A senior Tory MP has said swimming in sewage in Britain used to be regarded as “acceptable” – recalling his own childhood days paddling in wastewater.
Damian Green claimed attitudes towards sewage dumping have changed in recent years, as water companies apologised for polluting England’s rivers and beaches and promised change.
“I remember as a child in south Wales swimming in sewage,” he told ITV’s Peston. “Jackson’s Bay in Barry used to be a sewage outlet where we all paddled and swam.”
The former minister, who leads the ‘One Nation’ group of moderate Conservatives, said: “It was sort of regarded as acceptable,” before adding: “And of course it wasn’t acceptable.”
Discussing the politics of sewage spills, which has sparked outrage over the past year, Mr Green said: “It’s a problem – I’m absolutely not denying that it is a big issue. But it always has been.”
Tory environment secretary Thérèse Coffey, asked her own poor poll ratings, said: “I’m not surprised, especially when there’s a lot of misinformation out there – and somehow people think this is a brand new issue.”
Ms Coffey told Peston: “Actually what we’ve done is unveil the issue … I’ve insisted to water companies that by the end of June I want an action plan for every single storm overflow.”
Water companies said on Thursday that they would invest an additional £10bn in upgrades to cut sewage spills – but warned the public will have to pay more on their bills.
Ruth Kelly, chair of the trade body Water UK, said consumers will face “modest upward pressure” on bills if shareholders will make the investment in the biggest modernisation of English sewers “since the Victorian era”.
Water UK, which represents the companies, wants to cut overflows by up to 140,000 each year by 2030, compared to the level in 2020, and it plans to publish a financial plan this summer.
Ms Kelly said: “We’re sorry about the upset and the anger from the fact that there have been overspills of untreated sewage onto beaches and into rivers over the past few years. We’re sorry that we didn’t act sooner, but we get it.”
But music star and clean river campaigner Feargal Sharkey criticised the companies for making customers pay “a second time”, saying their apology was “nothing to celebrate whatsoever”.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “What I’m actually hearing is no apology for the fact we’ve paid them for a service we haven’t got.”
“They are now suggesting that we should pay them a second time for a service we haven’t had. We should have an apology for the suggestion they are going to put bills up by £10bn for their incompetence and their greed.”
Yorkshire Water sent out a separate apology and promised to invest £180m over the next two years. It said it has earmarked 190 storm overflows for improvement and that the works will be “partly funded by shareholders”.
Greenpeace UK’s policy director Doug Parr said: “Cry me a river. After years of relentlessly flooding our streams and beaches with raw sewage, an ‘oops, sorry’ from the water firms won’t cut it.
“What we need to see is urgent, massive investment to upgrade their tottering infrastructure, drastic reduction in sewage discharges, and beefed-up regulators to make sure it happens properly.”
