Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman has reiterated her support for a national water grid as she took questions about drought in the House of Commons on 26 April.
When the ‘Oral Answers to Questions’ session in the Commons chamber turned to the subject of drought, Mrs Spelman was asked by Henry Smith, Conservative MP for Crawley, about the Government’s plans for increased water connectivity between the regions of the UK.
Mrs Spelman replied that the Water White Paper had made the case for increased connectivity and that the process is already underway.
“Water companies are already joining up their sources of supply to help them to move water from areas of plenty to those of greatest need. For example, interconnection exists between United Utilities and the west-east link, and as my hon. Friend will have seen in the press, there is a bulk trading proposal between Severn Trent Water and Anglian Water. Local connectivity is the key, and Ofwat will bring forward proposals for the next price review that will encourage that,” she said.
Shadow Environment Secretary Mary Creagh then flagged up that in the Water White Paper the reform of water abstraction was not expected until 2027, something which “astonished the water industry.”
Water abstraction is seen as increasingly important because the hosepipe ban has seen in a boom in private boreholes, which enable people to flout the ban on water restrictions. However, taking from the groundwater supply affects everybody because that water is used to fill reservoirs and aquifers used by the public water mains.
In reply to Mrs Creagh’s question about what measures were being taken to tackle “unsustainable water use by the few,” the Environment Secretary said:
“The reform of the abstraction regime has, in effect, commenced. At the drought summit in May last year, the stakeholders in the industry agreed that we needed to take a more flexible approach to the present 30,000 abstractions a year to ensure that the water gets to everybody who needs it. The Environment Agency was praised publicly by the stakeholders at the third drought summit for the flexibility and transparency that have been achieved in the existing abstraction system. That does not mean that there is no scope for further improvement. As I said in the water White Paper, because of the challenge of climate change, we need to reform abstraction.”
With the UK government demanding a 50% reduction in storm overflow spills by 2029, the era of reactive management is over. Speaking in the House of Commons on 21 July 2025, then environment secretary Steve Reed said, “This Government will cut water companies’ sewage pollution in half by the end of the decade.”
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