“Lawyers acting for the campaigners believe the ruling could force the government to strengthen its entire water plans including its much derided “plan for water”, which was announced earlier this year.”

Helena Horton www.theguardian.com 

The government and environment agency failed in their duty to restore and protect waterways from pollution, the high court has ruled in a significant case that could force an overhaul of the government’s plans.

Fish Legal and Pickering Fishery Association took the government to judicial review over its river basin management plan for the Costa Beck river in the Humber district, which had a reputation as one of the best fly fishing spots in the UK until a few years ago.

The lawyers presented the court with evidence that the Costa Beck is failing for fish under the Water Framework Directive regulations. One of the reasons for that, they argued, is sewage pollution – Yorkshire Water’s “storm” sewage overflow at Pickering treatment works discharged into the Costa Beck more than 250 times in 2020 and more than 400 times in 2019.

They argued that the Environment Agency had failed to follow through with its proposed action against polluters.

The high court ruled that the government and the Environment Agency had failed in their mandatory legal duties to review, update and put in place measures to restore rivers and other water bodies under the Water Framework Directive regulations. The judge concluded there was no evidence the programme of measures could be expected to achieve the stated environmental objectives.

The judge accepted discharges were contributing to the poor condition of the river and said that, under the regulations, discharges for specific rivers such as the Costa Beck need to be regulated more tightly, if their condition is to improve.

The judge characterised the approach of the secretary of state for the environment as one of “smoke and mirrors”. The angling club, which won the court case, said the secretary of state was planning to fail.

Lawyers believe the ruling means the basis for the government’s plans to protect waterways from pollution – which have been criticised as weak – could be unlawful, and ministers could be forced to strengthen their measures.

This has potentially created a mess for the new environment secretary, Steve Barclay, who may have to overhaul the plans of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

It could open the door for other groups to bring similar challenges for the other river basin plans across the country, as the court found that the fundamental requirement to assess and identify specific measures to achieve the legally mandatory targets for each water body – such as tightened environmental permits for controlling sewage pollution – had unlawfully not been done.

Andrew Kelton, a solicitor at Fish Legal, said: “This case goes to the heart of why government has failed to make progress towards improving the health of rivers and lakes in England. Only 16% of water bodies – 14% of rivers – are currently achieving ‘good ecological status’, with no improvement for at least a decade, which comes as no surprise to us having seen how the Environment Agency at first proposed, but then for some reason failed to follow through with the tough action needed against polluters in this case.

“The Upper Costa Beck is just one of 4,929 water bodies, but it is a case study in regulatory inaction in the face of evidence of declining river health.”

He added: “The Environment Agency and the government have taken a high-level, generic – and effectively non-committal – approach to achieving targets when what was needed was a water-body-by-water-body plan of real action to stop ongoing damage.

“We hope this ruling will lead to actual environmental improvements, not only on the Costa Beck but on every other ‘failing’ river and lake across the country.”

Lawyers acting for the campaigners believe the ruling could force the government to strengthen its entire water plans including its much derided “plan for water”, which was announced earlier this year.

Penelope Gane, head of practice at Fish Legal, said: “The environmental objectives and information in river basin management plans underpin all sorts of long-term statutory plans and other strategic planning, including the government’s plan for water, water company business plans, water resources regional plans and the chalk stream restoration strategy. This legal action exposes that all of those policies and plans are effectively built on foundations of sand.”

A spokesperson for Yorkshire Water previously said: “The EA has undertaken water framework directive assessments at Costa Beck. These indicate that neither the water industry nor sewage are either confirmed or even probable causes of the watercourse failing to achieve good ecological status.

“Yorkshire Water is not party to this ongoing case. Nevertheless, we continue to work in partnership with the local angling association on this issue.”

The shadow secretary of state for the environment, Steve Reed, said: “The water industry is broken after 13 years of Conservative failure, with stinking, toxic sewage swilling through our rivers, lakes, and seas. This Conservative government’s plan is so weak it’s now been declared unlawful. They have been happy to stand by and let the sewage flow due to their sheer incompetence.

“Only Labour will take tough action to end this scandal by putting the water industry under special measures. We will ban water bosses’ bonuses, and introduce severe, automatic fines until the water companies clean up their filth.”

A Defra spokesperson said: “We are carefully considering the outcome of this judgment and next steps.

