I beg to move, That this House has considered bathing water regulations. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir John. It is a privilege to open this debate, and fantastic to see so many hon. Friends and Members.

I am grateful to all of them, as well as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), and the Minister, for their time this afternoon. We are fortunate in this country to have beautiful natural landscapes.

We are blessed with an abundance of beautiful beaches, inland lakes and rivers, pre-eminent among them the River Tone, which runs through Taunton and Wellington. We are lucky to have French Weir and Longrun Meadow as one of the 27 new bathing water sites.

I sincerely thank the incredible volunteers, the Friends of French Weir Park, who worked with me to apply for and achieve designated bathing water status there last year. That means that for the first time we know the river’s water quality.

It is variable and now proven to be poor, generally speaking. We now have that information because it is publicly available, and we can work towards getting the investment we need to improve the water. I am sure there are similar groups across the country in the constituencies of other hon.

Members.

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing forward this important debate. I know how much he enjoys a dip in the River Tone. The River Parrett in Langport is a well known and loved body of water for swimming and water sports, which I hope will soon become a designated bathing water site.

Sadly, polluters discharged sewage into it 54 times in 2023, amounting to 453 hours of pollution. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is crucial to support such sites to obtain bathing water status, so that they are safe for all who wish to use them?

My hon. Friend and neighbour is absolutely right. We need to see more bathing waters not fewer. That is one of the concerns I have in this debate. Bathing waters are not just places where people swim; they are part of the identity and lifeblood of our communities across the country.

As in my constituency, they are places where people come together for swimming clubs, rowing clubs, kayaking, paddleboarding, or just to enjoy the natural beauty of the river.

I commend the hon. Gentleman. He has invited contributions from those of us who are interested in bathing waters. My constituency has Strangford lough and the Irish sea on the other side. Back home, the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs designates water quality.

I am concerned that, if anyone wants to check water quality on the Ards peninsula, Strangford lough or the Irish sea, they must go online, which does not suit everybody. Does he agree with my suggestion to DAERA that there should be signs at designated bathing waters indicating the water quality?

That would be much simpler. People who go for wild-water swimming and other pursuits, would be able to see right away if the water quality is at the level it should be.

Order. If Members want to contribute they should bob. I want to call the Front Benchers at about 5.10 pm, so Back Benchers can work out how long they should speak for so that everyone can get in.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing this critical debate. While covid-19 undoubtably brought on many challenges, one positive outcome was the surge in open-water swimming.

More people than ever before enjoyed blue spaces for recreational activities, reaping significant benefits for both their physical and mental wellbeing.

However, many were more cautious about diving into freezing cold lakes, rivers and streams when they were aware of the level of bacteria and pollution present in our waters. As Liberal Democrats, we have long and passionately campaigned on this issue.

Last year, the Lib Dems discovered that water companies had discharged sewage over 100,000 times in areas designated as current bathing waters, putting public health and local ecosystems at risk.

My constituency of Tiverton and Minehead neighbours the patch of my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos). Very recently, one of my constituents shared a harrowing story with me, in which his children fell seriously ill after swimming in a local river last summer.

These public health risks are further exacerbated by bad flooding in our areas, as we have seen in recent episodes, which sweeps contaminants and overwhelms sewage systems into our waterways, degrading water quality. Does my hon.

Friend agree that stricter regulations must be introduced in the interest of public health and to ensure that our bathing waters are safe for everybody to enjoy?

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. We have talked a lot about the ecological and health benefits, but there is also an important economic impact, as shown by all the events in Henley that he outlined.

For example, tourism contributes more than £700 million every year to the local economy in West Dorset. We have the Jurassic coast and the River Lim church cliff beach at Lyme Regis, which has just been designated as bathing water.

It is important to recognise that clean water benefits our local communities not just in terms of health and nature, but in terms of our tourism industry.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing this timely and urgent debate.

A healthy natural environment is essential for both public health and our economy, yet our rivers and bathing waters are being polluted at an alarming rate.

In my constituency of Stratford-on-Avon, the River Avon, meandering along its valley, is a treasured natural asset that is used by many residents for kayaking, swimming, boating and rowing, but sewage discharges and pollution threaten its water quality.

Under the previous Government, water companies were allowed to pollute our rivers while consumers paid the price. We need stronger regulations, legally binding water quality targets, and more transparent, year-long testing to tackle this crisis.

Local authorities must also be given greater powers to hold polluters accountable.

I thank the many citizen science projects in my constituency, such as Safe Avon, that have highlighted the scale of the issue and the impact of poor water quality on the Avon, its tributaries, and our many precious brooks and streams.

Our local residents and groups have come together to create River Hope, which is a new participatory process taking place in Stratford-on-Avon.

It fosters a positive narrative for the River Avon ecosystem, and involves individuals, community groups and others implementing activities and events in, on, around and about our local water catchments and their biodiverse ecosystems.

