Read my latest update

Dear Resident,

You may have been wondering why you haven’t had a Letter from Westminster recently? Now we have had Sue Gray’s report, it is probably worth me briefly setting out a few thoughts.

Not only am I disappointed at the behaviour of the Downing Street operation (including civil servants who should know better) but, as I have had to say too often before, events of recent months have dented my confidence in the Prime Minister to say the least, and I feel let down as I know so many do.

Many have emailed me telling me of their disquiet over these events, others have spoken of their support for the Prime Minister and their belief that we need to move on. I am sure we will all be somewhere on that spectrum.

But I was struck by a quote in the Economist last week that “It is not in Number 10’s garden, but in supermarkets, petrol forecourts and doctor’s waiting rooms that Mr Johnson’s fate will be decided”. And whilst some will argue that it should be the garden, it is true that the cost of living and the healthcare backlog are a much greater presence in our daily lives that Government navel gazing cannot afford to put to one side.

Inflation is a scourge. I make no apology for citing Margaret Thatcher, the last Prime Minister to face a surge in inflation: “I tell you that inflation is the biggest destroyer of all—of industry, of jobs, of savings, and of society. Surely, it is folly to diagnose the disease and to know the cure but to lack the courage to prescribe or the tenacity to take the medicine. The lesson is clear. Inflation devalues us all”.

Tackling inflation is about more than just the price we pay for staples in the supermarket. Government is borrowing less than anticipated right now, but those gains are being cancelled out by and large by the fact inflation means our debt repayments are also growing.

So what is to be done? Do we just presume that the supply chain difficulties and sharp rise in energy prices will dissipate and everything will return to normal? That is placing a large bet. Many argue there is a close link between the money supply and inflation, therefore controlling money supply can control inflation. So the Bank of England can cease pumping money out by ending quantative easing.

And what we can’t do is go back to the 1970s by trying and failing to clamp down on wage increases. Nor can we create a Ministry of Prices as Labour did in the 1970s with Shirley Williams. It’s treating the symptom not the disease.

And what about healthcare? We are about to start paying increased payroll taxes to tackle the backlog and then fund better access to social care. But I know my inbox is filled with frustrations about being unable to access primary care in particular.

The Health Secretary has floated the idea of greater reforms in primary care – surely needed – but the primary care sector has risen as one to defend the status quo, which is wholly predictable. My own view is there should be more GPs based within hospitals, able to triage those attending A&E who don’t need to be there. That might help cut waiting times.

But patients also deserve some choice over their primary care – both in where they go, and how they are seen. The lack of face-to-face appointments is a key frustration, and the difficulty in accessing the level of care people had pre-pandemic has yet to go away. I do believe it should be easier for patients to switch surgeries, and surgeries can differentiate themselves in terms of when they open, what they offer and so on.

Many of those commenting argue that GP-led primary care means ‘continuity of care’ which helps the same GP over many years knowing their patients well and spotting nuanced changes in someone’s condition. That is all well and good, and reminds me a bit of Dr Finlay’s casebook. My casework consists of people seeing locums, and rarely the same doctor twice.

There are workforce shortages, there are IT improvements needed between GPs and hospitals, much more needs to be done for public health. But the first step needs to be patients accessing primary care in the way that meets their needs rather than the convenience of someone else.

Lastly, it is the second anniversary of Brexit. Whilst the champagne corks may not be popping, I do get the occasional email asking when Brexit will be complete. The Government has published a helpful guide to what difference it has made so far. I won’t offer detailed government but you can read it online at [link removed].

No space on this edition to cover my local activities – I’ll send that out in a few days.


Yours faithfully,

Paul Maynard MP
Conservative
01253 473071

Thank you for raising the issue of storm sewage overspills due to recent heavy rain.

