Last month, Danny Dyer, protégé of the Nobel Prize winning playwright Harold Pinter, 22nd generation grandson of King Edward III, and current owner of an Isle of Sheppey caravan park, floated a giant 30ft inflatable poo up the Thames. After mooring near South Bank, he marched up Whitehall and handed a petition to No.10 calling for the nationalisation of water companies. Dyer’s message was simple: “save our seas mate… It’s a f****ing disgrace.”
In recent years, Britain’s sewage scandal has become the symbol for the UK’s decline. A visceral sign that things are not working.
That’s why, back in Makerfield when Andy Burnham was making his indirect pitch to replace Keir Starmer, taking public control of the polluting water sector was one of the key themes of his campaign. In his inaugural party conference speech as Labour leader and Prime Minister, his overarching message of “taking back control” included a pledge to repeal Thatcher’s 1989 ban on the public ownership of water companies. This was Burnham’s ‘Clause 4 moment’, signalling a break from the past.
Cleaning up our rivers and seas will take significant investment in infrastructure and regulators. Despite strained public finances, Burnham knows gripping this issue is a clear way to demonstrate change. To show that a Labour government can still be relied on to fix things – rather than explaining things are too complicated.
But if the Prime Minister really wants to take back control, he shouldn’t stop at sewage. He should wage a war on pollution: taking on the waste criminals trashing communities, and confronting the historic injustice inflicted on innocent people by toxic forever chemicals.
While sewage typically grabs headlines, Britain’s waste sector faces its own crisis that is spilling over in communities, with an estimated 8,000 illegal waste sites nationwide.
For years, waste crime has surged as an unintended consequence of the Landfill Tax. In England, an estimated 20% of all waste is illegally managed.
Despite several government ‘crackdowns’, waste crime continues to grow. Profits remain high, penalties are low, and so are the chances of getting caught – providing an avenue for organised criminals to launder money and facilitate fraud, drugs, weapons and human trafficking.
Waste crime costs our economy £1 billion a year and causes misery to people’s lives as local areas are turned into dumps.
The Prime Minister doesn’t need to look far for the worst cases. In late 2024 in Bolton House Road in Burnham’s new constituency, over 25,000 tonnes of waste was illegally dumped at a former scrapyard. Schools shut and residents suffered a scourge of rats, flies and smells. Nicha Rowson said the situation had “torn the family apart” – as her eight year old was forced to move in with grandparents because the smell was making him ill. Almost two years on, the clean up is only beginning.
Burnham visited the site in August and promised action. But regulators still lack the resources and powers to pursue criminals up the chain and rapidly tackle mass dumping when it happens. Earlier this year the Government’s Waste Crime Action Plan allocated an additional £15m a year to enforcement, the same amount it cost to clean up Hoads Wood alone.
A war on pollution should also target toxic ‘forever chemicals’: the name given to persistent per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Developed in the 1930s, PFAS were used in products from non-stick cooking equipment, to waterproof clothing, and firefighting foam. Evidence now links high levels of exposure to cancers, pre-eclampsia, and infertility.
In the UK, journalist Pippa Neill’s pioneering investigations uncovered alarming levels of PFAS in the blood of residents and former workers near a firefighting foam factory in Bentham, North Yorkshire. Of the 39 people blood tested, one former worker recorded levels more than 200 times the US guideline for potential health effects, and one in four had levels in the highest risk category.
In Lancashire Sam Linacre-Hammond said discovering her family’s high PFAS levels left her feeling “guilty for poisoning my children.”
Despite the scale of contamination uncovered, campaigners say Britain is years behind the US and EU. While the EU has restricted PFAS in food packaging, Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee warned the government risked a “whack-a-mole” approach.
From Hillsborough to the Infected Blood Scandal, fighting injustice is a core part of Burnham’s political identity. Forever chemicals are another scandal where the state can see the damage done, yet it’s failing to take appropriate action.
A war on pollution could help Labour build a coalition: the Liberal Democrats want waste crime made a National Crime Agency priority, while Reform called for a ‘national day of action’ to tackle fly tipping. With the Conservatives proposing to abolish the Environment Agency, and the Greens seemingly talking less and less about environmental policy, Labour has an opportunity to take a stand.
Above all, a war on pollution is what Burnhamism is about: resetting Britain’s story from decline to hope.
In the 10 Year Plan, it’s time for a Water Bill that sets a trigger to bring failing firms into public ownership. It’s time to make waste crime a strategic priority for the National Crime Agency, and to bolster the enforcement budget with the proceeds of crime. And it’s time to ban non-essential forever chemicals as a group, while providing tests and monitoring to contaminated communities.
Because like Danny Dyer said outside No.10, it’s a f***ing disgrace.