes in particular, have made.
We just heard from my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset about the poor performance of Wessex Water’s chief executives; earlier this year, its chief executive and chief financial officer took £50,000 in undisclosed extra payments from the parent company and a former Wessex Water chief executive was handed a huge £170,000 payment—again, from the parent company. I struggle to remember any significant fining of water companies under the Conservatives. Indeed, I have spoken to people from the water sector, and they told me that they felt it was like the wild west. They welcome the fact that we finally have a Government who are getting the situation under control.
I welcome the Minister’s work on the Water (Special Measures) Act, which banned executive bonuses at failing firms and introduced “jail if they fail” for executives, automatic penalties for a range of offences, and mandatory real-time monitoring. I also welcome the Government’s work since, with the commitment to seeing sewage pollution and storm overflow spills reduced by 50% by 2030, as well as 10,000 water quality inspections per year, and with the Environment Agency securing a record £22.1 billion in investment over the next five years. I am particularly pleased to see investment of around £230 million by Wessex Water in my constituency and the wider area, and I have been to both sewage treatment plants to see how the work is going.
I am pleased that we are making progress, and that includes the replacement of Ofwat, which has been failing for a long time, with an independent regulator. However, there is more to do. We need to protect communities from the dangers of flooding and drought through the creation of multi-benefit mosaic habitats. In so doing, we can unlock their full potential for nature recovery, carbon storage and flood mitigation. We need to help farmers to continue delivering our food security, by prioritising the deployment of buffers on marginal agricultural land so that farmers benefit financially and can mitigate impacts on food production. We need to boost biodiversity and nature recovery by enhancing river corridors and making space for rivers to return to their natural function. In so doing, we can boost biodiversity and nature recovery through the creation of new and more connected natural habitats.
Nothing shapes a landscape more than a river. Nothing brings a landscape to life more than a river. If we ask ChatGPT, “What is a river?”, it will tell us:
“it is a natural stream of flowing water that moves downhill across land”—
and that tells us precisely why Members of Parliament should never use ChatGPT. A river is life—abundant life. Rivers are not just streams of water; they are amazing ecosystems. Globally, rivers are home to over 140,000 specialist freshwater species.
We think of water as being everywhere, but 99% of the water on this blue planet of ours is unusable by humans. Of the remaining 1%, which comprises freshwater, almost seven tenths is locked up in ice caps and glaciers, leaving just three tenths of 1% of the water on our planet in lakes, marshes and rivers. It is strange that something so vital to all life on our planet should be so scarce and so vulnerable.
I commend my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) on securing this debate to focus the House’s attention on how we can better protect and restore our precious riverine habitats. Others have set out the dire statistics. Sadly, it is true that 87% of rivers outside our national parks do not meet the minimum ecological standards set out in law. Even inside the supposed protection of our national parks, only four out of every 10 riverine systems meet those legal minimum standards.
With a new water Bill, the release of the land use framework and updates to the environmental land management schemes, 2026 is a particularly significant year for the health of our rivers. I welcome the publication of the water White Paper last week and the fact that it commits to implementing many of the recommendations of the Cunliffe review. Chief among those is a commitment to shift the focus of water companies towards pre-pipe solutions for water pollution. The Government say that they
My hon. Friend is making an eloquent speech about the importance of cross-society working between Government, regulatory bodies and the stewards of our riverways and countryside. Does he agree that, unless we have that collaborative approach, we are unlikely to see the change we both so desperately want in order to restore the health of our riverways and allow nature recovery to take root in environments across the country?
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We must be honest about the challenges still ahead. Despite new legislation, which I was proud to support, water companies continue to hide behind opaque and complex corporate structures, shielding themselves from scrutiny while our rivers and streams pay the price. Earlier this month, it emerged in The Guardianthat the chief executive and the chief finance officer of Wessex Water received some £50,000 in previously undisclosed extra pay from a parent company. Just a few weeks before that, we learned that a former chief executive at Wessex Water had been handed a whopping £170,000 payment, again from a parent company. Both those payments happened in exactly the same year that the firm was correctly banned by the Government from paying undeserved bonuses. From the reports on just how Wessex Water is choosing to operate, we can safely say that something extremely fishy is going on.
