Water and Flooding Minister Emma Hardy unveils the government is taking “unprecedented" action to combat water pollution after Thames Water was fined £122.7m for breaching rules over sewage spills and shareholder payouts.
Report by Ajagbef. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Report by Ajagbef. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Well, we have an infrastructure crisis at the moment. We haven't built a new reservoir in over
00:0430 years. This is because we haven't had the money invested by the previous Conservative
00:09Government, but also because of outdated planning laws. So this is why we're taking action,
00:14because if we don't, we're not going to have all of the drinking water we require by the mid-2030s.
00:20This means we will not be able to build all of the homes needed. So the government's taking
00:24unprecedented action to take planning controls away from the local authority,
00:29put them into the hands of the Secretary of State so he can absolutely drive through this process.
00:34And this means that we will be able to build all of the homes we need and have all of the water
00:39required for business growth. Well, I mean, as you can see, beautiful places behind me,
00:44but because we haven't had the focus required on this, the previous government didn't invest
00:49properly in the water industry and the planning rules and regulation meant that we couldn't deliver
00:54the reservoirs we need. Now, they should have been started years ago, but under this Labour
00:59government, we're getting on with the job now, not only to deliver these two, these two that I'm
01:04talking about today, but also seven more that are planned as well. We're going to be changing
01:09legislation to make those nationally critical infrastructure to give the powers to the
01:14Secretary of State so he can absolutely power through that planning process.