This weekend the news was littered with stories of raw sewage being pumped directly into our seas and rivers up and down the country. Shockingly, it was revealed that since 2016 raw sewage has been dumped into our waterworks for more than nine million hours.

This has resulted in warnings about going into the water on our beaches, including here in Northumberland, because of the risk of picking up a severe bacterial infection and with heavy rains expected in spells in the next week this is only set to get worse.

How could such a Dickensian episode be possible in 21^st century Britain? The simple explanation is government incompetence and a blind commitment to private ownership of public utilities with little to no regulation.

Back in October there was a vote in parliament that would have required sewage companies to do whatever was in their power to stop dumping sewage and prevent storm overflows of sewage discharge. I voted for this amendment, but the Tories whipped their members to vote against and as a result it failed.

Our water was privatised by the Thatcher government in 1989, selling of valuable assets and infrastructure in the process.

The result has disastrous. England leaks about 20% of its total water supply compared to just 5% in Germany. The publicly owned Scottish Water invests around 35 per cent more per household than the private water companies in England. – and they have the added benefit of not pumping raw sewage into their own rivers and shorelines.

You cannot control what you don’t own. Last year Southern Water was found to have released noxious materials into our water supply for 6 years. Despite this, no meaningful changes were made to the reporting of pollution and no steps were taken to bring water back under public ownership where it could be properly monitored.

The privatisation of our water has failed on its own terms alongside the privatisation of our railways, buses, energy, and mail services. New polling done in partnership between the pressure group We Own It and polling company Survation reveals that there is overwhelming support to bring all these industries into public ownership to be ran in the interests of the people rather the interests of private profit.

Incredibly, the two Conservative leadership candidates continue to promise only more privatisation, including of services in our NHS and Channel 4. The country has been crying out to politicians that they want to take back control yet so far nobody in the position to do so seems to be willing to listen.