Catherine Fookes

I beg to move, That this House has considered water quality in rivers, lakes and seas. Bore da—good morning. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I grew up in the countryside on a farm, and one of my favourite memories was having a friend round, going for a walk and sploshing through the streams at the bottom of the garden. We took it for granted that we could mess about in the Dorset chalk streams, and apart from annoying my mum when I came back inside sopping wet, making a terrible mess, there was never any fear that I would get sick or that I would be wading through sewage. What a change there has been, with parents now too scared to let their children run helter-skelter into the local stream, river or lake, for fear that they will get an ear infection, an eye infection or a stomach infection, or encounter a wet wipe or something much worse. I moved to Monmouthshire 25 years ago, and it was fantastic to raise my children there, with its fantastic rivers including the Wye, the Usk, the Monnow and lots of smaller rivers criss-crossing the constituency. I have spent so many happy hours, as I am sure other Members have in their local rivers, swimming in the Usk, walking by the Wye and kayaking down it. I have seen kingfishers and heron there and introduced my kids to the amazing wildlife we have, and I have spent some of our happiest days there as a family. Sadly, the health of our two major rivers, the Wye and the Usk, is in serious decline, and they are really good examples of what is happening elsewhere in the UK. In February 2022, Natural Resources Wales research showed that the Usk had the highest incidence of phosphate pollution of the nine Welsh special areas of conservation, or SACs, designated for rivers. In Glascoed near Usk, there was an average 85% failure rate against phosphate targets between January 2023 and June 2024. The Wye is being impacted by high levels of phosphates, which are causing a decline in water quality and algal blooms that then starve the fish, plants and invertebrates of oxygen. That leads to biodiversity loss and the collapse of the whole web of life in the river. These algal blooms are growing larger and becoming more frequent. In 2020, a thick algal bloom extended for more than 140 miles of the river. Recovery will take decades. Natural England’s condition assessment for the Wye SAC in 2023 was “unfavourable-declining”, which was based on declines in Atlantic salmon, water quality and white-clawed crayfish in the Lugg, and aquatic plants, Atlantic salmon and white-clawed crayfish in the Wye.