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00:00 Hi, I'm Isabella Bonham, a reporter for National World, and I've been chatting to Fergal Sharkey,
00:05 the singer-turned-environmental lobbyist. He was a former singer of the '80s pop group
00:10 Undertone and now is one of the most high-profile campaigners and loudest voices against river
00:15 pollution, fighting for an end to sewage being discharged into UK rivers and seas. I ask
00:21 about why he started campaigning against sewage spills, why the UK is in this mess, who is
00:26 to blame and what is the best we can hope for? Can the UK eradicate sewage spills?
00:31 First of all, I'd just like to start with, you know, when did you start campaigning against
00:37 sewage? What made you get into it?
00:39 Well, ironically enough, it goes back to I've spent a lifetime standing around in or next
00:47 to rivers, normally waving a fly rod furiously around my head whilst trying to persuade some
00:55 completely uncooperative, decadent trout to oblige me by grabbing the hold of the end
01:01 of my line. I used to be, until quite recently, the chairman of what is the oldest fly fishing
01:09 club in the country. And that is what directly got me interested in rivers, was my hobby
01:16 of fly fishing and watching particularly the decline of the Anwyl and Magna fishery, which
01:23 is what I was chairman of and finding ourselves in, being put in a position where we ended
01:30 up basically taking the Environment Agency to the doors of the High Court, simply to
01:36 get them to do something about the water levels and the volume of water in the river at that
01:43 time. Now, I have to admit, that problem has now been resolved. But that simple experience
01:50 of why 60 ladies and gentlemen of a certain age had to fundamentally take the Environment
01:59 Agency to the High Court, that just kind of made me oddly curious about what else might
02:07 possibly be going on.
02:09 What do you think of people, you know, getting involved and taking a stand? I know you've
02:12 touched on that briefly with the case of Joe standing up against South West Water.
02:20 I can barely now leave my house and get on the tube and go into London without any number
02:26 of people stopping me and wanting to talk about sewage. Now, I wish they would talk
02:32 to me about other things in my life, but if it has to be sewage, right now it has to be
02:36 sewage. The point I'm building up to, the last time I had that kind of level of attention
02:42 from anonymous members of the public, I had the number one record in this country. That's
02:49 how much this has cut through. That's how much it's infuriated and angered people. So
02:56 the truth is, we now know, by way of example, 56% of voters are now saying the sewage scandal
03:04 is going to influence how they vote at the next election. And my message to the water
03:09 industry from my own experience and from the data and the research I've seen, it's over.
03:15 You're finished. If you think you're going to carry on for the next 30 years doing what
03:20 you've done for the last 30, you're badly mistaken.
03:23 Well, we can see from your Twitter, you're active every day, holding water companies
03:28 to account. And I'd just like to know, who do you think is to blame, really, for the
03:34 mess that we're in now?
03:36 There has, without question, been an extraordinary lack of political oversight and a lack of
03:42 really paying attention to what has been going on now for 30 years. Clearly, we have a regulatory
03:48 system that has failed, not only to protect the environment, as we now know, there's not
03:54 a single river in England that is not polluted. And one of the biggest sources of that pollution
04:01 is the water industry. And that simple statistic begs the fact, what in God's name has the
04:08 environment agency been doing for the last 30 years? When all of this has been going
04:12 on, they have ram-raided these companies for cash. And in very general terms, those companies
04:19 have now made off with £72 billion worth of bill payers' money, leaving those companies
04:26 now about £64 billion in debt. The whole thing has been an absolute tragedy from one
04:34 end to the other.
04:35 How do you think this scandal can be solved? Do you have any sympathy for the water companies
04:44 in that they've got all of the massive uphold of the system to fix? Is there any sympathy
04:52 there? How do we go about solving it?
04:55 I'm really happy to challenge the industry on this. They are now kind of begging for
05:00 sympathy. They have and have had from day one a statutory obligation to build and operate
05:09 and maintain a sewage system, and I'm quoting, "capable of effectually dealing with the
05:15 contents of those sewers." That's the game they're in. That's the business they're in.
05:22 They've not delivered that. They've not maintained that legal obligation. So guess what? Water
05:27 companies get absolutely zero sympathy for me whatsoever.
05:32 One aspect is privatisation. Another aspect also, I just wanted to touch on Brexit. Do
05:37 you think that's played a part in reducing regulations around pollution?
05:41 No, because the truth is the regulations that we have actually came about because of the
05:48 European Union. Most of them relate back to the Water Framework Directive. The water...
05:55 God help me, I actually know this. The Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. So all of
06:02 the legislation that was ever needed to fix this has actually been in place for at least
06:08 20, if not 30 years. The truth is that water companies have blindly, deliberately, blatantly,
06:15 in my opinion, ignored it. I'll give you a simple example of that. The UK government
06:21 was taken to court by the European Commission in 2012 and found guilty by the European Court
06:30 of Justice for acting illegally and allowing water companies in England to dump water into
06:38 the environment in the way they do. So the truth is Brexit hasn't changed that. The legislation
06:44 is always there. They've always ignored it and pretty much ignored it from day one.
06:49 If you could say something to the water companies, the regulators, what would you say to them?
06:55 Oh, do your job. Do your job. The law says that they should not be exploiting our chalk
07:03 streams by over-extracting them. The law says that they should not be dumping sewage willy-nilly
07:10 into our rivers and onto our beaches. That they should be building and maintaining a
07:15 sewage system capable of effectively dealing with the contents of those sewers. So go and
07:22 do your job. Go and comply with the law. And by the way, can I have a refund for all the
07:26 money I've paid you for 30 years to do a job you clearly haven't done?
07:30 Do you have any events coming up in particular?
07:33 The next one for me is on Wednesday morning in Cardiff. I am also vice chairman of River
07:42 Action and River Action are taking DEFRA and the EA to the High Court in Cardiff on Wednesday.
07:51 And on Wednesday morning I will be in Cardiff outside the court, nine o'clock in the morning.
07:56 Do feel free to come along, come and join in, bring whatever drums, triangles, noise
08:02 making kit that you've got to offer. And I'll see you outside the court on that nine o'clock
08:06 on Wednesday morning in Cardiff.
08:07 Well, you should definitely keep challenging them and keep up the great work campaigning
08:13 and posting on Twitter every day. Keep that up because you're doing an amazing job with
08:19 what you're doing, putting pressure on the companies and regulators. But I really appreciate
08:23 you speaking to me today. Yeah, and hope to talk to you soon.
08:27 Thank you.
08:28 Thank you.
08:29 Thank you.
08:29 [BLANK_AUDIO]