Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, was in Wokingham Borough again this morning.
He was lending support to Clive Jones, his party’s candidate for the Wokingham seat at the next general election, as well as highlighting the problem of sewage discharges locally.
Standing on the banks of the River Loddon in Wargrave, Sir Ed told Wokingham Today: “What’s really alarming is the Conservatives have been allowing the water companies to pump their filthy sewage into rivers like the River Loddon.
“In the last 24 hours we have seen continuous dumping of sewage into the river behind me, and you can tell when you have look at it.
“I’ve been speaking to local people who tell me that in the past when they didn’t have this dumping, they could see the bottom of the river.
“It was beautiful and clean.
Sir Ed feels asking consumers to pay more through their bills to clean up the mess is wrong.
“I’m outraged by that suggestion.
“The water companies have done nowhere near enough in terms of investment.”
“We need a new start. We need to get tough on all the water companies on sewage dumping.”
He shouldn’t have voted to allow water companies to just pump raw sewage into the Thames whenever they wanted to.
Clive Jones echoed the view of his leader.
He said: “What people need to remember is that Wokingham MP Sir John Redwood was one of the architects of privatisation of water companies.
“The fact that water companies are proposing to increase bills by as much as 42%, not including VAT.
“It’s an outrage, it’s totally unfair.”
