A warning from the future about the state of the British sewage system

Jim McMahon, the shadow environment secretary, could have been attacking his future self in parliament today, writes John Rentoul

‘This is not straightforward,’ says Jim McMahon (Reuters)

It was the year 2038, and Jim McMahon, the deputy prime minister, was struggling to make himself heard over the shouts of Conservative and Liberal Democrat activists complaining about raw sewage being pumped into rivers and onto beaches.

“This is not straightforward,” he said, “but I take this issue extremely seriously and things need to change. That’s why we have developed this plan, and we are committed to delivering the progress that people want to see.”

To his horror, he realised he was using the same words Therese Coffey had used 14 years earlier, when his Green and Pleasant Land Department was still known as the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Guiltily, he remembered that time, just before the local elections in 2023, when he had led an opposition debate, demanding “an end to the Tory sewage scandal, at no cost to households”.

How had that worked out, he asked himself sarcastically, while the leader of the Conservative front organisation Extinction Rebellion launched into a long tirade. Well, he had been hoping to get a different job when the minority Labour government took office, but Rachel Reeves, the new prime minister, had told him he was doing such a good job that he should take over the department for which he had prepared so well.

She had also said, laughing, “There is no money,” so any investment in the water industry would have to come from higher bills for customers. He knew that all that pre-election rhetoric about curbing the profits of the water companies and squeezing the pay of their bosses would not produce significant sums of money. Still, he was able to announce a strict new regulatory regime.

Fortunately, the new government was given a fair wind by public opinion, and his line about running a “treatment plant for the mess the Tory government has left us” worked well for the first few years. Most of the criticism he attracted came from the Labour Party conference, which ritually condemned him every year for failing to renationalise the water industry, but every year he patiently explained that this would not magically produce more investment than the current set-up.

Now, though, after 14 years of a Labour government, he was back in the (renamed) department, and sewage was still overflowing into rivers and the sea. No matter how much he argued that the situation was better than it used to be, and that the billions of pounds of investment had cut discharges by whatever percentage it was, this didn’t stop the opportunistic opposition from stirring up angry voters who wanted overflows cut to zero.

And now he had to go to the House of Commons – in its temporary premises while the Palace of Westminster was preparing to start its refurbishment – and reply to his Tory opposite number, a new MP who had tabled some clever procedural device to try to embarrass the government.

The deputy prime minister rose to address the Commons at the despatch box: “The public are rightly disgusted by the excessive storm discharges, and so am I,” he said, “and that is why we have taken more action than any other government on this issue.” He criticised his opponent’s motion: “A lot of this plan is pointless because it is already being done.”

Except, of course, I am quoting Therese Coffey, the current environment secretary (and recent deputy prime minister), in the Commons on Tuesday afternoon, responding to McMahon’s attempt to take over the Commons timetable to pass a bill that would “set a target for the reduction of sewage discharges”, to be paid for “at no cost to households”.

She was surprisingly dismissive and partisan on an issue on which the Conservatives have found themselves on the defensive in recent years, but even she couldn’t bring herself to tell voters the truth, which is that if they want faster action on sewage, they will have to pay for it.

McMahon and the Labour Party know this too, and because no politicians are prepared to be straight with the voters, voters are encouraged to punish politicians who cannot deliver an instant, cost-free solution. And so the cycle goes on and on.