David Chadwick

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. Member for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes) for securing the debate. Like her, I am privileged to represent a constituency that is home to some of the UK’s most powerful rivers, including the Rivers Wye, Usk and Towy. However, these national treasures are drowning under a barrage of pollution. The Wye, Usk and Towy are heavily polluted, harming the environment and local wildlife, and jeopardising industries such as tourism, leisure and angling. I fully support the concerns raised about the previous Conservative Government’s failure to tackle water pollution. Conservative neglect allowed water companies to pollute rivers with impunity while siphoning off profits to pay excessive bonuses and dividends. People want swift action now. As the hon. Member for Monmouthshire mentioned, the previous Government had several roundtables on how to clean up the Wye, but what happened? Very little. The impact of the inability to clean up our rivers is hurting local communities in my constituency. We know there is a housing crisis, caused by a shortage of affordable homes. In Talgarth, a moratorium on new homes has been in place since 2022, meaning several much-needed housing schemes are frozen. Oversight from the Welsh Labour Government has fallen short. Although it is a non-profit organisation, for years Dŵr Cymru failed to invest in infrastructure and still diverted funds into executive pay, and it is one of the worst offenders on sewage dumping. There is widespread agreement that stronger regulations on water pollution are needed, a stance that I support fully, but regulations are effective only if they are enforced. In Wales, enforcement is severely lacking. Natural Resources Wales, our environmental regulator, has faced a decade of cuts under the Welsh Government, and is currently operating at least 50 staff members short of the number needed to do the job effectively.