Bobby Dean

I thank the hon. Member for graciously allowing me to trip over our shared boundary into her constituency now and again to do media reports on this issue. She is absolutely right to point out the polluter pays principle, and also ask how speedily it might be implemented, because the damage is happening right now and we need to rectify it as soon as possible. Moving on to that accountability process, there are still many questions that the community wants answered. We want to know when exactly the spillage happened. We want to know if 4,000 litres is an accurate estimate of the diesel. We want to know precisely how it made its way through the sewage network into the river. We want to know whether the Environment Agency’s response was quick enough. We want to know whether there was a pre-existing plan for this kind of accident; the way the sewage system is connected means that we would expect there to be one. If there was such a plan, was it put in place immediately? Of course, we also want to know who will pay not only for the response but for the damage that has been done to the river. I have already said that the Environment Agency’s engagement with me was quick, which I very much appreciate. However, I am also conscious that the agency is marking its own homework on the speed and the detail of the response. Like Thames Water and Transport for London, it has tough questions to answer—all of these bodies do. Key partners, such as the National Trust and the South East Rivers Trust, have had to operate on their own initiative at times, without information cascading down from these bodies or a clear plan to follow. There are some fears among people in the community that the Environment Agency might have been playing down the impact of the incident, and it is not totally clear what actions were taken at what time. As I have talked to conservationists, I have come to understand that when diesel dissipates, that is not the end of the destruction it can cause, because it will have broken down into the water body, and entered the sediments of the soil and into fish gills.