Emma Hardy

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I thank the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) for securing this debate, and I am grateful to everybody who has spoken in it. I welcome the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) to his place. I enjoyed listening to his first contribution from the Front Bench. Before I get into the debate about water, I want to say a few words about flooding. There is obviously still a major incident classification in Somerset—I am going there after this debate—and that remains a concern. There are reports of flooding to about 300 properties, mostly in Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. The Environment Agency flood defences have helped to protect about 16,200 properties from flooding, but it is still a difficult situation. There is still heavy rain across England, and it has continued in the south and south-west. I want to put on the record my thanks to the Environment Agency, the emergency services and everybody else, and I give my absolute sympathy and support to anybody impacted by the flooding. As a trade unionist, I echo the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher). The anger that the public feel towards water companies must never be directed at the people working for those companies, who are often the ones out there fixing the broken pipes and dealing with the sewer overflow. I remain concerned by reports from the unions about how they have been treated by some. Anger at the industry should never be directed at the people working for it. I am delighted to say that we have set out our vision for water through the White Paper, which was published last month. It outlines how we will work together with water companies, communities and the environment to transform our water sector and ensure a sustainable water system for future generations. It will drive forward the transformatory change that we need. I pay tribute to the passion of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) on this topic. She lobbies me not only publicly, but over coffee in the Tea Room and in the corridors, too. She is genuinely committed to this, and I thank her for her work. She is right to say that we have banned £4 million of bonuses, and she spoke about the Public Accounts Committee’s report, which highlighted regulatory failure. The White Paper mentions sustainable debt and what that might mean. The regulator is bringing the economic environment together. My hon. Friend rightly highlighted the need for skills; we are looking at how to appoint the people we need. She is right that statutorily those organisations need to continue to do their job and hold companies to account, but we need to create a shadow organisation working at the same time. Until we actually change the law, those organisations will still have all the powers. I look forward to meeting the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Dr Chowns) to talk about the River Wye. I will come on to talk a little more about the environment. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) for his work on the EFRA Committee. He is right that we need more of a joined-up approach. Asset health is a massive issue, as people in Tunbridge Wells know only too well. I was shocked when I came into this role and was told that companies do not even know where some of their assets are. That is absolutely basic. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase talked about environmental pollution, which is a huge issue. On 27 January, I met members of DEFRA’s Addressing Pollution from Agriculture programme, which I have mentioned in this Chamber before. They include representatives from farming, environmental groups and water companies. My idea was to bring everybody together so that they could hear from one another—the environmentalists from the farmers, and the farmers from the water companies—on the question of how we are going to address the challenge of environmental pollution. For some farmers, I think there is a question around education and understanding the right way to do things. I do not think they go out there to cause pollution deliberately. The question is, how do we work with them to solve this issue? On 27 January, I met them side by side with the Farming Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), to talk to them about this issue. Every four weeks until the summer, they will meet to say, “What can we do about agricultural pollution as one of the main sources of pollution?” Rather than me talking to the environmentalists and the Farming Minister talking to the farmers, we prefer the collaborative approach of having everyone talking to one another about how we solve the problem. That is the approach we have taken. When there is more to say on the outcomes of the group, I will report that back to the House. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) is passionate about this issue. In fact, my very first visit as Minister was to see the River Foss barrier. I am so pleased that she mentioned the issues around chemicals and the increasing awareness of PFAS—per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances—what is happening with chemicals and the need to look at the thresholds for levels of chemicals in the water. I will definitely ask the University of York to send me information on its Ecomix work and its AQuA project to see how it is doing that. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack) brought to life horrific experiences of flooding and how devastating flooding is for people’s mental health. We need to look at what can be improved. Obviously, if there are any concerns about water companies not giving her the information on what will be improved in her area and where, I am more than willing to follow up on that. People who know me know that I get very excited about regional planning, and this Chamber is the place to be excited about regional planning. The White Paper talks a bit about what we are going to do, but I will give Members a heads up on what I am doing tomorrow: I have the first meeting of the steering group looking at regional planning. The group comprises catchment partnerships, the Environment Agency, local authorities, Ofwat, National Highways—of course, one of the concerns with water pollution is run-off from our highways—the NFU, Wildlife and Countryside Link, water companies, the Rivers Trust, Blueprint for Water and internal drainage boards. I have probably missed one. We are bringing everybody together to determine where around the country we will have the early roll-out of out some of these measures. We want to determine how Sir Jon Cunliffe’s regional planning model will apply to different catchments, depending on whether they are coastal and whether they include rivers, and how this will work in practice. I cannot remember which Member it was, but someone said that we do not seem to be in favour of nature-based solutions. Clearly, they have never heard me talk about my passion for nature-based solutions, because that is simply not true. The idea is that we are looking at the pre-pipe stuff—the nature-based solutions—in regional areas. In different areas around the country, those boards will have slightly different compositions, depending on the type of catchment.