Labour has no real plan to tackle the sewage crisis damaging Britain’s rivers, leading campaigner Feargal Sharkey has warned as he called for a “root and branch” review of water industry regulators.
The punk rocker turned environmentalist told **i** the country needs a “clear, decisive strategy” to clean up Britain’s waterways rather than “the confusing messaging” coming from the Government.
His comments came as he announced plans to lead a mass rally in London in October to mark the end of Labour’s first 100 days in power and put pressure on the chancellor ahead of the Budget.
Sharkey will be joined by celebrities and environmental groups, including River Action, Surfers Against Sewage, British Rowing, the Wildlife Trusts and Chris Packham.
He campaigned for Labour throughout the general election campaign but is now calling for “leadership and urgency” from the Government to tackle sewage and other pollution, including agricultural run-off, in the UK’s rivers, lakes and seas.
Charles Watson, Chair and Founder of River Action, which is coordinating the march, agreed that Labour’s plans “do not nearly go far enough to deal with the scale of the problem they have inherited”.
Labour has announced a number of policies to tackle the sewage crisis, including restrictions on bonuses for CEOs and refunds for customers when water companies don’t spend their allotted infrastructure funding.
Ministers have also pledged to introduce a Water Bill within the next year, which will bring in automatic fines for water companies and criminal sanctions for bosses that oversee serious pollution.
But the Government is yet to indicate whether it will increase spending to tackle water quality, for example through increased funding for the Environment Agency or for farmers to tackle agricultural pollution.
Sharkey said he was hearing a “confusing message” from the Government, with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) promising to restrict water boss bonuses, while the Treasury has refused to reintroduce caps on banker bonuses.
He argued that restrictions on bonuses are unlikely to work “because when they did that in the City 10 years ago, everybody just doubled their salaries”.
“The simple fact of the matter is I see nothing so far that is actually showing anything resembling a strategy and a cohesive plan to deal with either the sewage crisis, the environmental crisis, the agricultural farmyard pollution or indeed the overabstraction of chalk streams,” he added.
Sharkey wants Environment Secretary Steve Reed to announce a “root and branch” review of the water company regulators Ofwat and the Environment Agency, which he said have “utterly failed both consumers and the environment”.
An independent commission should be appointed to carry out the review and report back to Parliament within the next six months, he said.
He also called on Mr Reed to “fire the board of both Ofwat and the Environment Agency”.
Original_Success3895 on
What plan does Labour have on fixing anything?
They promised no austerity leading up to the election, and have now flipped to telling the public to brace for higher taxes and service cuts.
Managed decline is the best we can hope for. But it’s the lesser of two evils so we can’t criticise them for U turning either apparently.
WeightDimensions on
Decent bloke. Seems he has a good heart. And that’s hard to find these days.
Destroyer-of-veins on
Until we have a government that is prepared to tackle head-on all the vested interests that governments now essentially represent, and introduce radical legislation that prohibits corporate activities that quite clearly make the lives of the majority worse, no government will have a plan to fix anything substantial at all.
CharringtonCross on
How can we fix the rivers? Wouldn’t this require a massive amount of new infrastructure?
Johnybhoy on
Fine the water companies into bankruptcy then nationalise them. They should never have been privatised in first place there is no competition or shopping around for your water supply.
Same with Royal Mail which is about to be bought by a Czech billionaire who will gut the business. There is no competition in mail delivery, parcels yes but no other companies want to deliver mail there’s no profit in it.
Terrible-Group-9602 on
Reality is this issue most concerns people living in countryside areas, and since these are usually not Labour constituencies, they don’t care.
Big_Red_Machine_1917 on
“Labour has no real plan” could be applied to everything about the Starmer ministry.
LookOverall on
The rivers started going down hill in the early days of the coalition when the government neutered the EPA. The rivers should improve when the EPA starts fining the water companies much more often.
9 Comments
Labour has no real plan to tackle the sewage crisis damaging Britain’s rivers, leading campaigner Feargal Sharkey has warned as he called for a “root and branch” review of water industry regulators.
The punk rocker turned environmentalist told **i** the country needs a “clear, decisive strategy” to clean up Britain’s waterways rather than “the confusing messaging” coming from the Government.
His comments came as he announced plans to lead a mass rally in London in October to mark the end of Labour’s first 100 days in power and put pressure on the chancellor ahead of the Budget.
Sharkey will be joined by celebrities and environmental groups, including River Action, Surfers Against Sewage, British Rowing, the Wildlife Trusts and Chris Packham.
He campaigned for Labour throughout the general election campaign but is now calling for “leadership and urgency” from the Government to tackle sewage and other pollution, including agricultural run-off, in the UK’s rivers, lakes and seas.
Charles Watson, Chair and Founder of River Action, which is coordinating the march, agreed that Labour’s plans “do not nearly go far enough to deal with the scale of the problem they have inherited”.
Labour has announced a number of policies to tackle the sewage crisis, including restrictions on bonuses for CEOs and refunds for customers when water companies don’t spend their allotted infrastructure funding.
Ministers have also pledged to introduce a Water Bill within the next year, which will bring in automatic fines for water companies and criminal sanctions for bosses that oversee serious pollution.
But the Government is yet to indicate whether it will increase spending to tackle water quality, for example through increased funding for the Environment Agency or for farmers to tackle agricultural pollution.
Sharkey said he was hearing a “confusing message” from the Government, with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) promising to restrict water boss bonuses, while the Treasury has refused to reintroduce caps on banker bonuses.
He argued that restrictions on bonuses are unlikely to work “because when they did that in the City 10 years ago, everybody just doubled their salaries”.
“The simple fact of the matter is I see nothing so far that is actually showing anything resembling a strategy and a cohesive plan to deal with either the sewage crisis, the environmental crisis, the agricultural farmyard pollution or indeed the overabstraction of chalk streams,” he added.
Sharkey wants Environment Secretary Steve Reed to announce a “root and branch” review of the water company regulators Ofwat and the Environment Agency, which he said have “utterly failed both consumers and the environment”.
An independent commission should be appointed to carry out the review and report back to Parliament within the next six months, he said.
He also called on Mr Reed to “fire the board of both Ofwat and the Environment Agency”.
What plan does Labour have on fixing anything?
They promised no austerity leading up to the election, and have now flipped to telling the public to brace for higher taxes and service cuts.
Managed decline is the best we can hope for. But it’s the lesser of two evils so we can’t criticise them for U turning either apparently.
Decent bloke. Seems he has a good heart. And that’s hard to find these days.
Until we have a government that is prepared to tackle head-on all the vested interests that governments now essentially represent, and introduce radical legislation that prohibits corporate activities that quite clearly make the lives of the majority worse, no government will have a plan to fix anything substantial at all.
How can we fix the rivers? Wouldn’t this require a massive amount of new infrastructure?
Fine the water companies into bankruptcy then nationalise them. They should never have been privatised in first place there is no competition or shopping around for your water supply.
Same with Royal Mail which is about to be bought by a Czech billionaire who will gut the business. There is no competition in mail delivery, parcels yes but no other companies want to deliver mail there’s no profit in it.
Reality is this issue most concerns people living in countryside areas, and since these are usually not Labour constituencies, they don’t care.
“Labour has no real plan” could be applied to everything about the Starmer ministry.
The rivers started going down hill in the early days of the coalition when the government neutered the EPA. The rivers should improve when the EPA starts fining the water companies much more often.