Latest / The Fourcast / Sewage scandal - the system letting water companies off the hook

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Sewage scandal - the system letting water companies off the hook · The Fourcast

0:00
Government is now sacrificing every bill payer and every
0:03
household in England and Wales on that bonfire of corporate
0:07
green, financial engineering and misconduct.
0:09
The frontline staff of the agency, they want to get out and
0:12
and see pollution, investigate it and force against it.
0:15
They're handcuffed by management and leadership who literally
0:18
don't want that to happen. Clearly the these water
0:21
companies are not at all disposed.
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They pay any attention to regulation whatsoever.
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If you want to change that behaviour, send 1 executive to
0:30
jail for six weeks and this industry would utterly transform
0:34
itself. Alex, you, you, you spoke to the
0:36
environmental agents and they put up a very plausible
0:38
interviewee. What did she say?
0:43
Hello and welcome to the forecast.
0:45
It's The Dirty secret at the heart of England's waterways.
0:48
The water companies publicly insist they are cleaning up
0:51
their act, but privately they have been allowed to avoid
0:54
prosecution for years through a little known mechanism called an
0:58
enforcement undertaking, essentially a deal that lets a
1:01
company admit fault and pay money to a good cause instead of
1:05
facing criminal charges. The Environment Agency says the
1:09
payments are a brilliant tool, faster and simpler than taking a
1:13
case through a lengthy court process.
1:15
But in a Channel 4 News investigation, our Chief
1:17
Correspondent Alex Thompson has uncovered how these payments
1:20
have been used repeatedly by water companies accused of
1:24
polluting rivers, allowing them to sidestep court scrutiny and
1:28
conviction. We've also found that the
1:30
Environment Agency has not completed a single prosecution
1:34
of a water company for any pollution occurring in the last
1:37
five years, despite almost 2 million sewage discharges.
1:42
To discuss what this means for the health of our rivers and for
1:44
public trust, Alex joins us now alongside campaign of Fergal
1:48
Sharkey and whistle blower Robert Forrester, who has first
1:52
hand experience of how these cases are handled inside the
1:56
system. Alex, let let's lay out what's
1:58
actually happened. The government sort of had this
2:00
idea. That let's.
2:02
Take this out of the courts, we'll speed it all up.
2:05
We'll get money straight into cleaning up rivers.
2:09
What's gone wrong? Well, yeah, that's what the law
2:11
says and that's what the regulations say.
2:13
Let's put it like this. It's 9:30 in the morning.
2:15
You're doing 125 miles an hour on the fast lane of the M6.
2:20
You get pulled over by the police and it looks like as
2:23
you'd expect, you're going to court criminal offence, you're
2:25
going to be prosecuted. But suddenly you say, hang on
2:29
officer, if I paid £10,000, twelve, £1000 to the RSPCA, can
2:35
we make all this go away? Now that sounds incredible, but
2:39
that's in crude terms is pretty much how this system happens.
2:43
Very good reasons. So the EA, the Environment
2:45
Agency and indeed the government and the charities who benefit it
2:49
means the money goes much faster than a Criminal Court to where
2:52
it's needed, they say, to clean up the mess.
2:54
They say it's fast it it gets around all the the entanglements
3:00
of the law, which we're all very well versed in, and the courts
3:03
being clogged up. Isn't the isn't the analogy of
3:05
speed awareness course? Well, the imagine.
3:07
That I can pay. I can pay to get out of the
3:09
penalty. Well, I'm surprised, you know, I
3:11
suppose you even know about such things.
3:13
Creation. Yeah.
3:14
Yeah. Well, look, I mean there is a,
3:16
you know, the problem with this is that if at the end of the day
3:20
this system was working and the money was going quickly and
3:23
things were being cleaned up, then there'd be an incentive to
3:27
stop the pollution in the 1st place and it would stop.
3:30
Instead of which the exact opposite is happening.
3:32
The government only this saying last week in the last year
3:35
they've they've got 8.5 million in these payments out of the
3:39
water and no police, two charities.
3:41
If that's happening on that scale, that means one thing and
3:44
one thing only. The pollution keeps on going.
3:47
So this is a mechanism that basically enables water
3:50
companies to keep polluting and just pay their way out of it.
