Eustice defends ‘utter failure’ of efforts to cut raw sewage discharges in England

theguardian.com:

The environment secretary, George Eustice, insisted the government was tackling the millions of hours of raw sewage discharges into rivers and seas in England as MPs demanded answers to a summer of water companies dumping effluent into holiday swimming spots.

Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: “Literal shit is being pumped into our rivers and seas. The state of our water network is a national scandal and the government has utterly failed to take action.”

She said the government’s plan, published last week, meant sewage discharges would be permitted up to 2050. “Why is the government going backwards?

“And during a cost of living scandal, floundering water bosses are still taking home obscene pay packets – pouring salt in the wounds of millions struggling to make ends meet.”

Eustice said the Conservative government was the only one to tackle the problem. He said that in 2016 just 800 storm overflows were monitored but the government had increased this to 12,000 out of a total of 15,000 overflows.

Using information from the monitoring had led to record prosecutions against water companies, he told MPs, with 54 prosecutions since 2015 and fines totalling £140m.

Defending the plan outlined last week to reduce raw sewage discharges via overflows, which was criticised as a “cruel joke”, Eustice said: “Our discharge reduction plan prioritises bathing waters. We are requiring water companies to make available all the data on storm overflows and to publish it in real time for the public.

“Water companies are investing £3.1bn to deliver 800 storm overflow improvements by 2025. We have increased monitoring of storm overflows to almost 90%, and by next year that will be 100%.”

He said £56bn of investment was to