Ministers failing over sewage pollution, says Caroline Lucas

Green MP Caroline Lucas has urged the government to "cut the crap" over sewage pollution and to return the water industry to public hands.

During an urgent question in the Commons, she accused ministers of "going backwards" on the issue.

Environment Secretary George Eustice insisted sewage pollution was being tackled "on a scale never seen before".

Under government plans, discharges of raw sewage into waterways would be cut by a quarter by 2025, he told MPs.

Mr Eustice said as a Cornish MP, he had long been aware of the problems caused by storm overflows.

"This is the first government to set a clear requirement on water companies to reduce the harm caused by sewage discharges and we've set this in law through the Environment Act" he said.

"Water companies are currently investing £3.1bn now to deliver 800 storm overflow improvements across England by 2025.

"It is only when this government required increased monitoring that we discovered the scale of the problem and so the reality is that this has been a problem for some time."

He added that water companies "should consider themselves on notice, we will not let them get away with illegal activity".

At the end of August, pollution warnings were in place on nearly 50 beaches after heavy rainfall led to water companies discharging untreated sewage.

Water companies discharged untreated sewage into rivers in England more than 400,000 times in 2020, according to official figures.

Ms Lucas said she was "utterly staggered" by his "complacency" over the pumping of raw sewage into waterways and on to beaches.

"We have a so-called plan that allows water companies to continue polluting until 2035 in areas with significant importance to human and ecological health and until 2050 elsewhere, that's sanctioning almost 30 years more of pollution," the Brighton Pavilion MP added.

She also rounded on Liz Truss, saying: "Our soon-to-be prime minister has claimed that she will deliver, deliver, deliver, but the only thing that she did deliver when she was environment secretary was devastating cuts to the Environment Agency."

Labour's shadow environment secretary Jim McMahon said the summer had shown the country was "awash in Conservative-approved filthy raw sewage".

"Over the last six years, there's been over a million sewage discharge spill events which, on average, are still taking place every two and a half minutes."

Liberal Democrat spokesman Tim Farron told MPs it was obvious there was as "colossal problem".

In the past year, he said, six million hours of sewage had been dumped legally into seas, lakes and rivers, while water companies made profits of £2.8bn and awarded their executives pay rises of 20%.

There is a major continuing investigation by the Environment Agency and industry regulator Ofwat into how all wastewater companies manage their treatment works.

Public anger over the continuing discharges has been building over recent weeks as reports of sewage pollution have become more frequent.