Residents not only engage in practical actions to restore and protect the wildlife and flora that the river sustains, but create a positive narrative of gratitude, good stewardship and love for the water as an essential element of thriving biodiversity. The river has rights.

Our rivers and waterways should be safe for swimming and for thriving wildlife, and should be protected for future generations to cherish and enjoy.

I am calling the Front Bench spokespeople early. That is not an invitation to speak—[Interruption.] Sorry, do we have Cameron Thomas? I did not think you were bobbing.

I was not bobbing; I was just going to intervene.

Then I am going to call the Front-Bench spokespeople. That is not an invitation to speak at inordinate length. We are delighted to hear from Tim Farron.

My remarks about brevity were neither targeted at nor limited to Mr Farron. I call the shadow Minister, Robbie Moore.

I wanted to clarify that there are two bodies of argument here. Given that there has been a complete lack of regulations and ways to enforce the “polluter pays” principle with water companies until now, status has been seen as one of the only mechanisms to do it.

However, I would like the Minister to recognise that these are already bathing sites because the criteria is that they have to show that they are already being used as bathing sites—that they are recognised as culturally and ecologically important.

Given that, even though they are poor we should be investing in them to ensure that they continue. We know that if they are declared poor, people are warned of that and therefore do not swim.

So we are not subjecting people to unsafe water; we are recognising that these are key bathing areas and have historical, cultural and ecological importance—now and in the future.

I do not disagree in the slightest. To be completely clear, sites that are already designated as bathing sites of course need enhanced investment and support to improve them, even if they are poor at the moment.

I was addressing the point about when we are looking to designate new sites, and answering the question why we are looking at core reform 2. Again, I stress that we have not officially responded to the consultation.

If we are looking at a site that we wish to designate in the future, which is of a really low quality, is it irresponsible to designate that site knowing that it will not reach for five to 10 years the standard it needs to reach? Like everything, that is a question for debate.

But for sites that are designated at the moment, I agree that we should be putting extra investment into them even if they are poor. I do not want to rehearse the many debates and discussions we have already had. There were 36 amendments, I think, to the Water (Special Measures) Act on Report.

Forty-four.

Forty-four amendments! We had many debates and discussions during the passage of that Act. To rehearse an argument we have had many times before, the reason why we are not focusing on the volume of water coming out is simply because volume can be very diluted, and therefore not a great threat.

There can be a small amount of incredibly toxic waste causing a huge amount of damage. I would like to see the investment going into water quality monitors. That is part of the next price review—how can we put water quality monitors in?

They would measure whether it is a huge amount and it is dilute, or a small amount and it is toxic. We just want to know what damage is being done to the river. My focus is, and remains, on water quality. There were some genuinely helpful suggestions from the hon.

Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) about where to place those monitors for measuring water quality. That was a really helpful contribution. While I am paying credit to him, the way we describe it—how we say it is safe to bathe—was also a helpful suggestion.

Will the Minister give way?

I will; I am praising the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale—let us get back to normal.

The Government have moved quickly on this issue. Does the Minister recognise that it is important that we maintain an engaged and concerned public? I have met with the Wylam clean river group and with other concerned groups throughout my constituency along the length of the Tyne.

One thing that continues to resonate with me is that these groups understand that this is a consistent piece of work, and that we need to be constantly iterating on making sure that our rivers do not just get clean, but remain clean into the future.

The Government and the public need to consistently work in partnership.

The Minister made some points on the length of time it would take to get some popular sites up to standard. Would she consider a pre-designation status, so that those sites are not left on the shelf with no support whatsoever—so that we are recognising, as my hon.

Friends have said, the importance of certain sites for sporting, cultural and historical reasons?

That is a really interesting consideration. I hope the hon. Member fed that into the consultation. I will not commit either way, but it is an interesting point and one I will reflect on—as I said, this is a Government who listen. On that note, I think it is time for me to finish talking.

I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate.

Well done for getting your mum in Hansard. I call Gideon Amos to say a few words to sum up.

I am really grateful to everyone who has taken part in the debate. I thank them very much.

I am delighted that when I was filling in the form for bathing water status in French Weir, it was such a successful initiative that it attracted not only the support of the Opposition spokesperson but also my predecessor as Member of Parliament at the time.

We were delighted to get that designation, but it would not have happened if core reform 2 was in place.

Even though that bathing site has been there for hundreds of years, dating back to at least the 18th century—we have records and pictures from the 19th century of changing rooms beside the river—the designation would not have happened and people would continue using the river and they would not have the benefit of bathing water status.

I urge the Minister to think carefully about introducing this very different criterion and moving away from places where people actually swim towards places where the industry think that they can afford to make the water quality better. That is the wrong criterion.

The right criterion is where people are already using the river. I was in the river every Saturday in February—I did not quite make January—and people will be there throughout the year, whether or not the signs are up and it has bathing water status.

I urge the Minister to think a little more on that. I reiterate my thanks to everyone for taking part. I hope the Minister will ensure a debate on the regulations when they go through this House, because they are really important for our water quality. Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That this House has considered bathing water regulations.