Henry Smith votes to let sewage discharges continue in Crawley until 2038

I’ve rarely seen the level of immediate public reaction to a story as strong as the realisation just 15 months ago that our rivers and seas were being polluted with raw sewage on a regular basis and Conservative MPs were happy to let them continue. In fact, the last opinion poll to give the Conservative Party a double-digit lead over Labour was taken just before the story broke and the party has experienced a steady decline ever since.

Unfortunately, it appears that some MPs continue to refuse to learn their lesson, including Crawley’s own voice in Parliament, Mr Henry Smith, who along with most of the rest of his Conservative colleagues voted to allow water companies to continue releasing sewage into our waterways until 2038.

Local Conservatives have been keen to deny that the discharges are happening within the area, something which is much harder now that Thames Water have provided a near real-time account of their discharges in and around Crawley adding to the existing evidence of pollution entering our waterways already published by The Rivers Trust (in this case affecting water flowing into the town from outside of the Thames Water area).

For hundreds of thousands of discharges into rivers to be taking place each year in the 21st Century is utterly unacceptable and reflects the lack of investment in the town’s sewage infrastructure by private companies. Infrastructure which was once built by local councils to ensure that the needs of their community were met. Now is the time for greater accountability, both from the companies which are failing their customers and the MPs who are failing their constituents.