As your email indicates, this issue has been high on the agenda after the controversy over recent votes on the Environment Bill. It is perhaps worth nothing that no-one is advocating the dumping of raw sewage. There is a disagreement between the Government setting out a clear set of milestones for how to achieve this, versus a political campaign whose primary target is to achieve state ownership of water utilities, and a subsequent campaign by those unreconciled to Brexit who argue that sewage discharge is a consequence. Locally and nationally, that is simply not true. Indeed, the multi-million project at Anchorsholme Park was designed to significantly reduce such occurrences – and only having two sewage incidents in the last year is far fewer than we had before that pumping station was constructed.

It may help if I explain some of the background. In short, section 141a of amendment 45 of the Environment Bill sought to place a new duty on sewerage undertakers in England and Wales to demonstrate progressive reductions in the harm caused by discharges of untreated sewage. This would not have stopped – and will not stop - the immediate dumping of raw sewage, as some may have been led to believe it will.

The amendment sounds admirable, and indeed is something I support in principle. But the trouble is that the amendment came with no plan as to how this can be delivered and no impact assessment whatsoever.

Some might argue that a plan is not essential, that one can be formulated afterwards. I would be sympathetic to this point of view if we were talking about a simple, inexpensive endeavour - but in eliminating storm overflows, we are talking about transforming a system which has operated since the Victorian Era, the preliminary cost of which is estimated to be up to £60 billion. Before we embarked on something of that size – a HS2 scale project - we should at least understand how we would do so.

The Government’s view was that it would have been irresponsible to have inserted this section in the Bill given that it was not backed by a detailed plan and thorough impact assessment. It would have been the equivalent of signing a blank check on behalf of billpayers.

However, I was pleased to support of the other amendments to the Environment Bill relating to storm overflows (including the rest of Amendment 45).

One of these amendments places a legal duty on government to publish a plan by 1 September next year to reduce sewage discharges from storm overflows. A separate amendment will also place a duty on government to publish a report on the ‘mechanics’ of eliminating overflows entirely (also due before 1 September next year).

This is absolutely essential, as it will provide Parliament and the public with up-front, clear and comprehensive information on the cost and impact of eliminating storm overflows. Between the Government plan on storm overflows and the new elimination report, we will fully understand precisely how we can best tackle storm overflows.

So while setting out lofty aspirations is all well and good, what we really need to do is the long, detailed, practical work required to understand how we can deliver on these ambitions. It is not glamorous or headline-grabbing. But it is the effective action we need to deliver for local residents.

Please do not think that the Environment Bill only legislates for the production of plans on tackling storm overflows, however vital these no doubt are. I was pleased to support amendments to the Bill which take firm and immediate action to tackle storm overflows in the short-term. This includes:

• A new duty on water companies and the Environment Agency to publish data on storm overflow operation on an annual basis.

• A new duty on water companies to publish near real time information (within 1 hour) of the commencement of an overflow, its location and when it ceases.
• A new duty on water companies to continuously monitor the water quality upstream and downstream of a storm overflow and of sewage disposal works.

• A new duty on water companies to produce comprehensive statutory Drainage and Sewerage Management Plans setting out how the company will manage and develop its networks, and how storm overflows will be addressed through these plans.

Outside of the Bill, Ministers have made their expectations crystal clear in DEFRA’s draft Strategic Policy Statement to Ofwat. For the first time, the Government will be telling the industry’s financial regulator that it expects water companies to take steps to “significantly reduce storm overflows”, and that it expects funding to be approved for them to do so.

Ministers will also undertake a review of legislation which would require Sustainable Drainage Systems to be constructed to ministerial standards on new developments, reducing the pressure on the sewage system.

All of these measures are informed by the work of the Storm Overflows Task Force, which Defra established in August 2020 to bring together key stakeholders from the water industry, environmental NGOs, regulators, and Government in order to drive progress in reducing sewage discharges. The Taskforce has agreed a goal to eliminate harm from storm overflows.

I hope this information is helpful and reassures you that any suggestion that MPs are not taking firm action on storm overflows is false. The Government has voted in favour of taking a range of immediate steps to address storm overflows, together with a legal duty on government to produce detailed and costed plans for reducing and eliminating storm overflows entirely.


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