Water Management

After a summer of drought in England, including in my constituency, we are bracing ourselves for flooding and storm overflows, and then more drought and more flooding, and then more storm overflows, and then more drought, more flooding and more storm overflows. On the levels around Stathe, Helland, Burrowbridge, Stoke St Mary and North Curry, my constituents must get used to the risk of their land being underwater almost every year, sewage being surcharged into the River Tone, and hosepipe bans and drought, if not at the same time, then in very quick succession. We are looking at a future of water scarcity—too little water—and too much water. The proposed solutions sound familiar: more reservoirs, more underground stormwater tanks, thicker concrete, bigger pipes, more pumping, more energy and more chemicals. Yes, we are going to need some of that, but that alone would amount to one of the most carbon-intensive infrastructure investment programmes this country has ever seen. In treating the symptoms, not the causes, those measures risk failure. Instead, it is time to tackle the problem where it begins: in the way that our homes, streets and buildings have been designed for decades and in the way that they will be designed in the future. The truth is that England does not lack water. I will be able to point to an awful lot of it this autumn across my constituency. Rather, it lacks the ability or perhaps the political will to manage it sustainably where it lands.

I commend the hon. Gentleman on introducing the debate. Is it not time to ensure that developers with a number of projects—many of them building hundreds of houses—start paying towards the upgrading of waste and water management? They often have big profit margins on their houses and such a policy would take the onus off Government and off the Minister.

The hon. Gentleman is quite right that developers should pay their way. There is much to do, as I will come to. On average, each house roof in England receives enough free rainwater to meet all its household’s non-potable—non-drinking—water needs, including flushing toilets, washing clothes and watering gardens. Instead of that, we send it, often at high speed, into the sewerage network where it discharges into our rivers. At the same time, we spend millions of pounds making pure drinking water, pumping it into our homes and flushing that down the toilet. Around a quarter to a third of drinking water in our homes gets nowhere near being drunk. In fact, it is all flushed down the drain without a single drop quenching anybody’s thirst. It is an appalling and pointless waste of drinking water and energy. It means that we respond by investing tens of billions of pounds in reservoirs to hold a bit more rain, so we can treat more of it, pump more of it into our homes and—yes—flush more of it down the toilet unnecessarily. That is not environmental progress; that is a high-carbon and highly expensive way of papering over the cracks in our water system. The water from our homes and highways—vast volumes of rainwater—continue to go straight down the drain as well, mixing with sewage, pointlessly being pumped and treated and pumped and treated, and far too often creating a backwash that sends sewage tumbling into the River Tone in my constituency and into rivers and beaches across the country. Our waste water treatment plants can cope with the sewage that is produced. What they cannot cope with is the millions of litres of rainwater we add to the sewage before we send it to the waste water treatment plants. Too often we respond by investing huge amounts into storage tanks to hold stormwater, so we can pump and treat more of it. that is a high-carbon and highly expensive way of papering over the cracks in our water system. The climate is making the problems worse and, ironically, our addition of rainwater into the mix is making the climate worse—a classic doom loop. As the atmosphere warms, England’s winters become wetter and our summers drier with more intensive thunderstorms. Meanwhile, housing delivery continues at scale, covering land with more impermeable surfaces while we continue to legally entitle developers to collect new rainwater and add that to the sewerage systems as well, which cannot cope. We are building the problem into existence before our eyes. Contrast this with how we look and deal with energy. We no longer assume that all power has to be generated centrally. Instead, we actively encourage decentralised generation, such as solar panels on roofs which, thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson), will now be required on every roof of every new home. We have batteries in homes and heat pumps replacing distant combustion, and we offer grants to make it happen. On water, we remain stubbornly stuck in—well, I was going to say the 20th century, but it feels like the 19th century. Other countries have progressed. In parts of Belgium, new homes must capture rainwater for beneficial use. No wonder it has achieved the lowest per capita water consumption in Europe, and no doubt the lowest water bills with it. Australia, Germany and Singapore have embedded rainwater harvesting and source-controlled drainage into mainstream development. In England, by contrast, we continue to ignore rainwater’s massive asset value. Even the amendment I proposed to the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 that new homes should capture rainwater to use it and lower residents’ bills was rejected, I am sorry to say, by the Government. This issue will not go away, and the alternative approach is really not that radical. It is all remarkably simple. The simple principle is what is called source control: capture rain where it falls, use it wisely and return the excess rain to the ground where it fell. Why use it to top up our sewage? Do we love sewage so much that we actually want to make more of it by adding more water and creating an even greater volume? For all those homes built in earlier centuries where rainwater is directed into the sewer already, why not offer grants to retro-split two drains from the one drain they have at the moment? It would mean lower costs for the consumer, lower water bills, less sewerage for water companies, less sewage going into our rivers and lower costs for the Government, the public and the agencies to cope with. It could cut water bills by roughly a third, meaning £225 off the average household bill. A household in Taunton and Wellington that catches its own rainwater and takes it out of the sewer would cut its water bill by a quarter to a third. That is around £225 a year off a £695 bill. Nationally, that is 28% to 35% of the total bill. If we gross that up, that is £6.5 billion off bills across 29 million households. Imagine what that could do if it was freed up to be spent in the economy in other ways.

