Amid mounting outrage at the state of the UK’s waterways and water supply, Therese Coffey has made a short video, outlining Tory government plans.

There’s only one problem with it: it’s nonsense.

Here’s Feargal Sharkey – but watch the video before you read his responses:

Economist Richard Murphy agrees:

Coffey has gone on to make more weird pronouncements:

Speaking at the launch of the government’s Plan for Water, Ms Coffey said the River Don in Yorkshire will never be given a high status without dismantling half of Sheffield.

“Achieving the gold standard for ecological status would mean taking us back to the natural state of our rivers from the year 1840,” Ms Coffey said.

“That’s neither practical nor indeed desirable in the circumstances. We’re not going to take London back to before the embankment was built or remove the Thames Barrier and, indeed, we’ll need another before the end of the century.

“And no one is contemplating dismantling half of Sheffield to let the River Don run free, but without that it will never be scored as being excellent, even though salmon have returned to that part of the River Don for the first time in two years.”

Feargal had a few things to say about that:

He said: “She’s conflating what was a government attempt to circumnavigate a legal deadline of 2027 and the natural state – which is a completely meaningless idea – with the idea that these rivers can’t achieve good ecological status, which they can.

“Even though it’s running through the centre of the city, there’s no reason to stop it from having a wide abundance of fish and flora and fauna, bugs and weeds can be a healthy ecosystem.”

And

Craig Bennett, chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts, said: “No one is calling for the dismantling of towns and cities but we are demanding an end to the grotesque pollution entering our lakes, rivers and seas.

“Attempts to continue business as usual, allowing polluters to poison rivers and stripping back environmental protections, would be a disaster for nature and future generations.”

That’s the problem in a nutshell: the Tories have reversed the progress on water quality by allowing the privatised water firms to flood our waterways with sewage in the name of financial profit.

The solution isn’t hard. We don’t have to turn the clock back to 1840 – just to before the privatisation of the UK’s water providers.

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