Aylesbury MP defends voting down sewage proposal and claims it would have caused flooding

Rob Butler was one of 268 politicians who voted through a bill which didn’t state that water companies had a “duty” to take “reasonable steps to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged”.

October’s vote has resurfaced on social media over the past week, after it was revealed that many UK beaches were damaged by sewage this month.

Pollution alerts were posted at over 40 beaches in the UK.

Mr Butler believes the coverage of last October’s vote has been misleading and has also in many cases ignored other Government policies which curbed water companies ability to be wasteful.

He told The Bucks Herald: “There has been a spate of fake news about Conservative MPs’ votes on sewage. The reality is that this Government has taken strong legislative action to reduce discharges and MPs, including me, voted to increase the restrictions on water companies using overflows.

"While this legislation was passing through Parliament, the Duke of Wellington proposed an amendment to stop the use of sewage overflows immediately. While this might sound good in theory, in fact it would have been impossible without floods potentially swamping people’s homes and streets with sewage. “Having seen the horror and distress caused by raw sewage in gardens in Aylesbury following floods before, there is absolutely no way I would vote for anything that could lead to it happening more often – so I certainly have no regrets about my vote.”

The Duke of Wellington’s suggested amendments were designed to make it tougher for firms to discharge waste into seas and rivers in the country.

Seven lines of the Duke’s proposals were removed, the rest of his suggested changes to the Environmental Bill did pass.

Mr Butler added: “What’s more, the Duke’s amendment hadn’t considered the cost of his proposal –independent evidence commissioned by the Storm Overflows Taskforce estimated total elimination of overflows could have a price tag of up to £600bn. There is no way this could be afforded by consumers, companies or taxpayers. Instead, the government agreed an alternative approach, mandating progressive reductions in discharges and agreeing targets that the water companies must achieve.”