William Gladstone complained that the Liberals were washed from office in 1874 by a “torrent of gin and beer”. Today’s Conservative MPs fears they face a similar – if smellier – fate if they do not tackle the toxic issue of water companies dumping sewage, via storm drains, into England’s not-so-green-and-pleasant rivers and waters.
Thérèse Coffey, the Environment Secretary, has today announced the Government’s new ‘Plan for Water’. With an obligatory nod to Sir David Attenborough – patron saint of those making a career rehashing the same material ad infinitum – Coffey promised £1.6 billion in accelerated investment.
Alongside that came new powers for the Environment Agency (EA) and the removal of the £250,000 cap on penalties for those polluting companies thought to have released sewage into rivers and beaches more than 800 times a day last year. There is also a plan to ban plastic in wet wipes – as if this issue didn’t already provide ample opportunity for toilet humour.
This policy package isn’t only ready material for schoolboy smarm. It addresses an issue that most Tory MPs find in their inboxes far too regularly. Our elected representatives are as sick at hearing about sewage in our rivers as are, presumably, our fish, otters, and beavers are of swimming in them.
The issue leaped onto the agenda in 2021. Under mounting pressure, the EA published, for the first time, all the data on raw sewage discharges from the previous year. It showed a 37 per cent increase in the pumping of human effluent, based on separate 400,000 occasions or 3.1 million hours of pumping.
Why is this happening? When you flush the toilets, it usually enters a sewage network that is filled with both buildings’ waste and rainwater. Usually, it is treated. But when it overflows, the system empties the untreated effluent into our waterways to avoid it going back out of our pipes and drains. Sewage in rivers is the least-worst option.
As with HS2 (boo, hiss), this is the natural outcome of Victorian infrastructure meeting a 21st century population. That it has become a particular issue for Tory MPs relies on the combined headache of social media’s capacity to spread nonsense, the opportunism of Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and Feargal Sharkey, the former lead singer of The Undertones (apparently).
Two year ago, MPs rejected an amendment to the Government’s Environment Bill, introduced by the Duke of Wellington, to place a legal duty on water companies in England and Wales “to make improvements to their sewage systems”. Only 22 Conservatives voted against ministers’ instruction.
The Government had reasons for sending the Duke’s amendment to its Waterloo. The bill aimed to increase the transparency of sewage dumping by forcing companies to publish information in real-time – and the purported cost of eliminating outflows was said to be between £150 and £650 billion.
DEFRA hoped that the legislation was sufficiently comprehensive; most MPs who voted for were unsure of its exact details. So they were rather shocked to soon be inundated by claims on social media and in their inboxes that ‘Tory MPs have just voted to dump sewage in rivers’.
Labour saw an opportunity for an easy – if misleading – social media campaign, aided by articles listing ‘every MP who just voted to ALLOW water companies to continue dumping RAW SEWAGE in our rivers’, and campaigners like Sharkey and others. CCHQ, alas, had this problem dumped in its lap.
Unfortunately for Conservative MPs, the tactic has been repeated every time a vote like this has gone on. Most recently, it occurred in January, when MPs set a target for reducing phosphates in rivers by 2038 – or ‘VOTED TO DUMP RAW SEWAGE UNTIL 2038’, according to Twitter. Even when the Government is taking action, the impression is given that it isn’t.
The trouble is that this exists at the nexus point of three powerful narratives: that affluent Tories don’t care about the effluent of the masses, that nothing in Britain seems to work anymore, and that privatisation has been a disaster for our water companies – a whole new meaning to the ‘sh*t state’.
What is to be done? Politically, today’s announcement hopefully represents a welcome step onto the front foot for Coffey. Tory MPs will be hoping that the Government is taking more of an interest in trying to avoid opportunities for Labour and co to antagonise their constituents – especially those in Southern constituencies where dumping is concentrated.
Ministers must also show that they have a coherent strategy for tackling an issue that is a hot topic. They might argue that it’s not as pressing as the cancer of inflation, the calamity of Channel crossings, or the horrors of our anemic growth, and it is being amplified by social media enthusiasts. Is this really the top priority of Stevenage Woman?
Yet the fact The Daily Telegraph, The Times, and The Guardian are now campaigning on this issue shows it is unlikely to go away. Fundamentally, none of us really want to see human faeces in our rivers – especially if, according to the Rivers Trust, 53 per cent are in a poor environmental state.
If Conservatives do not come up with a solution, the inevitable response will be re-nationalisation by a future Labour government. As Robert Colville has highlighted, investment and productivity surged post-privatisation, especially compared to Northern Ireland’s still-nationalised water industry with which Sharkey is most familiar.
Water companies have been told to spend £56 billion preventing sewage being dumped in rivers and streams; analysts from Barclays reckon £100 billion is required. That means the hefty increase in bills that the Government would rather like to avoid amidst talk of a cost-of-living crisis.
Hiking fines to pay for improvements– as Coffey is suggesting today – might also deter those international investors who own 70 per cent of the industry and will need to forgo a few more dividends to build a few more reservoirs. Of course, they must abide by the same rules as any other investors – yet the enforcement of those rules has been rather confused.
Michael Howard, who oversaw the industry’s privatisation, defends the improvements privatisation brought, but concedes that the regulatory regime should have been reviewed. Responsibility is passed between the EA, Ofwat, the regulator, and Coffey’s department.
Faced with increasing pressure for something to be done from both in and out of Parliament, the argument for a smack of firm government becomes increasingly obvious. If Coffey cannot grip this situation, then the gains of privatisation will be flushed down the drain – and the legacy of the late, great Nigel Lawson will be undermined just that little bit further.