16:40 Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)

At Davyhulme in my constituency, United Utilities operates a large sewage and water treatment plant, which was built in the 19th century but has been at the forefront of technical innovation and development since it was established—and no more so than now. Its groundbreaking sludge treatment project, which when fully up and running will be the largest such programme in the world, takes raw sewage and effectively transforms it into renewable energy sources, with the treatment by-product being used as soil conditioner.

That interesting and remarkable project has already benefited from modest financial support from the Government for its pilot stage, but, if drawing such green energy supplies from sewage and water treatment is to be a real runner, we might want to encourage substantial national investment in it. It is estimated that the Davyhulme plant, when fully operational, could supply green energy to 5,000 homes in the north-west, so there is substantial potential for such energy sources to become a major part of the Government’s renewable energy strategy. I should therefore be interested to hear from the Minister what discussions are taking place with his colleagues in the Department of Energy and Climate Change to link investment in our water treatment sector to the development of new energy supplies.

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17:02 Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)

Climate change will come to the fore—we are now in the midst of a discussion of drought, but there will be other climate change issues in future. Everyone keeps talking about the green agenda, but we need to introduce the new technologies into our water system. I shall come back to that in a few moments. Thames Water will claim that the recently improved project in Reading is state of the art, but the problem for Deephams is that development will come 10 to 15 years down the road. So we need to consider not what is state of the art now, but what will be state of the art in 15 years. I hope that the Minister can reassure the House that the Government recognise the need for these flexibilities, because there is a danger that Deephams will be out of date by the time it comes on stream. It is incumbent on Thames Water and the local community to consider what alternatives there are, and what other technologies could be used.

Council officers sympathise with the idea of introducing a combination of the two technologies to future-proof Deephams in respect of the factors that I have mentioned, including climate change, improved water quality and population increases. Is the Minister aware of, and sympathetic to, those technologies? They are not mentioned in the national policy statement, but it would be welcome if he could say something helpful about them. We recognise that the introduction of new technologies has a cost implication, but there is growing evidence not only that they can respond more flexibly to future pressure, but that over time they work out much cheaper.

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