A report by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee is calling for a new regulatory system to close loopholes that allow cumulative impacts of frequent but low-level pollution to go unpunished.
The Committee also calls for better customer protections. It says it welcomes the creation of a new promised Ombudsman but recommends better standards for incident responses and compensation arrangements when businesses and homes are hit by outages.
MPs say they want a standardised social tariff as a minimum level of support for low-income households, among other measures to end water poverty by 2030.
EFRA’s report comes in anticipation of Labour introducing a Water Bill in parliament.
Alistair Carmichael MP, EFRA Committee Chair, said: “A spaghetti junction of 80 pieces of legislation relating to the water sector, punctured by glaring gaps and loopholes, is one of the main reasons this industry descended into the mess it’s in.
“We support the government’s ambition to clear up this regulatory system. While we await new legislation and detail, this report sets out challenges that new reforms must rise to.”
To reduce wastewater pollution the Committee is calling for new standards for inspections and monitoring, national targets to cut incidents, targets to increase nature-based solutions and robust third-party verification of data supplied by companies.
EFRA says it “tentatively” supports the government’s proposal for an integrated regulator that combines the functions of Ofwat, The Environment Agency, the Drinking Water Inspectorate and Natural England.
However, the report recommends that Labour avoids avoid regulatory capture by placing restrictions on recruitment between the regulator and water companies, with auditing by Defra.
Despite the Committee not support increasing the size of fines, it still wants more rigorous turnaround regimes for persistent or serious failures.
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