Member

Amendment 58 in my name would amend Section 82 of the Environment Act 2021 to require the Environment Agency, not the water companies, to monitor in-river impact and to require publication of the data generated. It is now pretty well acknowledged that there were considerable problems caused by the introduction 15 years ago of operator self-monitoring into water company activities. At that point, it applied only to the monitoring of discharge from sewerage infrastructure. The truth is that the water companies have exploited operator self-monitoring and have brought it into disrepute. There is now no public trust in operator self-monitoring and there is a real issue of public confidence in the whole system. We made it worse in the Environment Act 2021, where the principle of operator self-monitoring was unwisely extended by the previous Government to include monitoring the quality of the water potentially affected by discharges: not only the discharge-point monitoring but the monitoring of rivers, streams and water bodies upstream and downstream of discharges.