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The Rest Is Politics

134. Question Time: Solving sewage, building on the Green Belt, and the most intimidating person in politics

The Rest Is Politics

Goalhanger

News, Politics, Government

4.5 • 11.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Should we start building on the Green Belt? Is there a fun side to politics? Why don't ministers resign anymore without being pushed? Tune in to hear Rory and Alastair discuss all this and more on today's episode of The Rest Is Politics: Question Time. LEADING - Leo Varadkar: pod.link/1665265193 TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: restispolitics@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:07.0

Please sign up at TheRestistPolitics.com or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks.

0:30.0

So, Alisa, sewage dumping, this is a question you like, Clive Fenton. I'm sure you'll be aware of all the news covering the dumping of sewage into our country's waterways.

0:42.0

And onto our beaches, I understand you voted to support this approach in a recent vote this year, did you? In Parliament, is that correct?

0:49.0

I'd like to understand why and given I imagine this may be addressed to me, I'm only teasing you.

0:53.0

I'd like to understand why and given the absolute mess, what actions you're going to take to reverse the sun acceptable situation.

0:58.0

So, Clive, I'm not actually a sitting MP, so I haven't been a member of the British Parliament since 2019.

1:04.0

So, I certainly did not vote to support this approach in a recent vote this year in Parliament.

1:09.0

However, it is a good subject and once worth talking about, basically at the heart of it, I believe is the incredible,

1:16.0

lamentable, underinvestment in our sewage system, which means that the whole British sewage system at the moment and has for a long time depended if there's an overflow in discharging raw sewage into water.

1:30.0

And fixing this, and I was the Environment Minister, so I spent a lot of time looking at this issue, is an issue of tens of billions of pounds.

1:39.0

The number that was thrown at me was something like 23, 25 billion pounds, which to put it in context is, I don't know, the entire prison budget four times over would have to go into fixing this.

1:54.0

So, it's not a small amount of money and it would be interesting to see a cross-party approach to put the funding in place to get it together.

2:05.0

And I think there's another thing that isn't communicated to the public, which is that being a bit unfair to colleagues in the Treasury, but the impression I got from the Treasury was that they thought that 23 billion pounds wasn't worth it for the health benefits that you derived from not putting the sewage into the water.

2:23.0

The question here, related from Lee Williams, your thoughts on water companies charging the customer 10 billion pounds over 10 years to repair antiquated network, despite withdrawing over 50 billion pounds in dividends over the last 10 years.

2:37.0

I think this is what gets people really angry or it is, this is of all the privatisations, I think this is the one that really gets people to go.

2:44.0

And I think that people just feel that these water companies have been absolutely in it for the money, haven't really invested for the long term.

2:52.0

They sort of stop caring, at some point they stop caring about the quality of water. And of course, if you have something like to raise coffees, the minister who always seems to me like somebody who, it's almost like everything is happening around us, though it's got nothing to do with them.

3:04.0

Yeah, well, it's not very good, is it? But it's better than it was or it's, you know, we've got, she actually went on television the other day, so we've got the cleanest bathing water we've ever had.

3:11.0

Well, you then look at these maps of where this SHIT is being pumped out in massive quantities.

3:18.0

As you know, I'm a cold water swimmer and we're always looking for new places and you can't even, you can't even get the data now as to what is clean and what isn't.

3:26.0

I think the government's completely underestimated this issue as a real problem for them.

...

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