SCOTLAND'S RAW SEWAGE CRISIS IS HOME-MADE
Thousands of tonnes of raw sewage each year is dumped into Scottish waterways and seeking to parry blame off onto Westminster does not cut the mustard
SCOTLAND is way behind England in tackling its chronic raw sewage spill crisis. That was the findings of The Ferret’s investigative report as far back as 2021. Since then little has been done to remedy the problem, and the existing Scottish Government has failed to do all it can to solve an environmental disaster years in the making
Blaming London
The reality of thousands of tonnes of raw sewage being unceremoniously dumped into national rivers and waterways year upon year isn’t something defenders of the Scottish Government can deny. Instead, the usual suspects engage in an old trick of acknowledging the elephant whilst pivoting to parrying off blame.
The National' for example (the SNP’s pravda) acknowledges Scotland is not immune to witnessing raw sewage being dumped into our waterways due to long running infrastructure issues. But, the in-house 'newspaper' for the ruling SNP attempts to peddle the line that it's somehow Westminster's fault whilst acknowledging the problem. They justify blaming England for our raw sewage problem on basis of "Westminster's control over capital spending".
This is somewhat misleading. Let me explain why.
Does the nature of devolution mean limitations on capital borrowing powers? Yes. But has the SNP government consistently maxed out existing capital borrowing powers year on year? No.
So, the reality is that for years running up to the 2021 Ferret report, we know for a fact that the Scottish Government had wriggle room and chose not to fully utilise it.
The Scottish Government has access to capital borrowing powers. To be specific, capital borrowing can be used to supplement capital spending within the limits of the Fiscal Framework.
It is with this in mind I point out that prior to 2021 the SNP government failed to fully utilise existing capital borrowing powers.
Capital borrowing for years 2018-19, 2019-2020, 2020-21 all reveal space to have borrowed more for capital purposes than what was used.
So it is untrue and misleading to claim the raw sewage issue is due to London controlling capital spending. ScotGov has wriggle room to borrow and has chosen not to use it for years. All of this somewhat undermines the credibility of the blame England line ‘The National’ has resorted to to defend chronic ScotGov failures concerning raw sewage dumping due to lack of infrastructural capacity.
Environmental catastrophe
The Ferret’s excellent reporting should be read. It reveals the staggering cynicism of the Scottish Government. While publicly attacking Westminster for English sewage dumping in 2021, it was privately fully aware of Scotland’s own sewage crisis. Leaked emails also revealed officials were deeply concerned - privately never publicly - about the scale of the problem north of Hadrian’s wall.
“Summarising the article, David Lister, the government’s water environment policy manager, consulted colleagues on 5 July on a draft briefing for energy secretary, Michael Matheson.
Authorities were seen by the public as acting “too slow” while a task force had been set up almost a year earlier in England to tackle sewage leaks, Lister said.”
Ultimately one of the revelations to come to light was that while in England 80 per cent of sewage overflows are monitored south of the border, with the remainder to be monitored by 2023. In Scotland just 10 per cent are monitored by Scottish Water, which plans to increase this to only 12 per cent by 2024.
Hardly an example of Scottish exceptionalism is it? And this comes in the context of years of Scottish Governmental capital borrowing powers not being fully utilised. So, let’s hear no more of the blame game. Instead let us hope the new First Minister will succeed where eight years of his predecessor spectacularly failed. I know, fat chance…plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose…
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