Murky claims about sewage bill fact checked

29 Oct 2021 | Full Fact's weekly news

FACT CHECK
Murky claims about sewage bill fact checked

The aftermath of the government voting down an amendment to the Environment Bill saw a number of claims from the media and opponents, and counter-claims from MPs defending their decisions. Some of these could do with clarification or correction.

Claim #1: “Tory MPs vote to allow water companies to dump raw sewage into Britain's rivers and seas” - MailOnline (also Evolve Politics and the Metro)

What this misses is the fact that a vote either way would have continued to allow sewage to be released into rivers.

The alternative amendment would have required water companies to progressively reduce the harm they were doing, but it did not explicitly state that the practice should be stopped entirely.

There is a bit of a grey area here as to what exactly the amendment calls for. The amendment’s explanatory notes say its purpose “is to try to eliminate, not simply reduce, the harm caused...by the discharge of untreated sewage into rivers.” However, explanatory notes have no legal effect.

The amendment itself called for companies to progressively reduce the harm of sewage discharge rather than the elimination of harm, or the elimination of sewage discharge itself.

Claim #2: “To get rid of or eliminate storm sewage overflows would cost between—these are very wide figures—£150 billion and £660 billion” - Rebecca Pow (and other Conservative MPs)

As mentioned, it’s unclear whether the amendment would have necessarily required water companies to completely replace the sewerage infrastructure with the aim of eliminating sewage discharge entirely.

The £150 billion figure cited seems to come from analysis commissioned by the Storm Overflows Taskforce, which is due to be published shortly. We’ve asked Defra for more information on the £660 billion figure also used.

Claim #3: “Six weeks ago, Govt said polluters could dump risky sewage into rivers because Brexit disrupted water treatment chemical supply chains” - Viral tweet

Brexit has been at least cited as a factor which might allow water companies to increase how much sewage they discharge.

The Environment Agency says that “permits contain conditions that control the quality of the effluent you can discharge”, but that companies may not be able to comply with these conditions if they cannot get water treatment chemicals due to a number of reasons, including the pandemic, supply chain failure and “the UK’s new relationship with the EU.”

Our full analysis of the claims

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FACT CHECK
Twitter poll about air monitors in Observer article is meaningless

On 24 October, the Observer reported that just 8% of schools had received carbon dioxide monitors promised by the government. But this article was based on a Twitter poll, making it meaningless.

The main reason for doing a poll in the first place is to find out about the views or behaviours of a group of people. As you usually can’t talk to all of them, you choose instead to talk to a sample of them.

That means a poll is only useful if you have some confidence that the people you are surveying are broadly representative of the people you’re interested in.

But with a Twitter poll you can never know this. This poll was carried out by the headteacher of a primary school and received 1,617 responses.

In this case, you can’t know whether the respondents were people qualified to answer on the subject (teachers, school staff, parents etc). And even if they were, you can’t know if those people can give a representative view of the situation across the country more generally.

Why Twitter polls are no substitute for representative surveys

FACT CHECK
Viral tweet on Rishi Sunak’s tax claims got it wrong

A tweet shared over 10,000 times claims that Rishi Sunak told Andrew Marr that someone with an income of £24,000 would pay £180 of income tax. The tweet asserts that someone earning that much would actually pay £2,286 in income tax - significantly more.

But this is a misunderstanding of what the Chancellor said. He was referring to how much more National Insurance they will pay when changes are introduced.

In 2020/21, before the National Insurance rise comes in, this person would typically pay £1,731.84 a year in contributions. In 2022/23, after the tax increases, they would pay £1,912.24, which is about £180 more.

Exactly what the Chancellor said

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