Devon beaches you shouldn’t swim at as sewage warnings issued including Budleigh Salterton, Exmouth and Sidmouth.

Thursday’s full Council Meeting was very busy and Owl is still catching up.

East Devon District Council’s former chief executive officer (CEO) died of asbestos-related cancer, an inquest has heard.

The number of coronavirus cases confirmed across Devon has doubled in the past week – but has nearly halved in Cornwall.

Daniel Clark www.devonlive.com 

Government statistics show that 42 new cases have been confirmed across the region in the past seven days in both pillar 1 data from tests carried out by the NHS and pillar 2 data from commercial partners, compared to 34 new cases confirmed last week.

It means that an average of 6 rather than 4.85 cases a day are being confirmed across the two counties, with 32 of the 42 cases having a specimen date having a specimen date from August 14 to August 21, and the other ten dating back to August 10.

The number of confirmed cases in Cornwall over the last week has dropped from 14 to eight, while the same number of cases, seven, were recorded in Plymouth – of which four were in the Honicknowle & Manadon MSOA area.

Weekly rate of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population tested

In Torbay, the number has risen from one to three, while across the rest of Devon, the numbers have more than doubled, from 12 to 26.

It means that in Cornwall, at present, 1.14 cases a day on average are being confirmed, with one case a day in Plymouth, with 0.42 cases in Torbay and 3.71 across the rest of Devon.

Of the cases confirmed in the last week, four of Cornwall’s cases occurred with the specimen date of August 14 or later, with five of the cases in Plymouth, 22 in Devon, and one case in Torbay.

Across the Devon County Council area, of the 22 cases, nine were in East Devon (of which four were in Seaton), four in Exeter, three in Mid Devon and North Devon, two in the South Hams and Teignbridge, and one in Torridge. No new cases were confirmed this week in West Devon.

By specimen date, the most recent case in Teignbridge, Exeter, Mid Devon, Torridge and the South Hams is from August 19, from August 18 in East Devon, Plymouth, North Devon, Torbay, and Cornwall, and August 10 in West Devon.

Across the whole of the South West, 230 cases have so far been confirmed for the previous seven day period, with 68 of them in Swindon, which despite media reports of facing a ‘local lockdown’, has seen the number of new cases decrease in the past week.

In terms of cases by specimen between August 11 to August 17 and reported by August 21, there are two Middle Super Output Areas across Devon and Cornwall that had four cases confirmed – Honicknowle & Manadon in Plymouth and Seaton in East Devon. Everywhere has had between 0-2 cases.

The number of people in hospital with COVID-19 in the South West has fallen in the previous week, dropping down to 17 from 18, with there being just one person in intensive care.

This week saw three hospital deaths in the South West – but the last death in a hospital in Devon and Cornwall occurred on June 29 – and for the second week in a row, no deaths were recorded in Devon in the ONS statistics.

The R Rate for the South West is now being estimated as between 0.8 and 1.1, up from 0.8 to 1.0 as of last week, and could be both the lowest and highest in the country, but it covers a large geographical area and low case numbers mean the estimates is insufficiently robust to inform policy decisions.

Torridge remains the place in England with the lowest overall positivity rate, and is 3rd in the overall table behind Na h-Eileanan Siar (Outer Hebrides) and the Orkney Islands.

Including Scotland and Wales as well, the South Hams is 7th, North Devon 9th, West Devon 10th, Teignbridge 13th, East Devon 14th, Cornwall 15th, Exeter 21 st , Torbay 27th, Mid Devon 48th and Plymouth 51st of the 369 regions

In total, Torridge has had 57 positive cases, West Devon 75, with 103 in the South Hams, 125 in North Devon, 215 in Mid Devon, 217 in Teignbridge, 239 in East Devon, 258 in Exeter, 288 in Torbay, 693 in Plymouth and 961 in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

Testing being carried out at Leeds Temple Green Park and Ride, part of the Government’s UK-wide drive to increase testing for thousands more NHS workers (Image: Danny Lawson/PA Wire)

The COVID-19 cases are identified by taking specimens from people and sending these specimens to laboratories around the UK to be tested. If the test is positive, this is a referred to as a lab-confirmed case.

