13 June 2025
I want to talk about the ‘S’ word.
No, not that one!
Sewage.
It’s a word I’ve heard and read a lot since becoming the local MP for Barnsley North (formerly ‘Central’). Over the years, I’ve been contacted by hundreds of constituents angry about the fact that so many waterways in our borough and country were regularly filled with toxic sewage under the previous Conservative government.
In fact, when Labour took office, we inherited record levels of illegal sewage in our rivers, lakes, and seas.
The Conservatives halved the Environment Agency (EA) budget after taking office in 2010, leaving them under-powered when it came to cracking down on polluting water companies.
They also failed to invest in our broken water infrastructure and let consumer money be spent irresponsibly on bonuses and shareholder payments. Under the Conservatives, water bosses awarded themselves over £112 million in bonuses, benefits, and incentives. That’s money that should have been invested in fixing our crumbling water infrastructure. Instead, it went to many of the bosses who were responsible for the sewage dumping in the first place!
To sum up: we inherited waters filled with record levels of sewage, and a system where failure was profitable.
This status quo is completely unacceptable. That’s why we’re reforming it with our landmark new Water Act.
Our Water Act has banned bonuses for senior bosses at six failing water companies: Thames Water, Yorkshire Water, Anglian Water, Wessex Water, United Utilities, and Southern Water. This is because they failed to meet the water regulator Ofwat’s standards.
In most walks of life, failure isn’t rewarded. It shouldn’t be any different here. We promised to ban unfair water bosses’ bonuses – and we have.
As well as reforming the system, we’re getting to work cleaning up our waters.
To further protect customers and clean up our rivers, lakes, and seas, we’ve secured a record £104 billion of private investment to cut sewage discharges by nearly half over the next five years. We’ve ringfenced this money for new pipes and treatment work – not shareholder payouts!
That’s not all. Since we were elected last July, we’ve overseen a 400% increase in the number of water inspections being carried out. In the same period, we’ve overseen a 145% increase in criminal investigations against water companies, with 81 investigations. Following these investigations, water bosses could be jailed for five years and water companies fined hundreds of millions of pounds.
Our Waters Act also changed the law so that water bosses found to have covered up sewage spills can be locked up for two years.
Only Labour is serious about cleaning up our waters. Clearly, the Conservatives have shown they can’t be trusted on sewage. Reform simply don’t care: they didn’t even mention sewage in their manifesto.
Frankly, the other parties’ record on this can be described with another ‘S’ word… shocking!
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