The New Statesman.

The pollution of Britain's waterways is well known,

but the full extent of the carelessness,

and you could even call it vandalism,

of Britain's biggest water company, Thames Water,

is a catalogue of wrongdoing on an industrial scale.

Research shared with the New Statesman shows that five years of new regulations and

responsibilities have done nothing to address Thameswater's pollution of bathing waters

and delicate ecosystems.

It details more than 39,000 sewage spills, about 8 and a half thousand of which were illegal.

This is Daily Politics from the New Statesman. I'm Olly Dougmore.

Today, I'm going to hand over to my colleague Will Dunn, who spoke to the MP with the

dubious honour of representing the constituency that is worse affected by these spills.

Liberal Democrat MP, Charlie Maynard.

This episode was recorded before there was an update on this story yesterday.

According to reporting in the Financial Times, Thameswater is set to escape new fines until

2030, under a deal agreed between creditors and the industry watchdog off-watt.

Thameswater will make a commitment that creditors will invest cash in the business for the next

four years.

Charlie, you've campaigned on this issue for a long time.

Tell me about how salient an issue this is in the politics of your constituency.

How does it rank among big issues like the economy, the NHS, housing, immigration,

...