Confirmed positive cases are matched to ONS geographical area codes using the home postcode of the person tested.

The data is now shown by the date the specimen was taken from the person being tested and while it gives a useful analysis of the progression of cases over time, it does mean that the latest days’ figures may be incomplete.

Cases received from laboratories by 12:30am are included in the counts published that day. While there may have been new cases of coronavirus confirmed or people having tested positive, those test results either yet to reach PHE for adding to the dataset or were not received in time for the latest daily figures to be published.

Putting these figures in a broader perspective

Owl has been tracking the Covid Symptom study as a useful proxy measure of the prevalence of Covid-19 because it is based on a very large (though self-selecting) sample and provides consistency across time. Over the UK the study estimates of infection rates correlate with the latest ONS estimates. It is becoming recognised that, to date, most officially confirmed cases present an underestimate and there is a considerable number of asymptomatic or very mild cases. What this table shows is that the number of active cases in the community shows considerable volatility but there is no particular cause for alarm at the moment.

Estimated active case/million people under revised calculation methods (prevalence)  Aged 20-69

The Covid symptom study is now converting prevalence and showing estimated active cases (people with symptoms and likely to be infective) for each district as follows:

North Devon 19; East Devon 29; Torbay 25; South Hams 17

“From Lulworth Cove to Bubleigh (sic) Salterton, from St Ives to Bude, Woolacombe to Minehead and every beach in between, accents from all over the country can be heard – as commonplace as the pasty shops.”

Jon Lewis www.independent.co.uk 

As a large population of the country decides against the risk of holidaying abroad, the southwest of England is welcoming more guests than ever – but faces the risks associated with the virus.

Based on stats alone it would appear Devon and Cornwall have gotten off lightly when it comes to coronavirus.

The South Hams was one of the first places in the UK to report a case of Covid-19, but since then there have been just over 2,000 more cases in Devon, with about 900 having been reported in Cornwall since early March.

While other picturesque parts of the country such as Cumbria suffered during lockdown with day-trippers blamed for spreading the virus, the westcountry – stung by those early cases – shut up shop quickly with a police force determined to enforce the letter of the law and angry, social-media savvy locals armed with smartphones and a passion for passive aggression ready to expose any second-home owners flouting the rules.

There are many in the southwest who would prefer it to have stayed that way, but this is a region which relies heavily on its tourism industry.

“It had got to the point where we had to open again,” says Victoria Norris, 46, who runs Tall Ships Creamery ice cream shop in Charlestown on the south Cornwall coast.

“Only time will tell if we have made the right decision. We have had a lot of holidaymakers down here and by the beginning of September we will know how lucky we have been.”

Victoria was so concerned by the spread of the virus that she shut down her business before the government made closure compulsory. She also refused to reopen until June – after her engineer fiance Scott Anstey had completely revamped her two small shops in the village to ensure they were completely Covid-safe.

She only allows one household into the shop at a time and employs a strict two-metre social distancing rule at all times.

“When we were closed there was a lot of pressure from people asking when we were going to open again, but I wasn’t prepared to risk my staff, their families or myself,” Victoria says.

“I won’t change what I have done. If we ever get back to a point of everything being safe I will keep my shops as they are.

“When people come down on holiday they do forget about the virus and social distancing just goes out of the window. We have a two-metre rule in the shop and some people love it while others think it is ridiculous… but we don’t want to get ill.

“I went kayaking the other day and I heard someone with a northern accent on the beach. They were doing no social distancing whatsoever and it just made me want to jump in the sea and get away as quickly as possible.

“I won’t go to the beach. I keep myself to myself. There are just too many people at the moment.”

The last few months have taken their toll regardless of the virus stats. Any further delay in easing lockdown would have even more businesses facing closure than have already done so.

