Welsh Conservative Shadow Environment Minister Andrew RT Davies has called for the body responsible for regulating sewage discharges in Wales to be replaced.
Speaking in a debate on pollution in Welsh rivers, Mr Davies warned Natural Resources Wales was too big to discharge its responsibilities.
He said bosses failed to fulfil their regulatory and commercial functions adequately.
He pointed to a recent visit he’d undertaken to the River Kenfig, which he described as “putrid and smelling”.
He said it was a “dead river” with a “complete lack of birdsong”.
He warned Wales is the worst affected part of Britain when it comes to sewage discharges, with 118,000 taking place in 2024.
England, which has a population 18 times bigger, had 450,000.
Mr Davies said:
“Wales is the worst part of Britain for sewage discharges, and that’s down to a failure of regulation.
“On a recent visit with the Kenfig Wildlife Trust, I saw a dead river – and this is not a one off.
“Natural Resources Wales is not fit for purpose –its regulatory and commercial functions must be split.”
ENDS
NOTE: Please find below the Senedd’s record of proceedings from Wednesday 24th June
https://record.senedd.wales/Plenary/16077#C765000
Andrew R.T. Davies
17:41:36
Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I move the amendment in the name of Paul Davies on the order paper this afternoon. We will be supporting the motion this afternoon, but I have to say I start from the premise, as a Conservative, that, actually, legislation should be one of the last resorts that you should use, because all you do is create an argument between solicitors at the end of the legislation and actually don’t solve any problems for people at large. So I’d like to see a small state rather than a big state, but, on this particular issue, people do feel disempowered and they do feel that nothing is happening to help them.
Recently, I undertook a visit to the Kenfig National Nature Reserve and looked at the River Kenfig. I know other Members in this Chamber have done the same. To see a completely dead river is actually quite stark, to say the least—to see it putrid and smelling. We were talking about this in the office this morning, about this visit, and the one thing that really stuck in people’s minds who came along with me to that visit was the complete lack of any birdsong in there. Because you could tell that the river was dead and everything in the river was dead with it, but actually the surrounding wildlife, through the putrid stench and the other pollution that was coming from it, killed off that wildlife as well then.
I’m really grateful to the Kenfig wildlife trust and the two Martins who met me on site to show me first-hand what was going on there, because Kenfig isn’t a one-off; it is happening across the whole of Wales and, indeed, the United Kingdom, but, sadly, Wales is worst affected. If you look at sewage discharge across the whole of Wales, there have been 118,000 sewage discharges in 2024. If you compare that to England, that’s 450,000 in England, with a population 18 times bigger than Wales. So, we’ve got a bigger problem here in Wales and we can’t sit back and allow it to continue.
I’ve been really grateful to Surfers against Sewage, who wouldn’t be a natural bedfellow of the Conservative Party, I might say, for the information that they’ve provided and this comprehensive report that they put together, looking at all aspects of the situation across the UK. We’re not unique, but the point that I was making in those statistics was that we are, sadly, top of the poll when it comes to some of these numbers, and we need to be doing far better.
The reason why we have put that amendment down about NRW is because, sadly, NRW, as the regulator, are not doing the job that they were envisaged doing in the first place when they were created. And that’s no fault of the staff at NRW. They work tirelessly to do the job that they can, but they really do face huge pressures over the organisation and the way it was constructed in the first place.
You brought together the Countryside Council of Wales, the Forestry Commission and the Environment Agency, put it all together, and thought big was going to be beautiful. Well, big wasn’t beautiful in this instance. And in this report, Surfers against Sewage, they actually have a paragraph or two specifically on NRW, and they say:
‘A Lame Duck Regulator
‘This is because Natural Resource Wales…, the environmental regulator which should be putting a stop to this pollution, is an absolute shambles.
‘Last year the Welsh Government had to settle a £19 million tax bill following an investigation by HM Revenue and Customs into how NRW was hiring contractors. The regulator is now slashing costs to try and repay the debt.’
Two hundred and—[Interruption.] Yes, gladly.
Jane Dodds
17:45:25
Thank you very much for taking the intervention. You talked about not supporting NRW, but I wonder if you would support them with additional powers and additional resourcing.
Andrew R.T. Davies
17:45:35
Well, that’s the point of our amendment and it’s something that I’ve stood on since 2019, when I had this job at that time, and called for NRW to be reformed and reconstituted, so that you spun out the commercial operations, such as the Forestry Commission, and you created a regulatory body that brought the expertise together, was budgeted properly to enforce the regulations that this place and other places put out there, and actually did the job that people wanted to see them doing. At the moment, they are too big and they lack focus, and you need to spin out the Forestry Commission side of it and build a regulator that can actually do the job that we’re charging them to do.
And I’ll be really listening hard to what the Minister says in his reply, because I can recall that when he was in opposition, he had some very harsh words for NRW, he did, and I wonder whether he has done the same journey as the health Minister—listening to the health Minister earlier this afternoon—and the officials, as I said to him yesterday afternoon, have now put him in that civil service cage, and the speech that we will hear this afternoon will be a civil service speech, rather than that passionate articulate opposition spokesperson that Llyr used to be. I hope that he will be bold this afternoon in responding to this debate. I hope he will show us a road map to empower communities such as those I was speaking to in Kenfig and the volunteers of the Kenfig wildlife trust. Don’t disappoint them, Minister. Give us something to go out from this debate with. Let’s re-engineer the regulator, let’s get behind the call for legislation on water pollution, and let’s be that exemplar of good practice rather than, sadly, that laggard of pollution across the whole of Wales. Thank you.
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