Peter Swallow

Peter Swallow

Labour — Bracknell

Speaking in the House of Commons on 15 January 2025

Debate

Rivers, Lakes and Seas: Water Quality

Contribution

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes) for bringing forward this important debate. In December, the Environment Agency rehomed thousands of fish into the River Cut at Jock’s Lane in Bracknell. That stocking will provide an immediate boost to fish numbers, which will be multiplied many times when the arrivals settle into their new homes and begin to spawn. In recent years, Jock’s Lane has been better known as a sewage spot than an angler’s paradise, so this intervention is welcome. The question now is how best to protect these latest Bracknell residents from any further sewage leakage. In 2023, Thames Water dumped more than 1,000 hours of raw and partially treated sewage into Bracknell and Sandhurst rivers. In Bracknell that was into the River Cut and in Sandhurst it was into the River Blackwater. It is not only deeply damaging to nature; it is frankly disgusting. A decade of under-investment by water companies and a lack of oversight from successive Tory Governments have led us to this.

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