If bonuses can simply be rebadged as undisclosed payments from another arm of a large web of companies, the bonus ban is at risk of becoming unenforceable. That weakens public trust, undermines the authority of our regulators and allows those responsible for gross environmental damage to be rewarded for failure. I firmly believe that the Government, working closely with a new, single regulator, must tighten the rules to prevent water companies from exploiting corporate structures to disguise what are clearly bonuses in disguise. Without that, I fear the bonus ban will not change the corporate culture and wrongdoing within these big firms, and water companies will continue to pollute our precious rivers and streams.
Alongside strengthening regulation and ensuring that pollution certainly does not pay, further work must be done to restore wildlife and reduce flood risks along our rivers. Again, I should stress that the Government are taking the necessary action. The recently published environmental improvement plan includes an important target to double wildlife-friendly farms by 2030, and I know that that is welcomed by a huge range of farmers in my constituency of South Dorset. The commitment of £500 million for landscape recovery will hopefully play a vital role in revitalising nature while helping communities better withstand floods.
The recent announcement by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the sustainable farming initiative will go some way to ensuring that farmers and landowners can play their part in protecting rivers and wildlife. However, I remain concerned that gaps remain in the role that nature-based solutions can, and must, play in cleaning up our rivers. That is why I support the Making Space for Water campaign run by the Riverscapes partnership, which is a broad coalition of the Rivers Trust, the National Trust, the Woodland Trust and the Beaver Trust—safe to say, there is a lot of trust in the campaign.
Farmers and landowners are currently standing on the front line of our environmental crisis, and the role that they play, and will play in the future, when it comes to protecting our riverways and enabling nature recovery is absolutely critical. They are seeing, at first hand, the pressures facing our rivers and the threat of flooding all year round. As has previously been remarked on, just this week Storm Chandra brought absolute havoc to my home of Dorset. The heavy rainfall has flooded rivers, left fields waterlogged and livestock areas almost completely unusable, and severely restricted access to farmland. Farmers and landowners are not just experiencing these challenges; they are absolutely critical to solving them. The decisions they make about their land shape the quality of our water, the health of our rivers and the survival of our wildlife.
In my constituency, from Purbeck to Wool to Weymouth, many farmers and landowners are already stepping up, carving out space for nature alongside their nearby rivers and restoring the landscapes that we all depend on. But they cannot carry that burden alone, and it is abundantly clear that they still lack some of the financial support that they need to best protect our riverways. To that end, targeted and simplified financial incentives must be considered, and be given to farmers and landowners to restore and enhance our rivers and streams. That is the key and, I believe, most important ask of the Making Space for Water campaign. With the right support in place, that will allow farmers and landowners to create river buffers and wetlands alongside their land. It would allow them to plant riparian trees and floodplain meadows, and to reintroduce beaver populations, just like they have already done in Purbeck.
If successful, that will all help to create a network of connected, nature-rich river corridors. Clean, functioning river corridors are a good news story for everyone: they help nature to recover and water quality to improve, biodiversity is no longer in freefall and our countryside becomes much more resilient. Where already implemented, healthy river corridors slow down the flow of water and reduce the risk of devastating floods and prolonged droughts. They act as natural infrastructure, storing water when we have too much and releasing it when we have too little.
The benefits go beyond flood protection. Restored river corridors trap pollution before it reaches our waterways. They support farmers, strengthening the resilience of their farmland without undermining food production. If we are truly serious about restoring nature, protecting rivers and boosting water quality, making space for water must be at the heart of the Government’s approach.
I know that the Minister is an enthusiastic advocate for our rivers and streams, and has met the team behind the Making Space for Water campaign. Indeed, she spoke proudly at the campaign launch just last year. I hope that today she will take the opportunity to set out what further action her Department can take to protect our riverways. I would welcome any further detail that she can give us on exactly how this Government, alongside a new, tough single regulator, will block failing water company bosses from receiving bonuses through the back door. From conversations, I know that the Minister shares my view that a tough bonus ban is critical to challenging the corporate misbehaviour that is all too present across the water sector. By embracing this important campaign, we can boost water quality, aid nature and biodiversity recovery, and enhance rivers and streams across the country. Indeed, we can make space for water once again.
I turn now to river pollution. One of the first things I did when elected to the House was to set up the all-party parliamentary group on water pollution. That is such a significant issue across the country and especially in my constituency of North Herefordshire. The hon. Member for South Dorset referred to the outrageous pollution caused by sewerage companies and the profiteering that has happened for decades at the expense of the natural environment and, indeed, the pockets of consumers, citizens and bill payers. It is clear to me and to the rest of the Green party that water should be in public hands. This is a natural monopoly. It is a service that should be provided only for the public good.
