Pippa Heylings

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Dowd. Like our rivers, lakes and seas, our chalk streams are choked with a cocktail of chemicals and sewage. Water shortages are already becoming critical. That is the case in my constituency, which is home to precious chalk streams that are under threat. The Conservative Government failed to stop water companies dumping raw sewage, and Ofwat continues to fail to regulate them. There was some hope that river basin management planning would achieve an overview and a strategic framework for managing our waterways’ different uses and challenges. However, as has been mentioned, the Office for Environmental Protection was clear that there are not enough specific, time-bound and certain measures in the river basin management plans to achieve environmental objectives, and that there had been insufficient investment in measures to address all major pressures. Yesterday, the Government said in their response to the OEP’s report on progress in improving the natural environment that the issue will be addressed by the independent commission into the water sector regulatory system led by Sir Jon Cunliffe. It is critical that the commission takes a holistic look and includes chalk streams in its review. Storm overflows and untreated sewage regularly make headlines, but they are just part of the problem. As we have heard, phosphorous pollution is the most common reason why water bodies in England fail to achieve good ecological status, with over half of rivers failing targets. Phosphorous in the water environment comes largely from the continuous discharge of treated wastewater by the wastewater industry, with that effluent responsible for around 70% of the total load. That is endangering our chalk streams, which are a natural treasure and among the rarest habitats on earth. They are our unique heritage—as precious as the Great Barrier Reef is to Australia or as the Amazon rainforest is to South America. The rare and beautiful chalk streams in my constituency are like a song, and the singers are the river groups that protect them: the friends of the Rivers Mel, Rhee, Granta, Shep, Orwell and Wilbraham and of the Cherry Hinton Brook, and the Cam Valley Forum. These chalk streams are under siege. Enough is enough: we need to give them specific protected status now.