Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)

My Lords, this is a large group of amendments and I am going to go on a bit; I apologise for that. I will speak first of all to my Amendment 45, which is a probing amendment. I should say, for the avoidance of doubt, that I declare no beavers. The Bill requires sewerage undertakers to publish a range of information when there is a discharge from an emergency overflow. My Amendment 45 would add a requirement that such monitoring and reporting should include whether what are known as “emerging contaminants” are present, including but not limited to per-fluoroalkyl and poly-fluoroalkyl substances—PFAS—and microplastics. Let me explain why this is important. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, expressed worries about these sorts of chemicals in discharges in national parks, but it not just national parks; these discharges are happening everywhere. PFAS are serious pollutants and occur in entirely innocent-looking products and processes. They accumulate in our rivers and seas, they are persistent and cannot be extracted, and they harm both human and animal health. These PFAS are used in over 200 applications, and I felt pretty guilty when I was briefed on these applications by the Marine Stewardship Council, as I—and probably other noble Lords—use these harmful applications, day in, day out. PFAS are used in anything with Teflon, for example, including non-stick pots, in waterproof clothing, in stain-resisting products, in cosmetics, in firefighting foams, and even in Apple watchstraps. My daily slow-release pills that keep me alive in the face of ulcerative colitis send PFAS into the water environment straight from my gut. So I and all noble Lords are responsible for all of this. PFAS are tricky to manage: they reach the water environment as particulates through storm or emergency overflows from sewage treatment works, but also from sewage sludge spread on the land or from being sprayed directly into the environment, as with firefighting foams. Once in our waters, they cause damage to wildlife and human health. Although some PFAS can be removed at sewage treatment works, the only secure way to deal with them is to ban those PFAS for which there is a viable alternative—there are a number of viable alternatives for many PFAS—and then seek to develop alternatives for those for which there are not yet alternatives.