Dear friends
We hope you had a good festive break.
We have a couple of updates for you.
1. Water Reform White Paper & Bill
We understand this will be published this week/ next week with a relatively short timetable between the White Paper and the Bill. This is now a vital time to secure MP support for the People’s Commission Report and recommendations.
2. Cunliffe Independent Commission
Many of you submitted evidence to the Commission. We have tried through the Freedom Of Information Request Process, to secure publication of all the evidence. Some evidence in the report is provided as a link to the submitting organisations website. Much of the referencing is ‘Evidence submitted to the commission’ or ‘Engagement with the commission’ with no detail or way of scrutinising it. We have looked at the ‘Summary of Evidence’ which primarily provides a summary of the Commission’s survey, and surveys done by NGOs. There are key issues from the public which have not made it into the final report. A previous FOI uncovered the significant time spent by the Commission with Investors, Regulators and Water Companies. None of the investor evidence is publicly available. our FOI has been rejected on the basis that it would take Defra too long to find the evidence in its references and make that reference available. Clearly Defra did not catalogue or organise the submitted material. The logic to the report recommendations cannot therefore be verified or scrutinised. We have sent all of this to EFRA.
3. White Paper Action
We provided a briefing to MPs in December, chaired by Sir Alistair Carmichael, and co-hosted by Anna Dixon and Clive Lewis which was really appreciated by those that attended and we will be running another one in the next few weeks when we know the White Paper timetable.
The Sewage Campaign Network is running an MP Drop-In event on the 17th March. They are also asking campaign groups and anyone with a passion to secure change, to book a 1:1 with their MP on the same day. We will then all meet for a debrief in the afternoon. SCN will be providing materials for MPs.
IF YOU would like to be kept informed about this please let us know and we will pass your email address to SCN for updates.
Many thanks
Prof Becky Malby BEM,