3:54
And so it enables it. But that is what is happening,
3:57
shall we say. It's not for me to say then, but
3:59
put it this way. I mean, you may argue and no
4:02
doubt we'll hear from from Robin Fogler, who would, that it
4:05
almost incentivizes pollution. From the charity's point of
4:08
view, it is literally the case that the more dead fish you have
4:12
in the river that you're trying to keep clean, the more money
4:16
you get. It's incredible.
4:18
So Rob, where did you work and what was it that appalled you?
4:23
Well, I worked at the Environment Agency 21 years and
4:27
what appalled me was the deprioritisation of water
4:31
generally by the agency leadership.
4:33
Methods were starting to be put in place that bypass regulation
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to the benefit of the water industry and the E US and the
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civil sanction regime was just one arm of those benefits that
4:44
that bypassed it. Let let's just remind EU is
4:47
what? An enforcement undertaking and.
4:49
And that is a deal done between the Environment Agency, the
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water company and a charity. Yeah, it's, it's a civil
4:58
sanction. So it there's no criminal
5:00
penalty imposed, it takes you out the criminal justice system
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and allows you to pay money to a charity and therefore you won't
5:08
have a criminal offence on your record.
5:10
So what? Why do you think this is such a
5:11
bad thing? Because I mean there there is an
5:13
argument that the money is going to clean up rivers.
5:17
It goes quicker than it would if you had years and years of
5:21
lawyers arguing about this. Why is it wrong?
5:25
It's ultimately the deterrent effect, it's watering down the
5:28
deterrent effect to stop further pollution.
5:30
If water companies are aware that they've got this in their
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armoury, they can have this up the sleeve.
5:35
There's not the incentive to then tackle gross pollution
5:38
knowing that this is the fall back.
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If you get prosecuted, you'll get a criminal sanction, you'll
5:43
get a multi £1,000,000 fine. They'll be deterring not to
5:46
undertake this again. So it's the incentive for almost
5:49
to pollute because you don't have the deterrent to fall back
5:52
on. So what?
5:53
What did you do as a whistleblower?
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Because your, your, your, your life has been dramatised as well
5:59
in the Channel 4 series. Yeah.
6:01
Well, I was a a London water officer, so I was involved in
6:05
investigating pollution incidents, carried out
6:08
enforcement activities and in that role me and fellow
6:11
frontline officers could see how Walter has been de prioritised.
6:15
We've been encouraged not to go out on site and not to respond
6:18
to instance. And then because the regulatory
6:21
process is interlinked, you then don't get the investigations
6:24
coming on the back of it. You then don't get the
6:26
enforcement actions that are coming back at it.
6:28
And to the public, it's a manipulated picture of what's
6:31
actually going on. But to the management of the EA,
6:34
that was the picture they wanted to project, one that was false.
6:38
And how much money are we talking about in terms of the
6:40
the E us? How much are they worth to a
6:42
charity? They can be worth anything from
6:45
a few 1000 up to 1,000,000. I think it's probably.
6:48
£1,000,000 to A to a charity. To a charity that's a charity
6:53
who's going to do work on a river that in some cases this
6:58
will be worth that the agency would normally have funded.
7:01
So there's a mechanism there where the water companies are
7:04
almost Funding Agency work. And these are rivers that are
7:08
polluted anyway. So if you go back to if you had
7:10
the proper deterrent in force, multimillion pound fines, would
7:13
that river be polluted in the first place?
7:15
We feel this is a mechanism. The government's quite proud of
7:17
the press releases all the time. What they do, because it allows
7:20
them to rearrange and create that illusion that something's
7:24
been done about this incredible, the incredibly daft, almost
7:29
lunatic situation that we're allowing water companies to dump
7:33
human waste into the nearest river.
7:36
The truth is these are nothing more than get out of jail cards
7:40
for water companies. I'll give you an example. 3
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weeks ago yet another government press release, £8,000,000 being
7:48
dispersed to charities. 8.5. 8.5 million if you look at the
7:52
detail, 7 Trent, by way of example, a company that is £2.4
7:57
billion worth of revenues annually for a mere £4.6 million
8:02
was able to offload, walk away from and dispense with six
8:08
criminal investigations that if they went to court, could
8:11
involve people going to jail for up to two years and, as Rob's
8:14
pointed out, unlimited fines. Well, now the the jail question
8:18
is complicated, isn't it, because the law has only
8:20
recently changed? To.
