SNP can't brush off complaints about 'sewage dumping' by pretending it doesn't exist

Contrasting the situation in England and Scotland, the party noted that regulator Ofwat had fined Anglian Water £62.8 million after finding that 21 per cent of its overflows had spilled more than 60 times in 2021. Some may blame this on England’s private water companies putting profit before public service but, unfortunately, the equivalent figure in Scotland in 2024 was 42 per cent – twice as bad.

Party leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “In England, when water companies dump sewage more frequently than the rules allow, they get hit with massive fines. In Scotland, it seems there are never any consequences for sewage dumping under the SNP.”

Wild swimmers may disagree

SNP Cabinet minister Gillian Martin hit back, saying 87 per cent of Scotland’s “entire water environment already has a ‘high’ or ‘good’ classification for water quality”. She also claimed “it is not accurate to call spills from the wastewater network ‘sewage dumps’ as typically, what is spilled is wastewater which has been highly diluted by rainwater”.

We fear she may struggle to convince anyone going for a ‘wild swim’ who encounters some of the more solid elements of what she calls “wastewater” of this latter point.

A report published last year by Environmental Standard Scotland found that, while progress had been made in reducing the number of lochs and rivers affected by wastewater, it was still a problem for some. And it added: “Contaminants in storm overflows and treated sewage pose a potential risk to human health and to the environment...”

So the Scottish Government and Scottish Water should not be allowed to brush off the Liberal Democrats’ complaints, which we suspect many people will share. This is a serious issue and old-fashioned attitudes towards how we deal with sewage must be challenged.

Part of the problem may be the myriad of arms-length quangos involved in running and overseeing our water-works. When public services are allowed to wander too far away from democratic scrutiny, they sometimes forget the identity of their real boss – the people of Scotland.