My New Year’s Message column for the Ham & High.  Read online here or buy a copy of your local campaigning newspaper from your newsagents.

“I’ve always loved swimming, ever since I was a young child.  Even on these crisp, snowy winter mornings I love nothing more than swimming in the great outdoors, whether at our brilliant Park Road Lido, Hampstead Heath ponds or further afield.  There’s so much evidence about the benefit of outdoor swimming for mental and physical wellbeing, reducing anxiety, improving mood, and connecting with nature.  It leaves me feeling energised and ready to face the day ahead.

But there’s nothing good for your health about swimming in sewage.

Not one river in England is in a healthy condition anymore and over the past six years there have been 1,261,498 (and counting) sewage dumps into our beaches and our waters.

That’s one every two and a half minutes.

This hasn’t happened by accident.  Liz Truss’ record doesn’t just include tanking the economy and increasing everyone’s mortgages.  During her time as Environment Secretary, she slashed Environment Agency enforcement and monitoring and failed to meet a single water company boss to discuss their performance.  She wasn’t alone.  Last year, Tory MPs joined together to block amendments to the Environment Bill that would have tackled dumping.  Is it any wonder that sewage dumps have skyrocketed under successive Conservative Governments?

I want to see the Environment Agency given proper enforcement powers and legally binding targets to end dumping.  I also want to end the practice of customers picking up the tab, while bosses and shareholders run off with all the profits.  Water bosses have taken home £48 million in the last two years, including £27.6 million in bonuses, benefits, and incentives.  It’s a reward for failure that must end – a Labour Government would hold water company bosses legally and financially accountable for the environmental consequences of their actions and strike off company directors who are persistent offenders.

In the time it’s taken you to read my column, there’ll have been yet another sewage dump.  Perhaps two.  Let 2023 be the year that we stop treating this country like an open sewer, clean up our waterways and end this disgraceful practice.

My best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to you all.”

Catherine