Oldham MP and Shadow Environmental Secretary Jim McMahon will be introducing Labour’s Water Quality Bill which will attempt to put an end to the practice of sewage dumping by water Companies into England’s rivers.
The party says that since 2016, sewage has been dumped in our waters every two-and-a-half minutes on average.
In a letter to Conservative MP’s urging them to back the McMahon adds that Labour Party analysis shows that over the last seven years, 1,276 years’ worth of raw sewage has been dumped into British waters.
On average, this equates to a sewage dumping event taking place every two-and-a-half minutes and in 2022 alone, there were an average of 824 sewage dumps per day in places where people live, work and holiday.
Not one English river is classed as being in a healthy condition, none meet good chemical standards and few meet good ecological standards and he says
“To make matters worse, not only have the Conservatives given the green light for water companies to dump sewage and neglect our vital water infrastructure, but they have also rewarded them for it, by allowing water companies to extract billions in dividends and with bumper bonuses for water bosses who are not delivering in the public interest.”
The bill proposes automatic fines for sewage dumping by water Companies,a mandatory monitoring of sewage outlets and legally binding targets for reducing emissions by 90 per cent by 2030