Now hotels, B&Bs, campsites, theme parks, ice cream vendors are all open again and have rarely been busier, boosted by a nation of holidaymakers desperate for a sense of freedom but fearful that overseas travel could mean contracting the virus, a two-week spell in quarantine on their return, or both.

And therein lies the catch-22 for many in Devon and Cornwall – they have to reopen and welcome visitors from other parts of the UK where the virus is more prevalent in order for survive economically, but what will the cost be to their own health?

Croyde and Georgeham in North Devon is home to one of the country’s most magnificent beaches and anything up to 10,000 holidaymakers in peak season – but a mere 700 or so hardy souls out of it.

“It’s probably busier now than in previous years, but that’s because people are staying in the UK rather than going abroad,” says parish council chairman John Symonds, who has counted himself among those 700 his whole life.

“Holidaymakers aren’t adhering to social distancing, it’s carnage down there. One campsite has a rule of 10 metres between each tent, but another site has got 1,200 people packed into a small field. What can you do?

“People and businesses have had it hard out there and now they are trying to catch up. You cannot blame them for taking the money now it’s on offer. I don’t think it will cause a second spike, but it’s obvious something will happen here.”

Sam Scott, a resident of neighbouring Ilfracombe for 15 years, agrees.

“At the start of lockdown I would have been outraged at holidaymakers coming down here, but now I’m more accepting of it,” he says.

“Yes, I am concerned about holidaymakers spreading the virus, but I would be more concerned about holiday businesses around North Devon going under. It’s a really fine line between protecting vulnerable people in the community and in Devon hospitals, and looking after local businesses.

“If people weren’t on holiday I like to think they would be a bit more sensible when it comes to social distancing, but I can understand them not doing it – they are on holiday and want to relax.”

Sunseekers have certainly seen the recent heatwave as an opportunity to make the most of the southwest.

From Lulworth Cove to Bubleigh Salterton, from St Ives to Bude, Woolacombe to Minehead and every beach in between, accents from all over the country can be heard – as commonplace as the pasty shops.

The corner of the UK thronging with people is nothing new in summer, but when you add in the need for social distancing the narrow lanes and 50cm wide cobbled pavements only heighten the sense of claustrophobia.

In Totnes cars have been banned completely from the narrow main road through the town on Saturday mornings in order to allow pedestrian shoppers to socially distance – it’s simply impossible to do so otherwise.

Other resorts such as Perranporth in North Cornwall have put cones down in the roads of the busiest streets and employed marshalls in an attempt to widen the pavements.

“It’s better than nothing,” said one local resident. “You speak to tourists who say they have come down here to get away from the virus… but I’m thinking ‘you could be bringing it down to us’.

“At this time of year it’s usually busy, but this year it’s just gone completely mental. We will be lucky to not get a second spike.”

21 August 2020 eastdevon.gov.uk 

These are the voting results as Owl recorded them last night, they have been cross-checked but it is always possible, with a long list, for inadvertent errors to creep in – if you spot any please let Owl know.

To avoid confusion about what voting for or against the motion put to Council means, Owl has used the term “Stay” to indicate those voting to stay in GESP and “Leave” for those voting to leave.

33 Councillors voted to leave and 22 Councillors voted to stay in GESP; there was one abstention, three Councillors sent their apologies and one was absent.

Essentially those voting to stay, were all the Conservatives present and all the self-styled “Independent Group”. These are the remainder of Ben Ingham’s group of “Independents” who did not join the Majority Group or form Cranbrook Voice. The other unaligned “Independent” from the Ingham Group, Cllr Peter Faithfull, also voted to stay in the GESP.

East Devon votes to withdraw from the Greater Exeter Strategic Plan

From a correspondent:

The Leader of the Council, Paul Arnott, grasps the importance of the public’s perception of ethical standards expected from those working and elected in the public sector and, surely, all would agree that the 7 Nolan principles of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership are an aim we should all try to aspire to in every walk of life.

