Rarely has an issue united my inbox as strongly as the Government’s failure to prevent raw sewage spilling into Britain’s riverways. Shocking figures released this week by The Rivers Trust show that Tameside has been badly hit by this latest environmental scandal. In the last year alone, weeks’ worth of raw sewage was dumped into Tameside’s rivers and waters.

In Longdendale, the Chain Bar Lane sewer storm in Hattersley spilled five times for a total of two hours in 2021, discharging into Hurst Clough Brook. Broadbottom Pumping station sewer storm spilled 25 for 4 hours, pumping into the River Etherow.

In Mossley, the Dark Lane and Roaches Lock storms spilled sewage 18 times and 34 times respectively, for 39 hours and 44 hours a piece, polluting the River Tame.

The Fern Bank storm in Stalybridge overflowed 72 times for a total of 56 hours, discharging sewage into Stocks Brook. Staying in Stalybridge, the Grove Road storm spilled sewage in Millbrook 85 times for 330 hours, and the Corporation Street storm in the town centre overfilled into the Tame a whopping 99 times for 409 hours.

Over in Hyde, the storm off Gibraltar Lane spilled 77 times for 97 hours, again into the Tame. The Raglan Street sewer storm spilled an unbelievable 105 times, for 410 hours. That’s 17 days of faeces being pumped into our waters from one spot alone.

Theses figures are taken from the Rivers Trust Interactive Raw Sewage Map which you can access at https://theriverstrust.org/sewage-map. The overall picture presents a damning failure of ministers to hold water bosses to account for polluting the areas in which people live, work and walk.

It is notable that the person likely to be named our next Prime Minister knows all about this issue. Liz Truss was responsible for tens of millions of pounds to the Environment Agency, with which then led to a doubling of raw sewage dumping. I spoke out against these cuts at the time because hitting the Environment Agency’s budgets meant hitting flood defence spending in areas like ours which had been badly hit repeatedly. Now the wider filthy consequences of those short-sighted cuts are sadly being seen.

The raw sewage crisis isn’t just incompetence on behalf of the Government, it is a political choice. Last year, during the Environment Bill debates, Conservative MPs voted to allow water firms to continue sewage dumping. I was proud to vote to clean up our rivers and unsure water companies do their part. It is shocking to me that anyone could do otherwise.