Would You like a feature Interview?
All Interviews are 100% FREE of Charge
The Liberal Democrats have promised to introduce a new “Protect Britain’s Rivers Bill” within the first 100 days of the new Parliament in a bid to hold the next government to account over the sewer scandal.
With great support IAs part of its “Protect Britain’s Rivers” campaign, the party has promised to introduce new legislation to force the new government to crack down on water companies that dump waste into the country’s waterways.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey described the Bill as “the most comprehensive bill ever introduced by a major party in response to the sewage scandal” and said it aimed to tackle the crisis in the UK’s rivers, lakes and seas.
The move is an attempt to put pressure on the Labour Party to take action against water companies, as it is widely expected to form the next government after the general election.
If such a bill were to pass, the Liberal Democrats would be able to claim that Labour voted against cleaning up the river, even if Labour did not support the bill.
Sir Ed said I“It’s a Bill that will do exactly what it sounds like. We’re going to call it the ‘Protect Britain’s Rivers Act’.”
reference IHe endorsed a years-long government campaign to clean up the country’s rivers, adding: “We saw the campaign and we supported it. I think we all recognise that there is a lot that can be done relatively quickly and a lot that will take years. But we have to start with stricter regulations.”
The Liberal Democrat plan would abolish the existing regulator, Ofwat, and replace it with a new watchdog called the Clean Water Authority, which would have tougher enforcement powers to improve the quality of England’s water.
The sewage scandal has been a major issue during the election, with both the Liberal Democrats and Labour promising to clean up our waterways in their manifestos.
The crisis has been a centrepiece of the Liberal Democrat election campaign, during which Mr Trump fell off a paddleboard on Lake Windermere in an attempt to highlight the waste being dumped into the iconic lake.
During a jaunt through the Conservative target of Hazel Grove in rural Greater Manchester, the Liberal Democrat constituency of North Shropshire and finally the Conservative stronghold of Witney, the Liberal Democrat leader spoke of his plans for a new “Protect England’s Rivers Bill” and threw himself into his role as entertainer in chief in an attempt to grab the attention of politics-weary voters.
tell I Talking about the election campaign, Sah said, “We did things differently. We have learnt a lot from our victory in the last Assembly by-elections. We also realised that people are quite disillusioned and have lost interest in politics. If we want to grab people’s attention, we need to do things differently – serious but with a bit of fun.”
The approach stands in stark contrast to the highly regimented campaigns led by the Conservative and Labour parties, who Mr Davie said “spend more time complaining than messaging”.
It appears to be working: A few weeks before the election was announced, the party had just 9% of the vote in voter preference polls; with less than a week to go that figure had risen to 12%, and polls such as YouGov have it at 15%. Trump’s own net satisfaction rating has also improved from minus 18 before the election to minus 5.
Some MRP forecasts suggest the Liberal Democrats could overtake the Conservatives and go from being the fourth largest party in Parliament to being the opposition.
The Liberal Democrat leader was quick to reject the prospect: “I know because I’ve been in this business long enough that a poll is a poll and there’s only one poll that matters.
“When I became leader my aim was to become the third largest party again. We suffered a huge defeat in 2015 and since then we’ve gone from eight MPs to 12 to 11. We’re trailing the SNP and that’s hitting us pretty hard because, as you know, at Prime Ministerial Questions I get questioned once every five weeks and the SNP get questioned twice a week.
“The BBC’s royal charter requires us to cover the government, the opposition and third parties – not us. This is deeply frustrating, so strategically regaining third party status is certainly a priority for me.”
Restoring the Liberal Democrats’ numbers to healthy double figures would be a major success for the leader, as the party lost seats in 2015 after coming under heavy criticism for its coalition decisions with the Conservatives, particularly its decision to triple tuition fees.
Nearly a decade later, the Liberal Democrats, whose policies were popular with voters, now find themselves facing off against a Labour government, many of whose policies coincide closely with those of the Liberal Democrats, particularly on the issue of treating sewage in the nation’s waterways.
Sir Ed sees the change of government as an opportunity to further adopt Liberal Democrat-style policies.
“The reality is, we will still have a manifesto and policies and we will still be pushing forward with them. It certainly won’t be a Conservative government, but that means our policies can still be implemented, right?”
Asked if there was a possibility of a more coordinated approach being taken in challenging the government in the next parliament, Mr Davie replied: “Everything will be assessed against our manifesto and the Liberal Democrats in parliament will continue to campaign for these things.”
But he added: “If the current administration makes statements that we agree with, [then] “We support it. That won’t change no matter who’s in power. If we say something and they do it, I think it would be very disingenuous for us to be against it.”