8:23
To let people go to jail for obstruction justice.
8:25
Covering up investigation. I'm afraid that again, it's just
8:28
another government press release that doesn't add up.
8:32
If you actually go back and check Section 110 of the
8:35
Environment Act 1996, I think you'll find that's actually been
8:39
the law for the last So what? Can you go to jail?
8:43
Well, that is not only for sanctioning that authorizing it,
8:46
allowing it or whatever the courts would find you guilty of
8:50
in that you permitted, knowingly, wilfully facilitated
8:53
that breach of your licence, that sewage discharge, that
8:57
pollution event to take place. Now the EA, as you mentioned,
9:01
four years, five years now has been involved with the EA
9:05
referred to as its largest ever criminal investigation.
9:09
Every single sewage company in the country was under
9:12
investigation. And as you've already
9:14
highlighted, not one of those has even remotely come to
9:17
prosecution, never mind to court.
9:19
What would you achieve though, if you were prosecuting?
9:23
Well, it's very simple. Clearly the these water
9:26
companies are not at all disposed.
9:28
They pay any attention to regulation whatsoever because
9:31
they know the regulatory system, the law is all there, as we just
9:35
discussed, for 35 years. You can go to jail for
9:38
disrupting an an investigation. But they know the regulators
9:41
aren't effectively trying to enforce the law.
9:44
They make little attempt at it. In fact, as Rob has highlighted,
9:47
they will go out of the way to facilitate the water companies
9:51
being able to walk away from this and not enforce the law
9:53
with vigor. If you want to change that
9:56
behaviour, send 1 executive to jail for six weeks and this
10:01
industry would utterly transform itself.
10:03
Tomorrow morning, first thing. I mean 7 trends and I'm sure
10:07
other wars companies say their focus is on trying to prevent
10:10
pollution before it happens. Let me remind them, they were
10:13
first told about all of this in 2003 when the European
10:17
Commission wrote to the UK government flagging a concern
10:20
that the UK government was in breach of the underlying
10:23
legislation. That resulted in the UK
10:25
government been taken to court in 2012 and been found guilty
10:30
facilitating sewage being dumped into the environment in breach
10:35
of the underlying legislation. So what do you mean?
10:37
What time frame are we looking at that they're trying to do
10:39
something about it? Is that trying to do something
10:41
about it since 2003, Trying to do something about it since
10:44
2012, trying to do something about it since people like
10:48
myself and Rob over the last 6-7 years have started bringing it
10:51
to public attention. We've heard Sorry a 15,000,000
10:55
times. Do you think Rob it would it
10:57
would be right to send a water boss to jail for something that
11:02
happens not because he has ordered or she, but just happens
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as part of the the mechanism. You know that these these
11:11
releases happen. It's not it's not it's not a
11:14
person who goes. You know what, let's just open
11:15
the floodgates full of crap. They're in charge of the
11:18
companies doing it. There are worries going on the
11:23
signed up to these E US aware of the discharge, legal discharge
11:28
has been picked up on and it's that direct culpability.
11:31
And to pick up on Fogle's point, if you look at the waste regime,
11:35
directors get sent to jail for the direct culpability of what
11:38
the company are doing. That's not mirrored within the
11:41
water companies. So you're right, there's the
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law's been there for a very long time and it's been used by the
11:45
agency on waste companies, but for some reason isn't being used
11:49
on water companies. So just just to be clear about
11:51
this, there is one arm of the Environment Agency that deals
11:54
with trade waste and flight tipping.
11:56
And they very proactively will go out there, prosecute people
11:59
and directors of companies, go to jail.
12:02
But there's another arm of the same government agency does
12:06
nothing, and in fact, I would argue, turns its back and tries
12:09
to disassociate itself with it as much as possible.
12:12
Alex, you, you, you spoke to the Environment Agency and they put
12:16
up a very plausible interviewee. What did she say?
12:19
Yeah, I mean Helen Wakem, she's the the head of head of water
12:22
kind of name says what it's, you know what it says on the tin,
12:25
really. And she said really what we've
12:27
been discussing, she says, and I quote they're, they're a
12:28
brilliant tool, a brilliant tool for the Environment Agency.
