Water is an issue in British politics that just won’t go away. Much like the sewage that’s being dumped into our rivers, it has floated to the top of the political agenda and refuses to be flushed.
It’s easy to see why.
Clean water has cross-party consensus. Nobody, not even in today’s fractured political landscape, is arguing for more sewage in our waterways! And it’s also one that voters have connected with in a visceral way.
When anglers catch ‘more tampons than fish’ in the River Severn, or children at the beach fall ill after paddling through sewage, even the most politically-disengaged people sit up and take notice. And when they learn that water companies are making record profits, while failing to protect our green and pleasant land, people get angry. And rightfully so.
Across the UK, there’s a desire for real change. Something we saw this last year when thousands of us, including Zero Hour campaigners, took to the streets for the Clean Water Now march.
At Zero Hour we share that desire. We know that resolving the issue of sewage pollution is key to ensuring that the UK achieves its commitment to halt and restore nature loss by 2030, as well as the nation’s climate goals. Our rivers and oceans are, after all, vital carbon sinks.
HOW TO FIX IT
One of the most exciting pieces of legislation in this Parliament (after the Climate and Nature Bill, of course) is the Our Water Our Way Bill. This private member’s bill is championed by Clive Lewis MP (Labour, Norwich South), who was one of the CAN Bill’s co-sponsors and gave an impassioned speech in the CAN Bill debate on 24 January.
Clive’s bill, and the #OurWaterOurWay campaign, recognises that protecting our waterways is a key pillar of restoring nature and identifies public ownership of water as being essential to meeting our climate and nature objectives.
With private companies currently relying on a business model that involves dumping sewage into our rivers, estuaries and seas, it’s clear that the privatisation route we’ve gone down since the 1980s isn’t working for the benefit of customers, climate, or nature.
The current laws governing the UK’s relationship with water are shockingly weak. They allow sewage dumping to keep happening from most outflows across the nation until 2050. How can we possibly hope to restore nature by 2030 when sewage will continue to pollute our aquatic habitats and ecosystems for another two decades beyond that date?
The water industry needs root and branch reform. Or, perhaps a more apt metaphor, it needs flushing out—and disinfecting—like a busted toilet.
At the same time, there’s a growing awareness that the water regulator, Ofwat, is no longer fit for purpose. News that the regulator has fined sewage dumping water companies just £2 when only 14% of England’s rivers have good ecological status is a symptom of an utterly broken system.
Britain’s privatised water system allows record profits to flow to privately-owned water companies, 70% of which aren’t based in the UK, while customer’s bills have experienced the largest price hike since privatisation.
We are paying for, and rewarding, failure. Even worse than that, we’re allowing companies to profit by killing the species, habitats and ecosystems that we rely on for life. This can’t go on.
WHAT DOES CLIVE’S BILL DO?
The Our Water Our Way Bill has its Second Reading in the House of Commons on 28 March 2025. If enacted, Clive Lewis’ Bill would:
- Set new targets and objectives relating to water, including the ownership of water companies and to climate mitigation and adaptation
- Place requirements on the Secretary of State to publish and implement a strategy for achieving those targets and objectives
- Establish a Commission on Water to advise the Secretary of State on that strategy
- Require the Commission to set up a Citizens’ Assembly on water ownership.
While the Government currently has its own Bill in Parliament, the Our Water Our Way Bill is designed to complement it—while going much further—and open up a national conversation about how we fix the mess the water industry is now in.
From our perspective, Clive Lewis’s Bill represents the type of shift that’s needed across all sectors of society, if we’re going to follow the science on climate and nature. It rejects the current ‘business as usual’ model of shareholders getting rich from ecological destruction, and it recognises that clean, swimmable rivers and coasts are not just good for humans, but also essential for the health of nature and the climate.
This is an excellent example of holistic policymaking and—at the centre of it—is the same kind of democratic participation that the Climate and Nature Bill is calling for; one that puts UK citizens at the heart of the decisionmaking process through a Citizen’s Assembly.
ZERO HOUR’S SUPPORT
We believe the Bill represents a golden opportunity to resolve the crisis the UK is facing in how we regulate, use, and look after our life-giving water system. That’s why Zero Hour is proud to join a wide coalition of organisations who care about water, the environment, democracy, and our bills.
The alliance includes local councils, like Waverley Borough Council; trade unions, like Equity; local Labour parties around the country; plus organisations like Citizen Network, Common Wealth, Autonomy, Momentum, Henley Mermaids, We Own It, Green New Deal Rising, Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, and of course, our allies at Compass.
If you’d like to know more about #OurWaterOurWay please visit the campaign page where you can sign up to be part of the campaign and ask your MP to be at the debate on 28 March.
