Dr Roz Savage

My constituency contains the source of the Thames, so I could, in theory, row from my constituency to the House. I would like to celebrate the opening of the Thames tideway tunnel, as mentioned by the Secretary of State. Back in 2013, I was campaigning for the tunnel, which included frowning at a sewage outflow under Putney bridge, so it could be said that I have been in the excrement for quite some time. Sadly, the situation has not improved in the 12 years in between. Just this morning, I had Ben Thornbury, an impressive young man, in my office to commend him on his work cleaning up the River Avon in Malmesbury. Sadly—let no good deed go unpunished—he had picked up sepsis from the pollution in the river. I am grateful to say that he made a full recovery, but, still, that is a sign of the times. Perhaps surprisingly, I would like to use a word rarely heard in the context of the water industry: hope. I would like to highlight some ways in which good things are happening, largely at the grassroots level. First, there is citizen science. Eighty pollution incidents were reported by citizens just in my constituency in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire last year. Citizen science can often highlight pollution incidents up to three days before official sources of information.