I confess that I am a little confused. There are plenty of places in the country, including in my region, where we already have a separate system for sewage and rainwater runoff that should keep them separate. Yet, over many years, we have seen that that has not had the desired effect, and I am sorry to say that we are still seeing far too much sewage going into our rivers. While I recognise the point he is trying to make, I do not think that it is the silver bullet he suggests. Does he not accept that if we are to capture more rainwater, the way to do that is to build the reservoirs we need?

As I said at the beginning, we certainly need some reservoirs; I completely accept that. However, as I have explained, we do not assume that the only solution with energy is massive, centralised power stations. In the same way, collecting water on our roofs and in our homes can make a massive contribution. That contribution—some £6.5 billion back into people’s pockets—is not to be sneezed at. Done at scale, the approach simultaneously tackles water scarcity, water excesses and carbon emissions. Toilets flushed with rainwater reduce demand for new reservoirs and enable more new development. Soakaways, green roofs and property-level sustainable drainage systems help to slow run-off and reduce flood risk and storm overflows. Less pumping and treatment means lower operational carbon. Less concrete and excavation means lower embodied carbon. Crucially, decentralised rainwater management delivers the benefits exactly where people experience them.

My hon. Friend is showing his usual erudition on these topics. He mentions SUDS—sustainable drainage systems—which can be an important part of the solutions he outlines. However, many homeowners in my constituency find that those sustainable drainage systems do not work as intended because they are not properly designed and maintained. We have unenacted legislation that means developers are not being held to account. Does he agree that we need to do more to make sustainable drainage systems work effectively?

My hon. Friend is characteristically right, and I will come on to schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, which he and I tried on several occasions to have enacted during the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Crucially, decentralised water management delivers the benefits I have listed: homes that are more resilient, bills that are lower, streets that flood less and rivers that have less sewage being discharged into them. Before I was elected as an MP, my campaign was to get the River Tone designated as a bathing water at French Weir. Working with the friends’ group, we succeeded, but unless we take action to reduce sewage volumes in the Tone catchment and around the country, we will not be able to meaningfully reduce sewage discharges into those rivers and beaches. Crucially, none of this requires an AI data centre to make it happen; what is required is a shift in mindset: managing rain before it becomes a problem rather than using it to make a problem and then trying to manage that problem we have created. We can personally do our bit. My son thinks that the enormous water butt I am trying to make in my back garden is a Heath Robinson creation—well, he would if he knew what Heath Robinson was, but he is far too young. Following all the regulations is challenging, but I am working on it. However, what is really needed is the Government to take action on regulation. Three key changes are needed from the Government. First, we need to stop designing homes that treat rain as an inconvenience to be sent elsewhere. Rather, it should be sent into people’s homes and harnessed as the asset and essential natural resource that it is and require rainwater harvesting in all new homes. Secondly, the Government needs to bring schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act into law, as pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), so that we start to drain more of our rainwater into the ground where it falls and have a properly regulated system for doing so. Thirdly, the Government need to grant the retro-splitting of household drains so that people can save on their bills and at the same time save our rivers—like our precious Tone—which can be spared the sewage these drains create, add to and augment. England is about to spend unprecedented sums on water sewerage and infrastructure. We cannot solely rely on carbon-heavy centralised systems. We should finally change our relationship with the rain that falls right on the top of us all. If we want cleaner rivers, secure water supplies, lower emissions and homes fit for a changing climate, the answer is learning to value rain and use it to save us all money where it lands.

