To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to encourage accurate reporting of sewage pollution by water companies.

The Government has made it clear that the amount of sewage discharged into our waters is unacceptable. That is why our Plan for Water sets out more investment, stronger regulation and tougher enforcement to tackle widespread sources of pollution.

We are making the water industry accountable on a scale never seen before. To achieve this, we have ensured that 100 per cent of storm overflows in England are now monitored, dramatically increasing the information we have on storm overflow activity. We included provisions in the Environment Act 2021 that build on this monitoring programme by requiring the publication of near-real time data on storm overflow activity by no later than 2025. We are also working to bring forward secondary legislation to support our new continuous water quality monitoring programme, which will provide world-leading information on the impact of storm overflow and final effluent discharges on watercourses.