Owl believes this is what was said under Agenda Item 6 last night:

Cllr Cathy Gardner, Chair EDDC 

“Some of you will know that I became involved in local politics because I was concerned about probity in planning. That was in 2013, at the time of the Graham Brown affair. I quickly got to know neighbours and others in East Devon who shared my concerns, and more. Now that I am Chair of EDDC it is a vital part of my role to safeguard the reputation of this Council and rid ourselves of that legacy. In order to do that I believe we must take positive steps to improve public perception of how we operate, especially when it comes to aspects of planning. We must ensure that our processes are totally robust and our behaviour is beyond reproach. I will hand over to the Leader, Cllr Paul Arnott who will explain….” 

Cllr Paul Arnott, Leader EDDC 

“This morning, the Chair called a meeting with the CEO and the Monitoring Officer, and invited the Chair of Planning, the Deputy Leader and me. 

We had a positive and wide-ranging discussion on how we can make sure that even as busy members and officers we adhere to the commitment to the Nolan Principles at all times. There is a difference between lip service and implementation, and all councils with duties in Planning must make sure that implementation is its watchword.  

This discussion had been triggered now for urgent action by a number of factors.  

From the recent past, it is clear that the failure of this council to go ahead with the Task and Finish Forum commissioned to look into the Brown issue -mentioned by the Chair – and into the role and influence of the former East Devon Business Forum, was a serious error of judgement. It gave the impression – whatever the case – that members and the public had no legitimate right to understand these unhappy matters. There had been a chance to clean the stable – instead the broom was snapped and the stable door locked. It was business as usual. 

However, the timing now has been mainly triggered by the need to look to the immediate future, and the time for action is here as the council, like the nation, enters some of the most challenging times for Planning in our history. We cannot fulfil our duty to the Nolan principles when the public is still unsure about the role of undue influence in our Planning Choices, our site identification. Or where their community’s S106 money has got to. 

Imminently, we re-engage with our Local Plan process. There were serious and unanswered questions about a number of sites which came in under the bar at the eleventh hour in the current plan in 2015, and members have repeated the concerns about the sporadic undeclared interests of some members in this council and their alliance with large-scale landowners in relation to the draft consultation for the Greater Exeter Strategic Plan. 

We cannot make a clean start on our new plan-making process without absolute clarity and commitment to the highest standards of member and officer probity. Soon, in addition, we will have to respond to the government’s consultation on Planning changes. This council will have an obligation to include in that the risks – nationally acknowledged – of local and national undue influence, corruption some might say, in that too. As we know, the Sec of State whose name is on the draft consultation helped in the cause of the international pornographer, Richmond Desmond, who hoped avoid millions of pound in CIL. He is but one of a legion of developer donors to the Tory party. That, I am afraid to say, Conservative members and friends, is your party. Well we are not having that here. 

Therefore, the Chair will host another meeting next Thursday on this topic with those gathered today, and arising from that I will write as Leader to the Chair and the CEO advising that we will have an agenda item to discuss how we structure our immediate work on this topic at the next available Cabinet.” 

EAST DEVON RESULT ON GESP – WE’RE OUT – BUT NOT DOWNHEARTED!

“It was reassuring that the recommendation by the Strategic Planning Committee to Council to withdraw from the GESP was carried by 33 votes to 22 with one abstention at the Council’s Virtual meeting last night and it is hoped that Mid Devon District Council will follow this lead and also withdraw next week. 

EDDC’s live streaming on Youtube is welcome as it gives the public an insight into the world of local politics and an opportunity to listen to the characters and qualities of those who have been elected to represent the people of East Devon.

The Leader of the Council, Paul Arnott, grasps the importance of the public’s perception of ethical standards expected from those working and elected in the public sector and, surely, all would agree that the 7 Nolan principles of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership are an aim we should all try to aspire to in every walk of life.

For the ordinary residents of East Devon, GESP has seemed opaque (even secretive) and any public consultation would have been unlikely to show the public’s widespread views because lack of transparency has left people in the dark and precluded and consequently very few would have felt confident to make representations on GESP – leaving only local government officers, members, local business people, landowners and developers to represent their opinions, which may have proved somewhat biased.

