I share residents' concern and anger about pollution in the Thames.
After a winter of record rainfall, storm overflows from sewage plants have been running way too high, and run-off from drenched farmland has been adding to the problem.
It's been building up for decades. Under all governments, Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem. The regulators have failed to make Thames Water address it, and in the meantime, have allowed them to build up unsustainable levels of debt.
Voters will hear a lot from the Lib Dems during this election campaign about what they’d do if they were in charge.
Their funding figures are - frankly - a fantasy.
They’re suggesting they can magic billions of pounds of investment without any cost to tax payers or customers. That is fantasy funding at its most dishonest. They have been supporting legislation so poorly designed that it would bankrupt the water companies, piling huge costs onto either customers or taxpayers, and force the sewage system to grind to a halt, backing up foul water into our homes.
After he was minister for the Post Office, Sir Ed Davey, now the leader of the Lib Dems, was the government minister in charge of energy and climate change. He did nothing to address this.
The Conservatives are making the water companies invest £56 billion by 2035 to solve this infrastructure problem. We calculate they can do that without bills rising too much, without breaking the companies, and without those costs being picked up by taxpayers. And we're working with farmers reduce the run-off from their fields, to help clean up the rivers.
There’s no question it’s too late, and we need to do more. But Ed Davey’s Lib Dems don’t have the answers. I'm focusing on workable solutions to get this right.
