By Professor John Robertson OBA
In the Guardian today, the above and this shocking statement:
The government, its water regulator and the Environment Agency could all be taken to court over their failure to tackle sewage dumping in England after a watchdog found failures to comply with the law.
An investigation by the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) found Ofwat, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Environment Agency (EA) all failed to stop water companies from discharging sewage into rivers and seas in England when it was not raining heavily. The OEP was set up in 2020 to replace the role the European Union had played in regulating and enforcing environmental law in the UK.
No UK Government minister or even spokesperson has been door-stepped for comment.
Imagine this happened in Scotland. You don’t have to try too hard to see the ‘SNP accused’ headlines but in England the report is not politicised.
Scotland’s media are desperate to balance out the raw sewage discharges between England and Scotland but it’s not easy.
Why?
Here:
English water companies fined FOURTEEN THOUSAND times as much for illegal sewage discharges as those in Scotland
August 6th 2024, in the Guardian we read:
Thames, Yorkshire and Northumbrian Water will be fined a record £168m between them for a “catalogue of failure” over illegal sewage discharges into rivers and the sea after the industry regulator’s biggest ever investigation.
The water regulator for England and Wales, Ofwat, has proposed penalties of £104m for Thames, £47m for Yorkshire and £17m for Northumbrian for failing to manage their wastewater treatment works and networks, including their operation of storm overflows. It said it was the first of more crackdowns to come.
On 28 December 2023, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency fined two companies for illegal discharges of sewage in 2023:
For a discharge of sewage effluent to the water environment, SEPA fined £600 each:
Sands Caravan and Camping Limited, Wester Ross
Robert Main Ellen, Muir of Ord
So, the usual arithmetic to make fair comparison.
£1 200 in Scotland, pro rata, would be £12 000 in England but for just those three companies, it was £168 000 000,
In 2020, Scottish Water was fined £19 000 for illegal sewage discharges into the Clyde. I can find no other such incident in recent years.
Sources:
England’s water NINE times more likely to contain sewage
From the Guardian on 12th August 2023:
‘An utter disgrace’: 90% of England’s most precious river habitats blighted by raw sewage and farming pollution
This requires little effort.
England above, Scotland below:
The flows and levels in Scotland’s water environment are currently at good or better condition in 90% of rivers, lochs and groundwaters. This is up from 88% when we published the second RBMPs.
Support Scots Independent, Scotland’s oldest pro-independence newspaper and host of the OBA (Oliver Brown Award) at: https://scotsindependent.scot/FWShop/shop/
The Oliver Brown Award for advancing the cause of Scotland’s self respect, previously awarded to Dr Philippa Whitford, Alex Salmond and Sean Connery: https://scotsindependent.scot/?page_id=116
About Oliver Brown, the first Scottish National Party candidate to save his deposit in a Parliamentary election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Brown_(Scottish_activis
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
“Aye, but SNP ‘n’ that”.
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Sorry but our ‘Scottish’ media don’t do ‘balanced’ reporting. They just try to distort it or worse make it up as they go along. with their usual headline which we’re all familiar with.
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Note that it is PUBLIC bodies which are, according to the article, liable to be prosecuted.
This is PRIVATISATION exposed. The removal from public ownership of water in England and Wales transferred PROFIT via DIVIDENDS to the shareholders of the privatised water companies. The mendacity of privatisation was that the private companies would use the profit to invest in and modernise the water infrastructure and provide a better service. But, in reality, very little investment was made.
The Tories set up ‘regulatory’ bodies – i.e. PUBLIC bodies – to ensure compliance of the private utility companies, but such bodies were understaffed and their scope for sanctions were limited. It is these public bodies which are facing fines and costs – i.e. the public is being fined for being the victims of polluted water.
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I’d go much further and amend ” but such bodies were DELIBERATELY UNDERFUNDED AND understaffed and their scope for sanctions were limited ” – DEFRA etc had been in Court and lost with monotonous regularity at cost to public pursse – The Ministers in charge tut-tutting and ‘We’ll look into it’ over the last decade plus were
That’s how long each served as SoS for DEFRA, that’s how much time each should serve in prison.
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It’s notable how this news story has been written up differently by the Guardian and the BBC.
The Guardian article open with: ‘The government, its water regulator and the Environment Agency could all be taken to court over their failure to tackle sewage dumping in England after a watchdog found failures to comply with the law.’
And then in its second paragraph: ‘An investigation by the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) found Ofwat, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Environment Agency (EA) all failed to stop water companies from discharging sewage into rivers and seas in England when it was not raining heavily. The OEP was set up in 2020 to replace the role the European Union had played in regulating and enforcing environmental law in the UK.’
The same news story appears in the BBC News website today. It appears in the UK news section but I couldn’t find it in the England news section.
See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g38drwmrlo
The BBC article opens with this paragraph: ‘The government and regulators have broken the law by being too lenient on water companies that spill sewage, the UK’s environment watchdog has found.’
It takes until paragraph 14 to learn: ‘The OEP was set up under the 2021 Environment Act to hold the government and other public bodies to account in England and Northern Ireland.’
At no point in the c.25 paragraphs of text does the BBC article state explicitly – as the Guardian does in its very first sentence and again in its second – that the matter in question is ONLY about ‘sewage dumping in England.’
Regarding the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), its own website states: its ‘work covers England and Northern Ireland. We also cover reserved matters across the UK (a matter on which only the UK Parliament in Westminster can make legislation). So to compound the BBC’s already problematic coverage, it’s use of the term ‘UK’s environment watchdog’ is not quite what it may seem.
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