12:31
In the past year, 8.5 million as we've discussed.
12:34
He says the reason we use them is they're faster than criminal
12:38
prosecutions. Prosecution can take years to
12:40
come to court and take up a lot of our time.
12:43
Balance that also with what the charities say.
12:46
This has got McKenzie from the Rivers Trust.
12:48
He says they make sure that the money is invested back into the
12:52
cash room. That's the river where there is
12:54
an issue. We're incredibly well placed to
12:56
make sure the money goes where it's needed and we're confident
13:00
that with a long enough time period that these enforcement
13:03
undertakings allow us to spend the money where we can have the
13:06
greatest impact on those cash on those rivers.
13:10
Now you can see a smallish criminal spillage, perhaps not
13:15
from a water monopoly you can see.
13:18
A farmer or something like that? Well, yeah.
13:20
Exactly. That could be dealt with pretty
13:22
effectively. Pretty I, I can.
13:24
There's a clear argument. The problem that we've uncovered
13:27
is 2 things, both of which say should never happen and that's
13:31
the law, the legislation behind this and the EA regulations,
13:34
although they've got a, a degree of discretion.
13:37
Big dangerous word, but they have and those are quite simple.
13:41
You shouldn't use it for repeat offenders, and you shouldn't use
13:44
it for serious offences. How is it being used for repeat
13:47
offenders? Well, is there discretion
13:50
within? Well, the, the, the data
13:52
suggests that that discretion, small word, massive effect is
13:55
being used right, left and centre.
13:57
And we give you one example we've discovered in the last 15
14:00
years, 2016 for the decade coming forward just under 6000,
14:05
category one, category 2. Those are the most serious
14:08
pollution offences. Just under 6000 of them were
14:12
downgraded to minor offences Category 3 and 4 without Even so
14:16
much as a site visit. So just explain what is a
14:19
category one or two incident? What's a three or a four?
14:23
And why is one OK to be used in an enforcement undertaking and
14:28
the other not? Category one's a major incident.
14:31
Category 2 is a serious incident, so they're major fish
14:34
kills. They're a long stretch of river
14:36
affected by pollution. Category 3 is deemed a minor
14:39
incident, so no ecology impact. Smaller area of water course
14:45
affected. Why the useful for the minor
14:48
incident is generally, as was explained, if it's someone like
14:52
a farmer or a smaller company, they won't want to do it again.
14:57
They're responsible for that minor incident.
14:58
They don't have the financial clout.
15:00
That enforcement undertaking then becomes a deterrent effect.
15:03
They have to pay money that's important to them.
15:06
A few thousand is important to them.
15:08
A million is important to a water company.
15:10
But that will be a deterrent effect once you get into the
15:12
major incidents. That has to be a criminal
15:15
sanction because you've caused such a serious incident.
15:18
And also the deterrent effect has to be a prosecution to make
15:20
sure that doesn't happen again. If you take that away from the
15:24
regulated process, you're taking the deterrent effect completely
15:27
off the table. So are you saying that incidents
15:30
that should have been category one or two were were effectively
15:34
being written down as 3 or 4 so that they could be dealt with
15:39
informally? Yes, that's the the down grading
15:42
of incidents as they come in, not dealt with informally, but
15:46
almost closed down and completely taken off the books,
15:48
so not assessed. This is a fundamental part of
15:51
how the water companies control the regulatory process.
15:53
So you're down grading it without your own evidence.
15:57
You've not been to site, you've only got water company evidence
16:01
coming in. We've got nothing to go off
16:02
ourselves. So it's a completely
16:04
manufactured arena to downgrade it.
16:07
So the officers issue is we need to see what's going on site.
16:10
It could be worse than it's been reported.
16:12
We need to get our own evidence. Senior managers say we're happy
16:16
with water company evidence and therefore the decision gets made
16:19
on that basis. And why weren't people being
16:20
sent? I mean, is that a resources
16:22
problem? No, it it, it wasn't a resources
16:25
problem because the funding in the agencies gone up for water
16:27
regulation significantly over a number of years.
16:29
It was a leadership and managerial decision.
16:32
If you attend these incidents, you're going to find problems.
16:35
You're going to find things we need to enforce against.
16:37
They're going to have to be reported.
