Defra to introduce legal duty on sewage pollution following public outcry

Within days of MPs voting with the Government to reject the Duke of Wellington’s Environment Bill amendment, which would have placed a legal duty on water companies to reduce sewage discharges into rivers, Defra issued a statement saying it would in fact amend the legislation to that effect.

The Department said the Government will introduce an amendment that will see a duty enshrined in law “to ensure water companies secure a progressive reduction in the adverse impacts of discharges from storm overflows”. It noted: “The amendment is also very similar to Amendment 45 in the name of the Duke of Wellington, which was debated in the House of Commons…The Government will bring forward the amendment in the House of Commons, when the Bill returns there for the next stage of passage.”

This followed public outcry on the MPs’ actions and wider sewage pollution issues, which tore through social media as well as reaching traditional news channels. Speaking in Parliament, water minister Rebecca Pow said: “Spurious comments made about the Government voting to allow raw sewage into the sea are completely inaccurate, as has now been pointed out on many fronts. A really aggressive social media campaign is being run on this, to the detriment of many MPs, including death threats.”

Pow denied there was any u-turn, pitching the new amendment as simply enshrining in law what the Government expected anyway.

The water industry said it supported the Wellington amendment, but called for wider action. A spokesperson for Water UK said: “The water industry agrees that we should be ending harm from sources like storm overflows, and we have set out the framework for a comprehensive national plan to do that. This calls for Government and regulators to authorise new investment, and for a much stronger effort on tackling the causes of sewers overloading, like blockages from wet wipes and poorly-designed housing developments.

“However, we think the Duke’s amendment on its own is not enough, as it only tackles the 4% of river quality failures caused by overflows. In our recent report ‘21st Century Rivers’ we set out the ten actions needed to genuinely transform our rivers and waterways and the actions needed from the water industry, farmers, government, regulators and others to secure the healthy, thriving rivers that everyone wants.”