I genuinely thank the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing the debate. I really enjoyed listening to his speech. There was so much agreement from the Government side of the House on pretty much everything he said. He described what I would refer to as “pre-pipe”, which I am really interested in. It is about, exactly as he described, looking at how we stop rainwater ending up in our sewerage system and often contributing to pollution incidents—the system becomes overwhelmed—when, as it is rainwater, it could be elsewhere. The hon. Gentleman touches on one of my favourite things to talk about: nature-based solutions—how we can use nature more, create soakaway areas and create sustainable urban drainage. That is absolutely correct. I am passionate about thinking about how we manage water. We often talk about how to solve problems around pollution, but if we better manage rainwater that falls from the sky, we can help to deal with pollution, as well as many other things. Reservoirs are hugely important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) pointed out, and we should absolutely be using them, but they are part of the wider system—collecting the rainfall and putting it where we want it, rather than it ending up where we do not. It is obviously for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to talk about building standards, but I can tell the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington, because I asked MHCLG ahead of this debate, that it is reviewing water efficiency standards in the building regulations for new homes, and considering how to enable water reuse systems, including rainwater and grey-water systems, where those are safe, practical and cost effective. I have mentioned this issue a few times, and I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern—“astonishment” may be going a bit too far—that we use drinking water to flush our toilets. To give the other side of the argument, which I have had played back to me, the rules mean that the water supplied to domestic properties has to be drinking water quality. I hope that I am not telling the House things I should not, but we are exploring how we can guarantee that we do not mix up the water pipes that go into homes and therefore cause problems that way. This always has to be safety first. That is why the only water that can enter a property—unless a private individual has set up their own system—has to be drinking water quality.

Does the Minister agree that much progress has been made in regard to rainwater harvesting, not just by MHCLG but by the Minister’s Department—not least the landmark report, published this March, by the Drinking Water Inspectorate? The report exactly explored a potential governance framework that sets out standards for non-potable water in domestic settings, and talks about accreditation and standards, to ensure that these systems, when we are ready to bring them in, are safe and will be properly maintained.

I thank my hon. Friend; I was trying remember what the report was, so I very much appreciate the intervention. She is absolutely right. We have some of the best drinking water in the whole world; we have incredibly high standards for the health of our drinking water. The report by the Drinking Water Inspectorate looks at how we can do this in a safe way, and I am keen to explore that. We are going to be short of drinking water if we continue at this scale in the future. Thinking about where we are using it, rather than using it to flush our toilets, feels like a way forward. There is a huge amount of cross-party thinking on how we can do that. This comes back to the topic of how we manage water. How do we think about water? Where is it falling?

The Minister is obviously aware of the work of the Labour rural research group. One thing we have been talking about is whether environmental land management schemes need longer-term certainty. Farmers are trying to invest in proper water management, as she is describing, but they often need more than three years to do so. Does she agree that her Department may need to look at how we can arrange for ELM schemes to be longer term, specifically when it comes to water?

I am hesitant to agree to something that is not in my brief, but I will certainly mention that to the Farming Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan). The hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington is right that when we think about water management, we often talk about reservoirs; those are very much needed, and do matter, but so does managing water where it falls—thinking about roofs, streets, gardens, farms and developments. That is why we want a more practical, prevention-focused approach to water management that captures more water, wastes less of it and plans developments in a way that looks at local catchments.

One thing that will benefit farmers in my constituency is the £50 million through the sustainable farming incentive to allow farms to build more water storage on their land. That is going to be of huge benefit, because their food stocks are down going into winter after the hot summer. We also have an issue with flooding. Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act has not been enacted, meaning that every development has a right to be connected to the drainage system, which increases the amount of flooding. If the Minister could take that forward with colleagues at MHCLG, I would be very grateful indeed.

On the point about farm reservoirs, my hon. Friend is correct. Today I held a meeting of the national drought group, and we had a focus on agriculture and the impact that drought has had on farmers. We are talking now about potential rain, El Niño and flooding, but drought is still here in this country. One of the conversations we had was, how can we support farmers to hold more of the water that comes down from the sky? We are focusing a lot on funding farm reservoirs, but we also need to think about filling farm reservoirs. How can farmers get them full for the summer, which we need, given our changing climate, with more rain in winter and drier summers? I love SUDS—I get very geekily excited about sustainable drainage systems. I know I am shocking you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I will try to convince you that they can be really nice, and they can be spaces for nature as well. I am not winning, am I?

I completely agree with the Minister. There are many SUDS in Bracknell Forest that have been delivered as part of alternative natural green spaces, and they create lovely nature corridors in our community. I just wanted to put that on the record.

This is like geeks united—we love our SUDS! They are brilliant. The hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington is right: the point about the maintenance of SUDS has been raised a few times. It is okay to build them—I actually think most are built and designed in a very effective way—but there is also the question of how we ensure they are maintained and who is responsible for that.

I just want to make an observation. When I trained as an architect, I had to follow a whole series of regulations on drains about what the diameters are, what the gradients are—everything has to be followed. For SUDS, there are no such regulations. One is regulated; the other is all down to policy. As many Members have said, we need proper regulation for SUDS, because things will go wrong if we do not get schedule 3 or similar legislation on to the statute book.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the expertise he brings to this House from his previous occupation. That is one of the things we are trying to work through with industry and MHCLG. We all agree that SUDS are a really good thing. Where they may not be as effective is the maintenance issue: who is responsible for maintaining them, and who pays for it? That is the kind of thing we are thinking about. This goes back to the point I made earlier. When it comes to planning, are we thinking about the management of water in an area? With our changing climate going from drought to flood, are we thinking about where we want the water? It is a slightly different, nuanced conversation to say, “When it floods, where do we want the water to go? When there is a drought, where are we going to get the water from?” That means thinking about it more holistically in a way that we have not done previously, when we thought about each point in isolation.

In January last year, Storm Chandra caused devastation in East Devon, and there was significant flooding in Ottery St Mary. Does the Minister think that, as well as attenuation ponds and SUDS, people should be encouraged to store water in their own gardens using such things as water butts?

Absolutely; the more we can all do collectively, the better. We are coming up to Flood Action Week, beginning on 12 October, when I will be calling on every single Member in this House to do what they can to get the message out to their constituents about being prepared and how we can all collectively play our part in what could be quite a challenging winter. The national planning policy framework requires all new developments to incorporate SUDS designed and maintained in accordance with national standards. There are some new national standards, and the hierarchy within those standards prioritises collecting rainwater for non-potable uses. We are also committed to better joined-up water planning, with decisions on housing, drainage, water supply and waste water taken together, so that growth is supported in the right places and communities are better protected. In conclusion, I have really enjoyed this debate and talking about some of my favourite things: natural flood management, SUDS, rainwater and water management in a catchment—it has ticked all my favourite boxes. Managing rainwater where it falls is practical, local and important. It can help households to use less mains water, reduce pressure on sewerage, improve drainage, support flood resilience and make new developments more sustainable. That is why this Government continue to support better management of rainwater. Our water system faces significant challenges, but this Government are taking action, cleaning up rivers, tackling pollution at source, holding water companies to account, improving resilience to flood and droughts, and securing investment needed for the future. Through reform, investment and stronger regulation, we are rebuilding public trust and creating a water system that works for people, the environment and our economy. Question put and agreed to.