Last night saw a chameleon-like speaker (who changes colours regularly) bleating incessantly, while others pontificated desperately trying to reverse the withdrawal from the GESP recommended by the new Strategic Planning Committee, by scaremongering and threatening Westminster intervention and unitary status, but the public perception is that they would all do well to re-read the 7 Nolan principles and endeavour to follow them as a first step to representing the people of East Devon.”

[Owl intends to publish more on the Chairman’s and Leader’s statement – working on the transcript]

Debate on this item started around 40 minutes into the meeting with the recorded vote starting around 1hr 8 mins.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmNHQruge3LVI4hcgRnbwBw

The EDDC coalition of Democratic Alliance (East Devon Alliance, Libdem, Greens, Independents) and Independent Progressive Councillors has only a narrow majority. It does not impose a “whip” on its members. Every vote is therefore a potential cliffhanger. For example, in this vote one Libdem abstained.

Discipline, on the other hand, is the one thing at which the Conservative Party excels. It is their great strength but also their weakness. It makes the party inward looking and slow to pick up on changes in mood not just in the party but in the community. Pursuing the party line blinds to arguments.

As soon as it was revealed, at the start of last night’s meeting, that three Conservatives had sent their apologies (later, another failed to show) the die was cast, the game was over.

And it showed when it got to their lacklustre performance in the debate. For the first time they looked, and sounded, defeated.

Council Leader, Cllr Paul Arnott explained that the Government White Paper proposed to tear up the duty to co-operate with neighbouring authorities. But under his administration, if the decision was taken to pull out from GESP, EDDC would continue to cooperate. He laid out a strategy to start immediately to revise the Local Plan and prepare to meet the White Paper proposals whilst making a strong consultation response to counter them. EDDC, he said, was in a strong position with a six year land supply.

In contrast, it appears that the Conservative councillors who spoke have not yet grasped the significance of what their Government is planning to do, nor what the GESP is all about. We heard the astonishing suggestion from both “Build,build, build” Cllr Helen Parr and Cllr Philip Skinner that the GESP was the best way to preserve the beauty of East Devon! Our “Chameleon” Cllr Ben Ingam painted GESP as delivering some Nirvana that Owl obviously failed to spot when reading the documents. 

As Chairman, Cathy Gardner, pointed out, more than four hours of debate had been held in the Strategic Planning Committee when, Cllr Dan Ledger, its Chairman, called every EDDC Councillor who wished to speak before going into the Committee session. There was also a significant contribution from the public.

The Chairman had asked that points be kept short and to concentrate on changes that had happened since the earlier debate. After about 30 minutes, and when it became apparent that Councillors were going over old ground and repeating arguments, she called the vote.

The recorded vote was carried 33 for 22 against one formal abstention (Libdem)

Three Conservative Councillors sent in their apologies in advance: Cllrs Allen, Hartnell and Twiss, and one, Cllr Pepper, failed to show..

Owl will produce a post in due course recording the result of the vote in each ward.  

A coincidence but a very prophetic one – Exeter needs to take a different direction – Owl

Owl , obviously, has a particular interest in who represents the Council on the two AONB. Owl is, therefore, delighted that the old guard have been completely replaced:

In the Blackdown Hills AONB by Cllr Paul Hayward.

In the East Devon AONB  Cllrs Pook and Parr are replaced by Cllrs Geoff Pratt and Marianne Rixon.

Debate on this item started around 40 minutes into the meeting with the recorded vote starting around 1hr 8 mins.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmNHQruge3LVI4hcgRnbwBw

Vote carried 33 for 22 against one formal abstention

It is worth noting that three Conservative Councillors sent in their apologies: Cllrs Allen, Hartnell and Twiss

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmNHQruge3LVI4hcgRnbwBw

The Chairman and Leader have just announced their intention to increase probity in planning with a follow up meeting shortly to flesh out the details of a “cleaning of the slate” based on the Nolan principles. They were obviously deeply unhappy with the reputation of EDDC planning in the past few years.

