Dr Danny Chambers

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes) on securing this debate. There are two chalk streams in the Winchester constituency—the River Itchen and the River Meon. The River Itchen flows through the heart of our city; it is not just a beautiful part of our environment but part our cultural heritage as well. There has been a lot of talk about chalk streams in the Chamber today, including in the eloquent contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings). However, we must remember never to take these streams for granted. There are only 210 chalk streams in the world, and 85% are in southern England. The biodiversity and ecosystems of some of them are completely unique, and these streams have been designated as sites of special scientific interest. In the southern chalk streams, for example, the Atlantic salmon are genetically distinct from those in the rest of the ocean. In that respect, dumping sewage and other pollutants in sites of special scientific interest is not only morally wrong but an act of ecological vandalism. Although we support many of the measures the Government have brought forward, after the last Government ignored sewage dumping for so long, we have a couple of specific concerns about chalk streams. One is about the recent statement confirming plans by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to scrap the chalk stream protective pack, without anything else being announced specifically to replace it. Chalk streams form over millions of years and are a unique part of our heritage. The Government need to recognise their importance and not merely lump action on them in with other protective measures. Will the Minister therefore please discuss the Department’s plans to put together a chalk stream-specific recovery plan and to achieve special protective status for all chalk streams? To finish off, I congratulate and pay tribute to all the community groups in Winchester that work so hard on chalk streams—the citizen scientists, the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, and the river keepers. They are really working hard, and we and the Government need to support them in every way we can.