16:39
It's not going to look great for the agency or the water
16:41
industry. So the best thing is keep them
16:43
off the box. Pretend they didn't happen.
16:45
What did the numbers show on that as to the as to how much
16:48
that was happening? Well, the numbers show Christian
16:51
that it it 10 years ago they just did this a few number of
16:55
times. This suddenly changing serious
16:57
to minor just a dozen times or so back into 1216.
17:02
By the last few years, you're getting 2 1/2 thousands of these
17:06
instances happening every single year.
17:08
So look, they're on to something.
17:10
They like this. The books look great.
17:12
We're really getting on with it. We can say to government, look
17:15
at what we're doing, here's the situation, we're really
17:17
proactive. But actually what is happening
17:19
is without any site visit whatsoever, something serious, a
17:24
lot of dead fish, it's become something minor.
17:27
No dead fish, nothing to worry about.
17:29
There's nothing illegal about this though, is there?
17:31
These judgements are discretion. Well, listen, there may be
17:35
nothing illegal about it, but the idea that you can have a
17:37
water company there that is consistently, day after day,
17:41
week after week, year after year, doping, dumping industrial
17:45
amounts of sewage into our rivers and onto our beaches,
17:48
knowing full well all we have to do is just kick a can down the
17:52
road. We'll pay a few million in an
17:54
enforcement undertaking and we'll just keep batting this one
17:57
down the road for another 5-10, fifteen, 20 years.
18:00
At that point you have to put a stop to it.
18:02
If those charities, in my opinion that benefit from this,
18:05
and I get it for a small local charity, £1,000,000, that
18:09
possibly could be most of not only your annual finance right
18:12
there. If they were actually truly
18:15
driven and motivated to protect, safeguard and conserve these
18:18
rivers, they'd put that eight and a half, £1,000,000 into a
18:21
pot and take out personal prosecutions against every
18:24
director of every water company in this country.
18:26
But they're on a change of landscape, right?
18:28
There and some charities have done precisely that I'm.
18:31
Well aware of it. And they won, yeah.
18:33
But but, but the well, you spoke to two guys, didn't you?
18:36
We did. One who did a private
18:37
prosecution, Yeah. And one who takes the money.
18:39
That's right. And his argument of taking the
18:42
money is what? Well, as I just read that was
18:44
Scott McKenzie and he says basically we are best placed and
18:47
there's a certain logic here. We are best placed to know we
18:50
know our river, right, probably better than the the water
18:53
monopoly does. We know when something's gone
18:55
wrong. We can work with the water
18:57
monopoly to get the money quick, fast into that area and put it
19:00
right. Just one problem.
19:02
There's absolutely no oversight whatsoever.
19:05
They get the money, but nobody's looking.
19:07
Did you actually go and do something about that spill?
19:09
Did you actually go there? What did you do?
19:11
How did it happen? How was the money spent?
19:13
Nobody asks a single. Question.
19:16
Let me give you some insight to this.
19:17
In 2924% of England's rivers were great graded as being in
19:24
good ecological condition. That by 2015 had dropped to 16%,
19:29
by 2019 to 14%. And the current projection that
19:34
I've seen is by next year just 6% of England's rivers will
19:39
attain good ecological status. So for all of that money and all
19:43
of this charity work that's been done over the last 25 years, if
19:46
the ecological status of our rivers is any measure, and I
19:50
think it's a good one, the whole scheme's been a colossal and
19:53
utter failure. I'm gonna need to rethink it and
19:55
those grounds alone. Regarding the the status of
20:00
rivers, how it's going down, but for the agency over the last few
20:04
years we've been meeting every KPI of 1 water quality through
20:08
the magical kilometre enhanced KPI.
20:11
Do you want do? You want to explain this bad
20:12
that I can't? Explain it.
20:15
KPI. When we cut our monitoring in
20:17
half, which measured the the water quality of rivers, we
20:20
brought in a KPI which kilometre enhanced and that is basically
20:26
officers being asked how many kilometers of river do you think
20:29
you've enhanced this month? And you just give them a number.
20:32
It's a guess. And officers are challenged and
20:34
say, well I'll stop that pollution, but the river was
20:37
poor before, it's poor after. And you've been told can we
20:39
stick you down for 10? Can we stick you down for 20?