They wished to ensure the error of judgement in not pursuing the infamous Graham Brown affair is never repeated; that there are no more undisclosed interests, that the public can see that “undue” influences do not play a part in planning decisions.

The watchwords appeared to be clarity and commitment.

These are very much Owl’s first thoughts whilst the debate on GESP is live

Honiton Town Council loses longstanding member and former mayor

Sajid Javid – the former chancellor, once a candidate to lead the Conservative Party, and still the member of parliament for Bromsgrove – has been hired as a global advisor to JP Morgan, one of the world’s largest banks. Second jobs of this kind for MPs corrupt our democracy, which is why they should be banned by law.

Zarah Sultana www.theguardian.com 

Javid is far from alone among senior Conservatives who have had second jobs. Shortly before she was appointed the home secretary last year, Priti Patel was being paid £1,000 an hour as an adviser to a firm that supplies services to the Ministry of Defence, while Jacob Rees-Mogg is in line for £800,000 in dividend payments from the investment fund he founded and which he continued to work for part-time when he became an MP in 2010 (he cut his operating links with the firm only when he joined the cabinet in 2019).

The issue goes beyond sitting MPs as well. The path from political office to well-paid external roles is well trodden. After he stepped down as prime minister, Tony Blair also took a lucrative role at JP Morgan . The former Conservative chancellor George Osborne took a highly paid role at BlackRock, the world’s largest investment firm, among many other jobs after leaving parliament in 2017.

And another former Tory chancellor, Philip Hammond, recently nominated for a peerage by Boris Johnson, is now a paid adviser to the finance minister of the Saudi government as it takes up the rotating G20 presidency.

Our political leaders should serve the people, not global banking giants or investment funds. Frankly, between casework, holding surgeries, supporting constituency events and attending parliament, I don’t know how they find the time. But the problem with these jobs goes much deeper than that.

Javid now has a personal financial interest in the success of a major global bank. This might not be such a problem if the interests of big banks happily coincided with our interests, but that’s not the case. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, banks including JP Morgan lobbied hard for banking regulation to be weakened. Quick profits were to be made, and “red tape” was getting in the way. They succeeded in persuading politicians to deregulate – and then the 2008 financial crisis hit.

Big banks had taken huge risks, and made billions of pounds in profits and bonuses; but when their luck ran out, they got bailed out. They never paid the price but we did, with a decade of cuts and stagnating wages from successive Conservative-led governments.

The truth is, second jobs are one part of a whole web of mechanisms that big businesses and the super-rich uses to influence MPs and government policy, which includes donations, dinners and the revolving door between the private sector and legislators. They send gifts and offer to take MPs on trips. As Dennis Skinner once joked, it’s always “Bahamas in the winter … they never go on a fact-finding mission to Greenland in the winter!”

This is all done to influence legislators and government policy, further aligning the interests of politicians and multinational corporations. The majority of the people, meanwhile, get a raw deal as a result.

To maximise their profits, big businesses want low taxes, low wages and low regulation. Most of us, by contrast, have an interest in decent public services – funded through taxes on the wealthiest – good and rising wages, and strong regulations to protect our rights.

But cosy relationships with the private sector have held sway for too long. It’s no coincidence that the Conservative party, which has cut corporation tax to one of the lowest rates in the world, receives donations from one-third of the UK’s richest people; nor is it a coincidence that it lets an estimated £90bn in tax be dodged every year, or that the UK had a record number of billionaires at the same time as a record number of food banks. These two records are connected: politicians have made decisions that benefit their funders, not the poorest.

It’s not easy to get parliament to change its ways. Many MPs have huge financial interests in having jobs alongside their parliamentary responsibilities. And the Conservative party is hardly going to bring in rules to stop the super-rich spending fortunes to influence elections and subvert democracy.

But to change Britain, and to build a society that works for all, we have to end the grip of big businesses and the super-rich on our politics. That change can come only from the grassroots up. As the coronavirus pandemic has exposed inequalities like never before, now is the time to build that power and to demand real change.

