Lord Gascoigne (Con)

My Lords, the Minister said in the last group that he was running out of energy, so I reassure him that he is not hallucinating: I am not my noble friend Lady Coffey. However, I am moving Amendment 59 on her behalf. I refer noble Lords to my interests on the register and declare that I am on the board of the Conservative Environment Network—although I speak completely independently of it. I am sure that whenever I stand to speak, many of my colleagues on this side and on the Front Bench think that what I have to say is full of excrement. I am pleased to satisfy them today because when it comes to sewerage, it is not often that it can be associated with good news. But Tideway is the good news story in the UK. It was officially opened by His Majesty the King earlier this year, and London’s super-sewer is now fully connected and has, to date, captured over 7 million tonnes of sewage, which would historically have spilled into the River Thames. That is enough storm sewage to fill Wembley one and a half times. While I was waiting today, I was trying to figure out how many times it would fill this Chamber, but I will leave that to brainier folks than I. This super-sewer is a marvel of modern engineering. It spans the length of London from Acton in the west right through to the Beckton sewage treatment works in the east, passing under iconic London landmarks as it goes. Having taken many years to build, it will continue to serve Londoners for generations to come, helping to protect our precious natural environment from sewage at the same time. However, ambitious infrastructure projects such as Tideway do not come cheap. That is why, in 2013, the specified infrastructure projects regulations were created. I do not want to go too much into the weeds of this but these regulations made it possible for the Tideway project to be paid for using a novel financing mechanism. This reduced the political and financial risk for Tideway’s investors, reduced the cost of capital, and spread the costs over multiple generations of Londoners who will benefit from that infrastructure. The incurred debts are repaid over the long term by Thames Water bill payers, much like a mortgage. Before work started, it was estimated that the project would cost customers between £20 and £25 per year, and that was in 2014-15 prices. The cost has remained well within that range since, which in itself is a remarkable achievement. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, this makes Tideway a good news story.