Stephen Morgan MP has said the Conservative government has ‘failed’ to protect Portsmouth’s natural environment after over 39 days’ worth of raw sewage was dumped into Portsmouth South’s coastline.
The Rivers Trust Interactive Map, which displays constituency breakdowns of monitored storm overflows, shows that in 2021, raw sewage was discharged into the natural environment of the City MP’s constituency of Portsmouth South for a duration of 950 hours.
This equates to there having been a continuous flow of sewage taking place for over a month of the year, Labour Party analysis has found. The map also points to 109 counted sewage spills in 2021 in the same area.
A fortnight ago, Labour found that that on average water companies in England and Wales are pumping raw sewage into our natural environment every two-and-a-half minutes, with areas such as beaches, playing fields and bathing waters having faced 1,076 years-worth of raw sewage over a six-year period.
This comes amid revelations last week, that prime ministerial hopeful Liz Truss was responsible for unleashing cuts of tens of millions of pounds to the Environment Agency, with Environment Agency data showing that the Tories presided over a doubling of water companies dumping raw sewage in subsequent years.
Specifically, during her time as Environment Secretary and as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Truss failed to hold a single meeting with a water company to discuss their performance of sewage dumping and oversaw the slashing of an Environment Agency grant, by a quarter, which was dedicated to monitoring of water companies and cutting pollution in our waters.
Environment Agency sources pointed to staff having been moved away from environmental monitoring following Truss’ period at DEFRA, casting serious doubts over Truss’ competency on major issues facing her previous departments and judgement in understanding the consequences of her decisions.
Last year, Conservative MPs voted to allow water firms to continue sewage dumping, having blocked a Labour-backed amendment to the Environment Bill, that would have sought to progressively eliminate sewage dumping into our natural environment.
Later this week, the Portsmouth South representative is meeting with the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust to continue his efforts to lobby Government to end sewage pollution once and for all. The MP is meeting the charity at Langstone Harbour to visit their seagrass project aimed to mitigate the damage done by sewage on seagrass.
Stephen Morgan, the Member of Parliament for Portsmouth South, said:
“Conservative MPs who are busy Tippexing over their voting records must explain to the country why they voted to allow the scenes of sewage dumping that we’re seeing and failed to protect our natural environment.
“Families across Portsmouth should be able to just enjoy where they live, work or holiday, without having to worrying about encountering filthy sewage as a result of water firms being allowed to cut corners.
“Britain deserves better than a zombie Tory government up to its neck in raw sewage. A Labour government will use the levers of power to hold reckless water bosses to account and toughen regulations to prevent them from gaming the system.”
In addition to writing to the Environment Agency earlier this month to raise concerns about recent sewage discharges onto south coast beaches, Mr Morgan has taken a range of actions to tackle the dirty water crisis locally, including questioning Ministers, convening a public meeting on the issue and working alongside local organisations and charities to hold government and industry to account.
