Access to safe water and sanitation is one of the most important development building blocks any country can achieve. Without it, health, education and economic outcomes are compromised. Globally, 300,000 children under five die every year from diarrhoeal disease caused by poor sanitation, poor hygiene and unsafe drinking water. In my time working for Save the Children around the world, I saw time and again the devastating impact that poor sanitation had on communities from Yemen to Bangladesh.
It seems crazy that in twenty-first century Britain, people are getting sick from sewage. But for many who enjoy our sea and rivers, it is becoming all too common an experience. According to figures obtained by the Labour Party, between 2016 and 2021, there were 74,450 spill events into our seas and rivers by Southern Water. This equates to a shocking average of a sewage spill taking place every 43 minutes over a 5-year period.
The incompetence doesn’t stop there. This has been perhaps the driest summer any of us can remember, and yet the number of leaks in the Southern Water network means that more than 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of water go down the plug hole every day.
The impact of sewage dumping on coastal communities like ours is devastating. When water companies dump sewage, they endanger public health, poison our environment and undermine our local economy. Our beautiful coastline is the bedrock of our tourism and fishing industries, and just as both are emerging from the pandemic, this is the last thing that they need.
Last week it happened again, with a sewage discharge in Bexhill closing our beaches along the coast once again. While water companies continue to pollute, this Conservative government and our Conservative MP voted down Labour’s October 2021 attempt in parliament to stop this harmful practice. For too long water companies have been allowed to get away with it. In the last five years, water bosses have received “performance related” bonuses while overseeing a 27,000% increase in the number of “monitored discharge hours” (sewage dumps), and failing to invest profits back into outdated infrastructure. And deep cuts to the Environment Agency haven’t helped either, with Tory leadership contender Liz Truss overseeing millions of pounds of cuts.
This crisis needs to be recognised for the national emergency that it is, and both the government and regulators have a duty to heed Labour’s warnings and act without delay.
This week, our own Conservative MP appeared on BBC South East Today saying that we can’t sort this overnight and need a long-term, costed plan. I agree, but her party have been in power for twelve years and the problem is only getting worse. There is no plan, and the very tool we have to crack down on this outrageous misconduct, our regulator, has been cut to the bone.
Labour will do whatever it takes to put a stop to this disgraceful practice. It starts with enforcing unlimited fines, holding water company bosses legally and financially accountable for this negligence and toughening up the regulation loopholes that allow the system to be abused. It cannot be right that companies continue to pay huge bonuses and dividends while failing in their first duty: to ensure safe, sustainable water supply and sanitation.
With sewage dumping, as with so many issues, this Conservative government are missing in action. As we approach a difficult winter ahead and the cost of living crisis, record NHS waiting lists and rising inflation create the perfect storm, I have found it staggering to see our two Conservative candidates for Prime Minister spend all summer too busy fighting among themselves to turn attention to the scale of this crisis and make a plan. I know so many in our community are worried sick about making ends meet, or getting an ambulance if the worst happens. Whichever one wins, one thing is clear: the more time we give the Tories, the more damage they will do.
Helena Dollimore is Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Hastings and Rye
www.helenadollimore.com.
Image Credits: Geoff Wilson .
I wish she were exaggerating with these statistics but sadly, Ms. Dollimore is not. I remain baffled why a party that has been in power for 12 years and was once the party of the countryside is allowing the UK to return to a distant past when water pollution and beach closures were common. Why? Whose is benefiting from this?
Certainly not the French, who are today complaining that the sewage is reaching their shores. In any other European country the water company directors would be in prison – here they get bonuses…
This might provide some perspective:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/uk-royal-mail-water-companies-private-investors-profit-wages-privatisation-utilities/?
Thanks for the link, GH. Very illuminating and alarming
Interesting link GH.
UK water companies are privatised, but no one can choose their water supplier, which is entirely pre-determined by their post code. You can’t switch or demand better. So they trouser profits without any of the basic constraints of capitalist competition.
So we’re stuck with Southern Water who can charge what they like with no competition.
Quite frankly, privatisation of public utilities and services has proved disastrous for the British people, especially where those utilities — like water — represent natural monopolies. Most people want a return to public ownership of essential services. So-called “light touch” regulation and toothless regulators have contributed to these scandalous water company problems and to sundry other examples of companies ripping off customers. We have a situation where many corporations and cowboy capitalists view the UK as Europe’s magic money tree: they charge British consumers sky-high prices and then mock our stupidity and inability to do anything to stop them. In effect, Southern Water serves its executives and shareholders, not its customers. Money that could be used to repair water leaks and prevent sewage outflow to the sea is being diverted to dividends and executive bonuses. UK energy profits, at an all-time high, are largely heading to foreign investors. EDF is a French state-owned company that owns eight British nuclear power stations, E.on is German owned, Scottish Power is owned by a Spanish multinational, the list goes on. I have nothing against foreign companies per se — after all, these companies employ British workers. But the eye-watering profits end up abroad, to Britain’s detriment. UK consumers pay two to three times the amount for rail travel than our European counterparts. Other European countries see the sense in having their utilities and essential services publicly owned — for the very reasons that have harmed the UK’s population. It has now been shown that unbridled capitalism leads to enormous social and environmental problems; fair competition and well-regulated capitalism arguably have a role to play. Many of the UK’s problems are solvable with political will, and people are waiting to see if the current government’s policies will effect the fundamental change needed. The initial signs are not good.
Well said! I started my career with the CEGB ( Central Electricity Generating Board), a nationalised industry that ran everything from power stations, transmission and the local area boards. It was broken up under Thatcher’s government and sold off.
Dungeness B Power Station and all Nuclear Power Stations came under Nuclear Electric then sold to EDF. Rather ironic that I should end up working for a French state owned company.