It is absolutely right that the Government are taking action to tackle the problems caused by the water and sewerage companies. Yet, as I have emphasised previously, if we look only at the water and sewerage companies, we are not looking at half the problem—in fact, more than half the problem, because we know from the Government’s own data that agricultural water pollution is an even bigger contributor to water pollution than is sewage. Yet in last week’s White Paper, it merited only one page of the 48-page document. That is deeply disappointing. It signals that although the Government talk about cleaning up our rivers, lakes and seas, they are not taking a holistic, joined-up approach to this problem. We cannot deal with these issues in isolation.
Agricultural water pollution is even more of a problem in my constituency; more than 70% of the phosphate pollution, which has had a devastating effect locally, comes from agricultural run-off. That has impacts on nature—in the suffocation of important species such as ranunculus, for example. It has impacts on people, who no longer feel able to swim in the rivers that they have swum in for their entire lives. It has huge impacts on the economy. We have had a planning moratorium in North Herefordshire in the Lugg catchment since October 2019, which has cost the economy at least half a billion pounds. Huge amounts of effort have gone into trying to resolve the issue locally, and I pay tribute to the work of the council and the local citizen scientists, who have done everything they can to address it. However, without proper Government support, local actors are stuck.
People care passionately about this. The citizen scientists in the Wye catchment have done about 50,000 water sample tests since 2020—in just the last five years. That is an amazing piece of work. Farmers are stepping up and doing fantastic work themselves, out of their own pockets and motivation, coming together under the auspices of initiatives such as the Wyescapes project. That brings together 49 farmers throughout the Wye and Lugg catchments to work together on a proposal for a landscape recovery scheme. But they need Government support.
At the minute, we have a White Paper with just one page on agriculture. We have a diffuse water pollution plan on the Wye catchment, published at the end of last year, that says that, even with perfect implementation of all available measures, we will get nowhere close to solving the pollution problem that is totally gumming up our environment, communities and economy in North Herefordshire.
I ask the Minister: what more will she do? It is clear that we urgently need more. We need more support for farmers, we need funding for projects like Wyescapes, and we need a commitment on a proportion of the funding that has been committed to landscape recovery under the revised environmental improvement plan. How much of that will go to river corridors? How much of it will go to projects like Wyescapes? We also need more funding and teeth for the Environment Agency, to make sure that there is a level playing field for all people in the area. Fundamentally, we need a water protection zone for the River Wye. We need the Government to ensure that that option is fully and properly assessed.
Our rivers are the veins and arteries of our communities, economies and environment. They are not drains. They are essential to the health of our environment. We need Government support for citizens and farmers, and everybody else working to protect and restore our river habitats.
Water quality is uppermost in the minds of my constituents; it comes up often in my surgery appointments, on the doorsteps weekly and in my community visits. It is also particularly on the minds of my school students. Already, this calendar year, I have been to Avonbourne—a fantastic school doing amazing things—to speak with students on a youth enterprise scheme, and to St Walburga’s, Malmesbury Park, the Epiphany school and St James’ academy. Pretty much every question that I was asked in those classrooms was about the quality of water.
Younger people care passionately about our planet, about its protection and about their right to swim without being washed over by sewage. They want the Government to get this right. At St James’ academy, I went into two different classrooms and spoke with the eco-councillors. They talked at great length, with great eloquence and expertise, about what we should be doing, so I wanted to talk a little bit about that in this debate.
I also want to put on the record my thanks to Christchurch Harbour and Marine Society, which has been working with citizen scientists to make sure that Christchurch harbour’s water quality can be improved. In so doing, it is setting an example to the young people in the schools I mentioned. The society is calling for a dedicated conservation policy for the harbour. I know that is important, and I know, from testing water quality in that harbour, that much could be done to improve the situation.
I know, too, that those school students are concerned about the situation in the River Stour. That is not surprising, really: as my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset was saying, our rivers have been heavily modified and are not fit for purpose. An estimated 85% of the UK’s rivers and streams have been altered from their natural state. Landscapes cannot cope with the pace and the extent of climate impacts such as flooding from storms and heavy rainfall. Indeed, 20% of UK homes and 80% of UK farmers have already felt the negative impacts of those changes in our environment.
