This summer our local water company, Southern Water, was fined for dumping billions of litres of raw sewage into protected waters for what was described as during the course of the investigation ‘their own financial gain’.
Southern Water have a history of dumping raw sewage into our local waterways and although they were fined for their flagrant abuse of this, some of it is entirely legal within the current legislation.
That is why I voted last week for the amendment to the environment bill that would have placed a duty on water companies to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged into waterways. The majority of Conservative MPs voted against this.
I would have thought that such an amendment would be received with cross party support being relatively uncontroversial. I was therefore very disappointed to see most Conservative MPs vote it down.