Column -25 March 21 - Lockdown Anniversary and Cleaning our waters

This week saw the one year anniversary of the start of the first national lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In one day, the world changed for us, we found ourselves living with our freedoms restricted and massive changes to the way many of us live and work at the most basic of levels.

One year later and with the success of the Vaccine Programme, the hard work of the vaccine rollout run by our NHS and many volunteers, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  We have now seen more than 30,000,000 vaccines delivered across the UK and at the weekend saw more than 800,000 people given a dose of the vaccine in one day – statistics that are incredibly encouraging, and along with the success of the lockdown measures, we are winning the fight against the virus.

As we look forward to the future, it has been good to be back up in Parliament for some of this week. One of the meetings I have been at this week was the AGM of the Ocean Conservation All Party Parliamentary Group, a group of MP’s who work across political parties with stakeholders including environmental charities, NGOs, health experts, businesses and community leaders to evidence and discuss the need for policy and legislative change to better protect our marine environment.

Campaigning on local, national and international environmental issues is something I have been passionate about since before I became MP, and since my election I have been closely involved with the Government’s work on the ground-breaking Environment Bill, sitting on the Bill Committee for it last year, as well as getting elected as Vice Chair of the Ocean Conservation APPG at the beginning of last year.

Another huge part of the APPG’s success is the stalwart backing that we have from Truro and Falmouth-based charity Surfers Against Sewage, whose positive campaigning over the years has done so much to raise the profile of these issues. And there is still much to do.

Sewage pollution still plagues the rivers and ocean.  In 2019 there were over 200,000 discharges of untreated sewage into UK rivers, and in 2020 almost 3,000 discharges into UK coastal bathing waters alone.

In order to tackle this issue, we need a cross-sector approach that embraces a range of solutions, working with the water companies like South West Water, the Environment Agency and companies that contribute to so much of the waste packaging that we sadly see ending up in our rivers and seas to achieve the positive change we need.

And in Parliament along with the previously mentioned Environment Bill, we have also been pleased to support and successfully campaign for the Government to adopt the Sewage (Inland Waters) Bill, a Bill to place a duty on water companies to ensure that untreated sewage is not discharged into rivers and other inland waters; and for connected purposes, something which we sadly still see happen often from Cornwall’s antiquated sewage infrastructure.

It is good to see then, as we look towards a future where we can relax Covid restrictions and live more freely, that as MPs we are still working closely across political boundaries to bring about the positive change that we all know needs to happen for our seas and rivers.