Herefordshire MPs press government on river Wye clean-up

In a rare show of cross-party unity, Herefordshire’s two MPs have jointly presented a Bill in Parliament pressing the government to bring back a plan to clean up the river Wye.

Jesse Norman, Conservative MP for Hereford & South Herefordshire presented the River Wye (Cleaning) Bill in the Commons jointly with North Herefordshire’s Green MP Ellie Chowns, in a so-called ten-minute rule motion which gives individual MPs the chance to put forward legislative proposals.

If passed into law, it would require the environment secretary to publish and implement a plan for cleaning and improving the water quality of the river Wye, through better land management, water treatment, more sustainable farming and stronger enforcement.

“Many of the key clean-up measures and mitigations are well understood,” Mr Norman, the Shadow Leader of the House, said. “What we need now is action.”

Following the apparent victory in securing a top-level river Wye action plan last year, with a £35 million budget and a designated “river champion”, the former local MEP Anthea Macintyre, Mr Norman said it was “deeply disappointing” that the incoming Labour government then dropped both.

He added: “While I am very glad that my colleague Ellie Chowns is sponsoring the Bill, it is a great pity that other Wye catchment MPs have chosen not to.

“Indeed, I do not notice a single Wye catchment MP in the Chamber; a great sadness.”

He added the community response to the problem on both sides of the border has by contrast been “magnificent, with hundreds of volunteer citizen scientists actively taking weekly water readings”.

But while local sewage and waste water discharges are now being brought within national standards, this will be “only by the early 2030s, which is still far too slow”, he said, while a plan to ring-fence fines from polluting water companies for local restoration measures has also been dropped.

Meanwhile a proposed cross-border plan for the river has been “impeded by political differences between the Welsh and UK governments” – whom

Mr Norman  said must now “ensure that this magnificent river is fully restored to health as swiftly as that can be achieved”.

The Bill will now be given a second reading on July 4.