I thank noble Lords for their broad support for the recommendations that have come out of the Cunliffe report. This is a very important step forward in cleaning up our waterways.
The Statement talks about the five recommendations that we are taking forward immediately, including: the new statutory water ombudsman, ending operator self-monitoring, and the new single water regulator— I think there is consensus that Ofwat has not done its job effectively. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, makes an important point when she says that we should not reward incompetence, and I am sure that will be fed through. There will also be greater local involvement. The noble Baroness talked about communities; we want them to be more involved, and customers to be right at the heart of how we move forward with these changes. That is one of the reasons for bringing forward the regional element: to enable communities and consumers to be more central in water planning and how we manage pollution going forward. There will also be an improved strategic direction, because water strategy has failed abysmally over the last few years.
Of course, this is not the limit of our ambition. We will respond in the autumn in full to the recommendations in the Cunliffe report. We will publish a White Paper, which will be open for consultation, and we intend to follow that up with a water reform Bill. So, many of the questions that the noble Lords asked, and I assume will continue to be asked, will be able to be addressed once we see that White Paper, and that consultation will be available for people to take part in.
The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, asked a few questions, which I will address. First, he talked about funding. I stress that it is actually this Government who secured the £104 billion of investment, which is so needed because of the lack of investment in the water industry over many years. That is going to be critical to improving leakage, for example, and providing better service for customers. He asked whether the regulator would be independent of the water industry but also answerable to the Secretary of State and to Parliament. We have said in the White Paper that we are going to have this new, single water regulator. Those are the kinds of questions that will be debated as we move through that process in order to inform our further legislation when it comes forward.
Social tariffs were mentioned by both noble Lords. As I said, we want to put customers at the heart of the new model that we are developing. The recommendations made by the Independent Water Commission talk about national social tariffs and the introduction of compulsory smart meters. These will be considered alongside all the other recommendations as we move forward. As I said, further information will come out this autumn, when we have developed the White Paper.
The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, also talked about the monitoring of overflows and mentioned that in 2010, 7% were monitored, and by 2023, at the end of the previous Government, it was 100%. In answer to that, a lot of this monitoring came in because of public pressure and because of the absolute horror at the amount of pollution that was going into our waterways. People had not been aware of that before. While we are very pleased that the previous Government increased monitoring, there is responsibility to be taken for the amount of pollution that had gone into our waterways and the complete incompetence of the regulators at the time, which is what we are now trying to address.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, asked about the target to reduce pollution—50% by 2030—and how that was going to be delivered. We have combined this with the existing commitment in the environmental improvement plan to reduce phosphorus from treated wastewater by 50% by 2028. Together, those two targets form the pledge that we are making on this commitment. Ofwat and water companies previously agreed a commitment for water companies on the PR24 agreement for storm overflow spills to be reduced by 45%, based on a 2021 baseline. To be clear, the data between 2021 and 2024 does not compare, because in 2021, only 88% of storm overflows were monitored. Although it looks less, the amount has increased, as has our knowledge. Our target for storm overflows is based on the 50% reduction in spills from storm overflows by the end of 2029, compared with 2024 levels. We can do that because we now have 100% of storm overflows monitored.
More broadly on communities, we are engaging for the first time on entire river catchment systems. As part of that, we want to bring local people, local authorities —which have an important voice—businesses, and farming communities, of course, into the work that we are doing to improve pollution systems in their local area. As I said, that will be done on a regional basis and then into the catchment model system. That will be more effective, I hope.