…as minister calls Labour’s water plan “thoroughly unworkable”

Water minister, Rebecca Pow, warned Labour’s plan for water “would add £1,000 on to every customer’s bill and we would have to add pipes that would go two and a half times around the world”.

She was responding to a call from Liz Twist MP to immediately enact Labour’s “much more ambitious plan to tackle combined sewer overflows, and this would include cutting discharges by 90%, mandatory sewage outlet monitoring, and automatic fines for discharges”.

In the ensuing discussion, Pow asserted: “The so-called plan the Labour party has put forward is thoroughly unworkable in the cost it would put on the public, the time it would take and the amount of pipes that would be required. It would involve digging up the entire nation, whereas we have a completely costed plan: it is very clear, and we have set targets on when these storm overflow monitors have to be in place—by the end of this year—and all the work on the storm overflow plans must be delivered to the secretary of state and me forthwith. So we are definitely on top of this like never before.”