• Zarah Sultana is the Labour MP for Coventry South

The head of the Environment Agency has endorsed a proposal to weaken laws on cleanliness of polluted rivers, lakes and coastlines after Brexit.

Sandra Laville www.theguardian.com 

Campaigners say Sir James Bevan is trying to “rig the system” to cover up decades of failure by the agency.

Bevan flagged the idea of amending the EU’s water framework directive (WFD) to an audience of business leaders. England has consistently failed to bring its rivers up to the standard required under the directive, which puts waterways through four stringent tests designed to assess their health. Rivers have to be assessed on all four tests in order to be graded as “good” – known as the one-out-all-out rule.

Just 14% of English rivers have been assessed under the directive as good. The directive sees water quality as an area that can have the most significant impact on the environment and examines factors such as biology, physical character, depth, width, flow and pollution as part of the four tests.

But Bevan said in his speech that he wanted England to reform the directive to end the one-out-all-out rule and allow rivers to be judged on one criterion rather than all four. If that changed, the number of rivers judged in a good state would rise dramatically overnight.

Bevan acknowledged the directive was landmark, and sets high standards demanding deadlines for improving water quality in rivers, lakes, estuaries and groundwater. He said: “It has driven much of the work that the EA and others have done over the last 20 years to secure those improvements.”

Nevertheless, it is “a candidate for thoughtful reform” in a post-Brexit UK, he said.

Bevan said the one-out-all-out rule “can underplay where rivers are in a good state, or where improvements have been made, to those that aren’t. Right now only 14% of rivers in England qualify for good status under the WFD, because most of them fail on one or other of the criteria. But many of those rivers are actually in a much better state than that, because most of them now meet most of the criteria: across England, 79% of the individual WFD indicators are at good status.”

The one-out-all-out rule could also force regulators to focus time and resources on indicators that might not make much difference to actual water quality, Bevan said, and some rivers in urban settings would never achieve all criteria because they could not be restored to their natural state.

Campaigners reacted angrily to the signal that the leader of England’s main environmental watchdog was supporting what they said was a watering down of the key measure to clean up rivers and coastal waters.

Hugo Tagholm, of Surfers Against Sewage, who used the framework directive to help drive a cleanup of UK coastal waters, said: “Engineering the testing programme to give the illusion that our rivers are in a healthier state than they currently are won’t help us accelerate the much needed restoration of our aquatic and coastal environments.

“Sewage, farming effluent and urban runoff plague and destroy riverine ecosystems nationwide and we need radical thinking and interventions to practically restore and rewild this blue ecosystem for wildlife and for people.”

The Guardian revealed last month that water companies released 1.5m hours of raw sewage via storm outflows into rivers in 2019, in 204,000 discharges all of which are permitted by Bevan’s agency. Critics say the agency is giving water companies a licence to pollute, and exploiting the rules that say sewage can only be released in exceptional circumstances, like extreme rainfall.

Feargal Sharkey, the former lead singer of the Undertones, who now campaigns to save rivers from overabstraction and pollution, condemned any suggestion of a weakening of the protections currently in place. He said: “The whole idea is a charade, nothing more than the worst kind of clumsy pretence aimed at trying to cover up decades worth of the EA’s own failure and incompetence.”

The Environment Agency declined to comment specifically, but pointed to the text of Bevan’s speech.

• This article was amended on 19 August 2020. Sir James Bevan’s comments applied only to England, not to the UK as referred to in a previous version. The article also used “criteria” when “criterion” was meant.

Martin Kettle www.theguardian.com 

Why are the members of the UK parliament not holding the government’s feet to the fire amid these multiple crises? The case for them doing so is overwhelming. In the middle of a global pandemic, with coronavirus cases rising again at home, the government has abolished England’s main public health body. The examination and university entrance systems are in real-time chaos. The economy has fallen into recession. Jobs are collapsing by the thousand daily. Oh, and the Brexit talks have stalled.

Meanwhile, a prime minister who can’t cook and who likes to take luxury foreign holidays at someone else’s expense is supposedly out in the rain on a midge-ridden Scottish camping holiday with his partner and a three-month-old baby. Believe that if you wish. What really matters is that Boris Johnson is simply absent without leave.

