Southport MP responds to sewerage vote after he received "a flurry of abusive emails"

Cleaning up our rivers: I recently supported the Government’s Environment Bill which helps to clean up our rivers and protect our environment. Since then, I’ve received a flurry of abusive emails from those who have, as often is the case, read the ‘expert’ opinion of others on Facebook. 

Last week, MPs voted on the Government’s Environment Bill which is a brilliant piece of new legislation which strengthens many of our existing environmental laws (I should know – I was the Private Parliamentary Secretary at the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs when this piece of legislation was drafted).

During the course of the debate, I voted against an uncosted amendment which would have seen households in Southport pay thousands of extra pounds in water bills - money which I know most families don’t have. This has seen many of the usual agitators suggest that ‘Tory MPs voted for raw sewage to be pumped into rivers!’ - a laughable, inaccurate and ridiculous claim which ignores the safeguards and work which is ongoing to protect our rivers and which I voted for as part of the Bill.  

I did not support the Lords’ section of amendment 45 for one very important reason. The age of our sewerage system means the complete elimination of storm overflows would be extremely challenging. Notably, initial assessments suggest elimination would cost between £150 - £660 billion. To put that in perspective, that is nearly £10,000 for every person in the United Kingdom. This would undoubtedly lead to customer bill increases and trade-offs against other water industry priorities. 

It could also be a huge liability for the taxpayer as government would ultimately be responsible for ensuring that this work would be carried out and would have to underwrite the cost. The threat that households could have faced huge increases in their bills if this amendment was approved was very real. I suspect that 99.99% of people wouldn’t support a huge increase in their water bills and I make no apology for voting this amendment down to protect working families.

I did, however, vote to implement a number of new measures to address the harm caused by storm overflows, which you can read here: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/2593 

I hope this information is useful and reassures my constituents that clear and effective action is being taken to address storm overflows. I hope it also addresses the ridiculous suggestion that raw sewage will be visible from Southport’s pier!