Little joy for peers pressing on Panorama pollution piece

Newly appointed Parliamentary under-secretary of state for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Lord Douglas-Miller, rebutted calls for change from peers last week during a question on the recent BBC Panorama documentary about a water pollution cover up.

The points raised by contributors included:

• crossbencher, Baroness Boycott, challenged that water companies should not be able to cite Ofwat and the Environment Agency (EA) investigations as a reason for not sharing data following environmental information regulation (EIR) requests;

• Lib Dem, Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, said: “Will the government concede that trusting companies that are financially motivated to cover up failing works to avoid penalties from Ofwat to carry out their own testing is not an effective regulatory system? Will they commit to putting robust independent regulation in place to ensure sewage works’ compliance?”

• Green Baroness Jones of Moulescoomb called for an investigation into the “fraud” adding: "The allegations are that the Environment Agency is also complicit and other water companies could be doing exactly the same”; and

• Conservative, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, said company directors should be held personally accountable.

Responding, Lord Douglas-Miller defended the EA’s record on monitoring and inspection; said water companies are responsible for information provision under EIR; argued “it is standard practice for the initial and final categorisations [of pollution incidents] to be different”; and said the Government has legislated to introduce unlimited penalties on water companies and to make them applicable for a wider range of issues.