I want to write to Baroness Pinnock
Baroness Pinnock: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville for tabling this very important topic for debate. She has described the consequences for our rivers of discharging raw sewage from storm overflows; the health problems that follow can be very serious, but I will start with some history. Nearly 170 years ago, sewage was discharged into the rivers that served our great...
Baroness Pinnock: ...people are then reliant on an already overstretched NHS. Perhaps the solution to the loss of swimming pools is to use our rivers, but the only action in the Autumn Statement in relation to tackling sewage-filled rivers is to slash the funding of the Environment Agency by 11% per year. No doubt the Minister will respond by saying that there has been an increase in funding for adult social...
Baroness Pinnock: ...its annual report. Similarly, as an FoI request from my party has shown, hospitals across the country are facing huge repair costs from chemical leaks and broken fire alarms—in one hospital, raw sewage was in patient areas. In my view, sewage seeping anywhere in a hospital is totally unacceptable. This followed on from a report from November last year that the repair bill for NHS...
Baroness Pinnock: ...from aquifers. The amount of water taken from aquifers obviously then impacts on the flow in chalk streams, which is essential for their protection. What I want to say about pollution from sewage overflow discharge is this. About 150 years ago there was a Conservative Prime Minister in this country who had a policy of sewage. That is exactly what this country needs now. A Conservative...
Baroness Pinnock: ...have to agree a five-year plan for investment in water infrastructure with Ofwat, which is a balance between investment, priorities for improvement such as those to which the Minister referred—sewage systems, clean bathing water, the freshwater river directive and all the rest of it—and cost to the consumer. That is the balance that has to be reached, and those plans are agreed with...