On the same front, the UK faces a growing water-scarcity crisis. England alone will need an additional 5 billion litres of water a day by 2050 to support our growing population. We already use 14 billion litres a day, so that is equivalent to 35% of our current consumption. As we just heard from my hon. Friend, we have some of the unhealthiest rivers in Europe, thanks to the inheritance left us by the Conservatives. Only a third of the UK’s river stretches are in good ecological health, with many in dire states as a consequence of physical modifications, intermittent agricultural and road run-off, and continuous discharges from sewage treatment.
Lastly, biodiversity across the UK is declining. On average, UK species have fallen by 19% since 1970, and just 3% of England’s land is effectively protected and managed for nature. Pollinators, native mammals and freshwater species such as Atlantic salmon or brown trout, which once thrived in our rivers, are on the brink of collapse. Is it any wonder that the younger generation are outraged and want us to act?
And we are acting: this Government got to work quickly. It was a pleasure to sit on the Water (Special Measures) Bill Committee with my hon. Friend the Minister, where we heard much flim-flam from the Opposition. In spite of that, we managed to crack on with introducing significant measures, be it the banning of executive bonuses if firms fail—[Interruption.] I beg your pardon, Ms Butler; the Minister has made me laugh now.
We also need to clean up our rivers. In the words of Martin Lines, the chief executive officer of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, healthy and functioning river corridors are
“a practical way to improve water quality, reduce flood risk and restore biodiversity.”
He says that farmers
“are part of the solution”—
he is right—and that
“with the right backing, these nature-rich corridors can help futureproof both our land and our livelihoods.”
Richard Benwell, the chief executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link, says:
“Carving out space to re-naturalise rivers would bring ecosystems to life, reduce flood risk and bring joy to millions.”
In closing, I echo my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset in welcoming the first ever licensed beaver wild release in England, in our beautiful county of Dorset. It is good news for Dorset, it is good news for our country and I feel sure there is more good news to come.
“will ensure legislation, funding streams, and regulatory mechanisms”
to tackle the root causes of pollution, but those must be properly funded and backed up by a regime of thorough monitoring and swift penalty enforcement for infringements.
We politicians have made much of the failures of the water companies over the past few years and the totally disgraceful exploitation of bill payers to line shareholders’ pockets while companies fail to address pipe leakage, combined sewers and sewage outflows. Equally, I entirely support the outrage expressed by my hon. Friends the Members for South Dorset and for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) about Wessex Water and its motley leadership crew. However, they are not solely responsible; there is also the agriculture sector, whether that is chicken farms on the River Wye or eutrophication from nitrogen fertiliser run-off. The Government must drive the solutions to river habitat restoration.
ELMS is the key part of that. When it was first launched by the previous Government to replace the EU’s agricultural subsidies, the £2.4 billion was to be split into three equal funding pots of £800 million a year. Landscape recovery was one of those pots, but last month’s environmental improvement plan set out the new headline commitment of just £500 million for landscape recovery projects. Now, £500 million is a lot less than the £800 million initially promised, but wait: that £500 million is not a year, like the £800 million; it is £500 million over 20 years. That is a paltry £25 million a year, making a total mockery of the idea that the Government are taking landscape recovery seriously.
Will the Minister therefore publish the evidence and modelling showing how the combined ELMS offer will add up to deliver the Government’s environmental objectives and legal commitments on water? Can she direct me towards evidence that demonstrates that £500 million for landscape recovery is sufficient to deliver the Government’s environmental objectives and legal commitments, in terms of both our 30 by 30 commitments and our longer-term EIP and Environment Act 2021 targets?
Will the forthcoming water reform Bill go further than the water White Paper and put nature-based solutions at the core of tackling water pollution, including actions to prioritise and fund catchment-based measures at scale? Will the Government consider embedding an overarching commitment, within the Environment Act delivery plans, to create a national river corridor network that prioritises the restoration of river habitats, along the lines proposed by the Making Space for Water campaign? Finally, when will the Government deliver on their commitment to update the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 so that protected landscapes are given stronger powers and clear duties to drive nature recovery, including river habitat restoration?
The water Bill must embed the use of nature-based solutions in a way that has not happened so far. The water White Paper’s comments on exploring the use of green bonds to help investment in nature-based solutions is therefore welcome, but we cannot simply leave it to private investment to get us to where we need to be. The Government should empower the new super-regulator’s chief engineer to direct companies to prioritise and scale up nature-based solutions, mandating, wherever possible, a change from grey infrastructure to green. The ministerial directions to Ofwat and Natural England during the transition phase should pave the way for that—[Interruption.] Excuse me.