So where are Britain’s MPs when they are needed? The conventional explanation is that this is simply the usual long summer recess. Parliament almost never sits between late July and early September. MPs have met only twice in August in the last half century – the last time over Syria in 2013. They can be recalled only if ministers want it. Ministers rarely do. End of story.

Except this is not the end. Instead the extremely deliberate marginalisation of parliament under Johnson and Dominic Cummings is emerging into plain sight. The Covid-19 pandemic conceals this, because it is so obviously an exceptional time and because the socially distanced parliament is stuck in second gear. But do not be deceived. We are witnessing the attempted overturning of an established system of representative democracy that can almost be described as a quiet coup.

A year ago next week, three members of Johnson’s then minority government went to Balmoral and secured the Queen’s authorisation to prorogue parliament. That triggered a constitutional crisis over Johnson’s attempts to sideline the hung parliament over Brexit. The crisis was eventually ended by the wrongheaded decision of opposition MPs to support an early election, which Johnson won with a working majority of 87.

Yet any idea that last year’s general election result might signal a return to government through parliament has been confounded by events. As it has turned out, the sidelining of parliament in the prorogation crisis has continued during the Covid pandemic. Sidelining was not just the temporary expedient brought about by the Brexit crisis and the absence of a majority. It is the continuing policy. Johnson has taken his 2019 election victory and proceeded to redefine it not as a parliamentary mandate but as a presidential one.

Conventions are there to be broken. One of these, which had increased before Johnson’s arrival to No 10, is the readiness of ministers – in particular the prime minister – to submit themselves and their policies to regular scrutiny and challenge by elected MPs. The sovereignty of parliament in the British system is, after all, far more than a convention. It is the central pillar of the unwritten constitution. Even with a majority of the kind that Johnson now enjoys, parliament remains in both law and theory the wellspring from which government derives its consent, informal as well as formal.

Johnson is ignoring this – partly because he is not, by deed or instinct, a parliamentarian. He makes far fewer prime ministerial interventions there than his recent predecessors. He avoided prime minister’s questions for months, and is now clearly uncomfortable facing Keir Starmer. He had to be forced to do a session with the liaison committee of Commons select committee chairs; it went badly and he will not do another in a hurry. He does not command parliament from the dispatch box in the way other premiers with large majorities, such as Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair, could do. He has no instinct in his body to recall MPs over anything at all.

Cummings, meanwhile, views parliament with the same contempt he reserves for all government institutions. Towards MPs, as to civil servants, he is malignant disdain incarnate. The two of them are never happier than when parliament is absent and they can get on with governing in the preferred, quasi-presidential mode. Johnson’s platform of choice during lockdown was the press conference rather than the Commons chamber. He wasn’t very good at that either, which is why he is now looking for a press conference spokesperson, a move Thatcher’s press chief, Bernard Ingham, has correctly condemned as a “constitutional outrage”.

Which brings us back to the here and now. MPs of all parties should be hopping mad that their voices are going unheard at a time when the entire structure of public health policy implementation in England is being scrapped by central government without the slightest consultation, and the futures of tens of thousands of school-leavers thrown into hazard by avoidable ministerial blundering. It ought to be possible for the Speaker to recall parliament, not just ministers. Though he lacks the powers, Speaker Hoyle should be making his indignation known. Westminster should have taken a leaf from the Scottish parliament’s book and ensured that the Commons could meet once a week during recess if the Speaker chose.

Scotland’s better accountability is a reminder of the chief losers in this. Johnson is in Downing Street because he persuaded a majority of the people of England that they had been rendered too powerless by the European Union. The diminished British parliament was said to embody this loss. English votes took Britain out of Europe in the name of restoring parliament’s sovereignty. Yet, as Johnson and Cummings continue with their centralising and accountability-defying revolution in government, they are doing so at the expense of that parliament and above all of the people of England, whose only democratic voice it is.

• Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist.