JONATHAN REYNOLDS: 'The Rivers Trust Sewage Map has shown raw sewage regularly being released into the Tame'

As regular readers of this column will know, the state of our water ways is of great concern to myself, this Labour Government Labour and, as my inbox attests, to constituents of Stalybridge and Hyde. 

The Rivers Trust Sewage Map has shown raw sewage regularly being released into the Tame and Etherow rivers across the constituency. 

I have consistently voted for cleaner rivers and stronger regulation of water companies, but over 14 years the Conservatives consistently blocked any action. 

The advantage of now being in government is that we can finally act to address this awful situation. This is why the Labour Government introduced the Water (Special Measures) Bill, which will go through its final stages in Parliament this week, to give regulators the most significant increase in enforcement powers in a decade to crack down on companies damaging the environment and failing their customers.  

The Bill delivers on the manifesto pledges to clean up the water sector, including significantly increasing the ability of the Environment Agency to bring forward criminal charges against law-breaking water executives. 

It will create new tougher penalties, including imprisonment, for water executives when companies fail to co-operate or obstruct investigations. 

The new legislation will also ban the payment of bonuses to water bosses if they fail to meet high standards to protect the environment, their consumers and their company’s finances.  

Other measures in the Bill include severe and automatic fines for a range of offences, including allowing regulators to issue penalties more quickly, without having to direct resources to lengthy investigations. 

It will also introduce independent monitoring of every sewage outlet, with water companies required to publish real-time data for all emergency overflows. 

Discharges will have to be reported within an hour of the initial spill.  

This Bill is a major step forward in our wider reform to fix the broken water system. 

The Labour Government will outline further legislation to fundamentally transform how the water industry is run and speed up the delivery of upgrades to our sewage infrastructure to clean up our waterways for good. 

I also welcome the announcement from United Utilities this week that they will be investing over £13 billion over the next 5 years in the North West to improve water quality, reduce leaks and storm overflows by 60%. 

As well as supporting 30,000 jobs across the region this is a sign that water companies are getting the message that decades of underinvestment is not acceptable. I would urge them to go further and faster.