I raised a Point of Order in the House on 29th October calling on the Rt Hon Steve Reed MP, former Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to issue a clear and unequivocal apology for “misleading the public” with his comments on Scottish Water back in July.
Over the summer the UK Minister had alleged that “pollution under the SNP in Scotland is even worse than it was under the Tories in England” and had previously claimed that “Scotland has a nationalised water company—under the control of the SNP Government, of course—and water pollution is worse than in England as a result.”
He repeated his dubious claims in the Chamber, on social media and in a letter to my colleague and Cabinet Secretary at the Scottish Government, Gillian Martin MSP.
This seemingly outright untruth jarred and so I wrote to the Office for National Statistics to clarify Mr Reed’s usage of ONS data which seemed to be at odds with statistical analysis done by SEPA and the Independent Water Commission, and to ascertain if the Labour Minister’s conclusion was a reasonable interpretation in the wider context.
Right enough, this was promptly followed with a reply from the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority’s Regulation Committee, which oversees the independent regulator, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). Professor Dame Carol Proper confirmed that Steve Reed MP’s omission of relevant information in this context risked misleading the public and damaging public trust.
Professor Dame Carol Proper wrote that his claims “lacked enough transparency about their sources to be verified, and that the broad evidence did not support them”. She asserted that “without appropriate discussion of the limitations of some of the more specific figures quoted”, they ran the risk of “misleading the public.”
As far as I am concerned, this is a clear breach of public trust by a Minister in a government that has staked its reputation on ‘restoring trust in politics’.
Reed also cast aspersions on the nationalisation of water in Scotland, making an unfounded claim that nationalised water companies in the UK perform worse than private companies for consumers. This will come as a surprise to Scottish householders who enjoy water bills that are £113 cheaper than their counterparts in England and Wales. It may also come as a surprise to Labour voters who are pro-nationalisation.
Finally, while I’m on numbers and statistics, SEPA have reported that 87% of Scotland’s entire water environment has a ‘high’ or ‘good’ classification for water quality – up from 82% in 2014. The Independent Water Commission has also found that 66% of Scotland’s water bodies are of good ecological status as compared with 16.1% in England and 29.9% in Wales.
Time for Sewage Steve ‘to do the math’ and apologise for his irresponsible and erroneous comments. I expect his public apology to be forthcoming.
FURTHER UPDATE:
In Parliament on Thursday, 30th I raised the issue of public confidence in the UK Government and concerns over standards in public life with this week’s ‘Watergate / Sewage Steve’ scandal over the Minister misleading the public on comparisons of water quality in Scotland and England. I believe it is time for a debate on the importance of the Nolan Principles to restore public trust.
