TV presenter and environmental campaigner Chris Packham says OFWAT is in “dereliction of duty” and calls on the government to “reform that regulator”. Mr Packham joins a range of groups including River Action and Greenpeace who march through central London to demand tougher action to keep the UK’s water ways clean. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00We should have a surely a quality of life expectation when we can allow our children
00:07to paddle and we should be able to swim on our beaches, but at this point we do so at
00:12the risk of our health. And where is it going to go? If it doesn't get better, then very
00:17soon we'll have cholera outbreaks and all of the things that were, you know, perceived
00:22to be ills of the distant past. Look, what we've got here is a system that's gone into
00:28significant decline because of lack of investment in infrastructure. At the same time, we've
00:32had a rising population and now we've got climate breakdown. So we've got extreme weather
00:37events which are causing, you know, higher levels of rain, causing those sewers to overflow
00:41and dump into the rivers. We've got farming that hasn't been regulated. We've got huge
00:46runoff of fertilisers and chemicals going into our rivers as well, which is really significant.
00:51And to go with that, worst of all, we've had a regulator that is in dereliction of duty.
00:56They simply haven't been doing what they were put in post to do. So what we're asking
01:00for, politely and democratically today, is for our new government to basically reform
01:06that regulator. I'd say rip it up and start again. Get some new people into Ofwat and
01:10give them some teeth to do their business.