20:42
And that is how that metric that's been quoted to Parliament
20:45
and quoted to press. Like a market haggle. 10,000
20:47
bonds enhanced. It's just completely made.
20:50
By the way, can I can I ask what is enhanced actually look like?
20:53
What is the E as definition of enhanced?
20:55
Exactly, to officers it was upgrading the river to the EA.
20:58
It's just a made-up number. So if I send somebody down there
21:01
and we spent 10 grand and we tidied up a bit of riverbank and
21:04
fixed a little weird something I could then claim, well, actually
21:08
there's 35 miles of river above this point.
21:11
So I've now migrated fish. So I've now enhanced 35 miles of
21:15
river. Yeah.
21:16
Excellent regardless of water quality.
21:19
So what? What do you think should happen
21:21
to this voluntary system? The voluntary system, it should
21:25
remain partly in place, It should be scrapped for water
21:27
companies on the repeat offender basis only.
21:30
You've had your chance, you get one, but now it's being abused
21:34
and the way and it should be kept for minor offences for the
21:38
small to medium companies where it is a deterrent effect.
21:41
The prosecution deterrent effect for water companies needs to be
21:43
brought in and a good point to see how it's skewed
21:47
prosecutions. Now, if you look at the
21:48
prosecutions that do come through, they're generally for
21:52
hundreds if not thousands of offences bundled together into
21:56
one prosecution. These haven't been attended by
21:58
officers in previous days. They will be individual
22:02
prosecutions, but the agency and Walter Company don't want
22:05
hundreds or thousands of prosecutions, so they gets to
22:08
bundle them all together. So the enforcement undertaking
22:11
system has that effect of watering down prosecutions that
22:14
do take place. But I mean, if you if you did
22:16
actually prosecute each event, the system would just collapse.
22:21
You'd bankrupt the walls. I mean, if you look at the seven
22:23
trends fine in 2024, that was already four years after the
22:30
spill had happened. Yeah.
22:32
So, you know, the the legal system can't cope with
22:36
prosecuting individuals can. It.
22:38
Well, I'd, I'd argue again on that and I'll just levy again to
22:42
the wayside of things. The wayside of things get gets
22:45
things prosecuted within 18 months.
22:48
There's no delay. The delays in prosecuting water
22:50
companies come from water companies.
22:52
They cause the delays. In my experience, these can be
22:55
pushed through the courts quickly.
22:56
But you're right, if you're pushing thousands of
22:58
prosecutions through, that may be too much.
23:00
The justice system, it's certainly bankrupt water
23:03
companies, but ask yourself how we got into the position where
23:06
we could prosecute thousands. And that's the problem.
23:09
That deterrent effect was taken off the table to the point where
23:11
we now have thousands of prosecutable offences which we
23:14
can't prosecute because of the enforcement undertaking regime.
23:19
There is a bill the government has drafted now on water.
23:24
What is it going to do? Well, according to the Permanent
23:28
Secretary Defra, who a month ago, 5 weeks ago appeared before
23:32
a Select Committee, it appears that it may not be to transform
23:36
the system the way we would all like to see it being done.
23:39
To quote the Permanent Secretary, Government's aim is
23:42
to simplify and streamline the underlying legislation, and he
23:47
specifically identified the Voter Framework Directive and
23:50
the Urban Twist Treatment Wastewater Directive.
23:53
They want legislation that underpins every bit of
23:56
environmental legislation in this country.
23:59
Now, how do I interpret that? The civil chief, civil servant
24:01
is telling me government aimed to simplify and streamline we're
24:05
now facing, But my concern is situation where we cannot get
24:09
the water companies to comply with the law simply because the
24:12
EA chooses willfully not to. So we're just going to change
24:16
the law. They comply with what the water
24:17
companies want, and we're just going to give them what they
24:19
want on a plate. The whole thing is nothing more
24:22
than window dressing. I'm sure Rob will confirm it.
24:25
All of the existing legislation ever needed to clean this up, to
24:29
deal with this, it's there already.
24:31
It's on the statute book. We just need regulators to go
24:34
out there and force the existing law and to do so with vigor and
24:37
enthusiasm and ambition. What is the what is the law that
24:42
the Environment Agency which is being scrapped?
24:45
Yeah. Could have used that.
24:48
It hasn't to you want to go clean up rivers.
24:53
The law that exists, just environmental permitting
24:55
regulations, Regulation 38, one that covers all pollution.
25:00
The laws are there. What would it give them the
25:02
power to do? Or what does it give them the
25:04
power? Well, they've got the power to
25:05
enforce against pollution, so they've got the power to make
25:08
sure water companies self report on time.
25:11
They've obviously got the power to then attend incidents on
25:13
time, they've got the power to investigate properly and they've
25:16
got the power to prosecute those forearms of that regulatory
25:20
process worked. 2028 O 8 to 2012, they worked.
25:25
The water companies were compliant.
25:28
Water quality was at its highest.
25:30
That the powers haven't changed. It was the agency's choice not
25:33
to use them. So what happened in 2012?
25:37
Well, 2012 was when operator self monitoring started to kick
25:41
in and water companies started to realise, oh actually we can
25:44
just peel back on reporting things straight away.
25:46
The regime changed in 2015 and that's when the water regulatory
25:50
process collapsed. Water companies would could then
25:53
report instance whenever they wanted.
25:55
They could control when agency officers went out on site, they
25:58
were allowed to control what evidence they could submit to
26:01
the agency. So the agency then struggle to
26:05
investigate properly and struggle to take the necessary
26:07
enforcement action because they weren't dealing with their own
26:09
evidence. They were actually going seeing
26:10
the impacts. Data on a sheet does not show
26:14
the impact in a river, the volumes that have gone into the
26:16
river, the dead fish that may have occurred from from that.
26:20
So they shifted the whole regulatory regime onto water
26:22
companies and away from the agency.
26:24
So that's not a watering down of powers, that's just not using
26:27
the powers you've actually got. To give you a practical example,
26:30
there is nothing in the world to stop off what and the EA work in
26:34
a conjunction and jointly where off what would have to do it
26:38
issuing what's called a Section 18 enforcement order, ordering
26:42
the water companies. You will sort this out and you
26:44
will stop doing this in the next five years.
26:47
And if the water companies do not comply with that instruction
26:50
off, what in the EA can then begin the process of revoking
26:53
their operating licence and taking the licence away from
26:55
them? And what what, what happens to
26:57
those powers now that there's this rationalisation of the
27:00
regulator and of what's going? On that, that's now bear in mind
27:04
we've not seen this water bill yet and what it's going to
27:06
contain. But the likelihood is if they're
27:09
going to water down the water framework directive and the
27:11
wastewater treatment directive, all the power is going to go.
27:15
It's never going to be used. It's never been used in 35, I
27:17
mean. What I don't really understand
27:19
is what why the government would do what you say they are doing.
27:24
And there is always a disagreement between your
27:26
interpretation of the law and theirs.
27:28
But. Disagreement.
27:31
I'm right? This is this is a massive
27:33
political issue that drives voters.
27:35
Absolutely not this, indeed. Why?
27:37
Why would the government deliberately let water companies
27:40
get away with it and take away? Pounds Well, OK, the the
27:42
politics for me involves the £82.5 billion worth of debt that
27:47
these companies are now saddled with, bearing in mind we
27:50
privatise these companies completely debt free.
27:53
So on our behalf, we as bill payers are not liable to pay
27:57
back apparently that £82.5 billion worth of debt.
28:02
That becomes a major political headache when you've got a
28:05
country that's completely economically flatlining, when
28:09
the systems and public services are collapsing.
28:11
I can barely drive around North London without my front tire
28:15
disappearing down a pothole. And you're desperately trying to
28:18
grow the economy and stimulate some sort of growth driven by
28:22
overseas and national investment.
28:25
The reality is there's a bond market out there and £82 billion
28:29
worth of debt that I don't think it's worth the paper it's
28:31
written on. And government's going to have
28:33
to face up to the reality that otherwise what we are doing,
28:36
government is now sacrificing every bill pair and every
28:39
household in England and Wales on that bonfire of corporate
28:43
green, financial engineering and misconduct.
28:46
What do you mean government's going to have to face up to it?
28:47
You mean take it on to the balance sheet?
28:49
No. They're going to have to
28:50
actually come to some arrangement.
28:51
They're going to have to restructure and refinance this
28:53
industry. Industry.
28:54
If you're a Thames Water customer right now, getting on
28:57
for 30% of your bill is doing nothing.
28:59
The paying interest on that debt that's currently sitting on
29:03
Thames Waters balance sheet, they're all of those water
29:05
companies in the same situation. Government needs to sit down and
29:09
sit and explain to these guys, we are not accepting this.
29:12
You're going to have to refinance and restructure these
29:14
companies. Otherwise, we're going to start
29:16
taking them back into some form of state control.
29:19
What, what are the companies themselves like to deal with
29:21
then, Alex, when you're you've done a lot of these stories, I
29:24
mean, do they do they engage with you or?
29:27
The flat and short answer that Christian is no, they don't.
29:30
They don't come out to do interviews as a matter of
29:33
course. We were very lucky to get Helen
29:35
Wagen from the Environment Agency after many, many years of
29:39
asking them to come and do an interview.
29:41
So people can read into that what they will, but they are
29:44
not, they are not very forward in coming to put their case,
29:48
which you'd have assumed if they thought was strong and robust,
29:51
they'd be only too happy to shout it from from the rooftop.
29:54
So that reticence, I think, you know, people might read into
29:58
that quite a lot. Did you know what their position
29:59
is on this system? Yes, absolutely.
30:02
They they they they their position to the watermelon is
30:05
exactly the same as that of the environment.
30:08
AC you can't. And indeed the charities who
30:10
have benefited, you know, they're all three parts in in
30:12
this together and you can see they love it because as we have
30:15
said, there is a certain efficiency about getting
30:19
something done, getting the money moved from here to there
30:22
to do that. But the simple fact is you need
30:24
to bring all this together. The quality of the rivers is
30:27
getting worse and worse and worse.
30:28
So whatever the system was brought in to do, it clearly
30:33
isn't doing it. If I was the chairman of a water
30:36
company that was recently fined 4.6 million in exchange for
30:40
walking away from six potential prosecutions where I could face
30:43
two years in jail and unlimited fines, you fined me 4.6 million.
30:48
Phone them up and ask them if they'd like that paid in 20s or
30:50
50s. And what and what do your former
30:54
colleagues think of what you've done?
30:57
The on the front line, they're happy that this is getting the
31:02
attention it deserves. The front line staff of the
31:05
agency want to do their job. They want to get out and and see
31:08
pollution, investigate it and force against it.
31:11
They're handcuffed by management and leadership.
31:14
Who who literally don't want that to happen.
31:17
So they're happy that the light is being shown on this.
31:20
Now, they still show the same concerns of Matt, of me that the
31:24
water bill and the white paper are almost a white flag to the
31:28
water companies to say you're going to remain in charge
31:31
because the enforcement undertaking regime and the rest
31:34
of the regulatory process I've spoken about isn't addressed at
31:37
all. And the Secretary of State made
31:39
a comment recently that she believes the incident response
31:43
system the agency has is robust and needs no changes.
31:46
I mean, after all the evidence that you can see, if that's
31:50
their position, then we're. Struggling.
31:52
So why are they wrong finally, when you know ministers will
31:54
come on and say we've brought we we've brought in the idea that
31:58
people can be jailed for obstructing investigations.
32:02
We've introduced unlimited fines and I know you, you say they
32:05
already had the, the the the power.
32:07
But this is a new specific framed around obstruction of
32:11
investigations. We're introducing unlimited
32:15
fines. Yeah, and banning bonuses or
32:19
restricting remuneration. You know what?
32:22
Why are they? Why do they not have a point
32:24
that they are taking robust action?
32:27
Well. Like Fergal mentioned, that's
32:29
not happening. That's just words.
32:31
But the robust action is to to reintegrate the regulatory
32:36
process that brings a deterrent in for water companies.
32:39
None of that is happening. The incidents are still not
32:42
being attended. Water companies self report when
32:44
they want, operator self monitoring still in force.
32:47
Prosecutions are few and far between.
32:50
They still control everything. That white white paper and the
32:52
ministers you speak about not only aren't tackling that,
32:55
they're saying they're happy with that.
32:57
So how is that going to change if that's the position?
32:59
Thank you all very much indeed. Pleasure.
33:02
That's the forecast. Until next time, bye bye.