John has clarified his decision to vote against an amendment of the Environment Bill.
In response to The Weston Mercury, John said: “Most of Britain’s Victorian sewers carry a mixture of sewage, plus rainwater runoff from roofs and roads, which means they overflow if there’s a flash downpour. This isn’t new – it has been happening ever since the first sewers were installed, centuries ago – and the new Environment Bill already includes measures to fix it. So it wasn’t either true or fair to claim anyone voted in favour of dumping more sewage: the choice was between a fairly significant clean-up at a manageable cost to consumers’ water bills (there are 200,000km of old sewer pipes to fix, after all) which I supported, or a slightly bigger one with a much larger rise in bills. But both options would have meant fewer overflows, and waterways which will be cleaner than before.”