“The government has an ambitious plan for water, which is delivering more investment, stronger regulation and tougher enforcement needed to clean up our waterways. This includes reforming river basin management plans and delivering tailored long-term catchment action plans for local groups to improve all water bodies in England.”

How do you know?

Basic literacy and numeracy are essential life skills, how come so many in government seem to lack the latter? How do they pass the selection process? – Owl

Boris Johnson was “bamboozled” by the science during the pandemic and had to have details explained to him “repeatedly”, the Covid inquiry has heard.

Archie Mitchell www.independent.co.uk (Extract)

Sir Patrick Vallance’s bombshell diary entries revealed in excruciating detail how the former prime minister struggled to understand graphs and “just could not get” some scientific concepts.

The former chief scientific adviser – one of the government’s most senior advisers during the pandemic – told the inquiry about how he kept daily notes as a “brain dump” to help him “decompress” — and never intended them to “see the light of day”.

But the diary extracts have already proved humiliating for Mr Johnson, with the inquiry hearing how Mr Johnson sometimes struggled to retain scientific information, was “clutching at straws” and at one point queried whether Covid was spreading “because of the great libertarian nation we are”.

In one entry following a meeting with Mr Johnson in May 2020 about schools, Sir Patrick wrote: “Late afternoon meeting with the PM on schools. My God, this is complicated. Models will not provide the answer. PM is clearly bamboozled.”

Another entry, also written in May 2020, said: “PM still confused on different types of test. He holds it in his head for a session and then it goes.”

In another humiliating passage for Mr Johnson, Sir Patrick wrote: “Watching the PM get his head around stats is awful. He finds relative and absolute risk almost impossible to understand.”

Later, in September 2020, Mr Johnson is talked through some graphs, after which Sir Patrick wrote: “It is difficult, he asks questions like ‘which line is the dark red line?’ – is he colourblind? Then ‘so you think positivity has gone up overnight?’ then ‘oh god bloody hell’. But it is all the same stuff he was shown six hours ago.”

Asked about the extracts, Sir Patrick said Mr Johnson “would be the first to admit it wasn’t his forte, and that he did struggle with some of the concepts and we did need to repeat them often”.

But Sir Patrick added that scientific advises from across Europe all recalled their leaders having problems understanding some concepts.

Earlier in the day this is what Rishi Sunak told an audience in Enfield:

“The first time most of you saw me was during COVID. When I stood up at a press conference to announce the furlough scheme. From that moment until today, whether you like me or not, I hope you know that when it comes to the economy, when it comes to your job, your family, your incomes, I’ll always make the right decisions for our country.……

“So now you can trust me when I say we can now start to responsibly cut taxes.….

“You can trust me to take long-term decisions and that’s how we’ll build a brighter future for all our children.“

[Full speech here; quote from concluding remarks at 20:40]

On Eat Out to Help Out, see below, could it be that our “techbro” PM couldn’t grasp scientific arguments about infection transmission? Or did the “beancounter” place the health of the hospitality sector economy above the health of the population?

Not a sound basis for gaining our trust either way.- Owl

Rishi Sunak’s Eat Out To Help Out scheme almost certainly drove a second wave of Covid cases in the UK, the former government chief scientific adviser has told the inquiry into the pandemic.

Jane Merrick inews.co.uk 

Sir Patrick Vallance said it is “very difficult to see how it [the scheme] wouldn’t have had an effect on transmission”.

While the half-price discount offer in August 2020, devised by the then chancellor, has previously been linked to a second wave by independent scientists and critics of the policy, Sir Patrick’s evidence is the first time a senior figure from government at the time has confirmed it was a driver of transmission.

The former scientific adviser said Rishi Sunak should have known the effect Eat Out To Help Out would have had on transmission because he was in all the relevant meetings at the time.

The evidence from Sir Patrick will put pressure on the current Prime Minister’s handling of the response to the pandemic. Mr Sunak is giving his own evidence early next month.

The inquiry has previously heard how Mr Sunak was referred to as “Dr Death the chancellor” by Dame Angela McLean, who is Sir Patrick’s successor, in reference to the controversial Eat Out To Help Out policy.

Neither Sir Patrick nor Professor Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, was informed of the scheme before it was announced by the Treasury in July 2020.

Sir Patrick said their advice “would have been very clear”, adding that the public health message up until that point was “interaction between different households and people that you weren’t living with in an enclosed environment with many others is a high-risk activity”.

He said: “That policy completely reversed it to saying: ‘We will pay you to go into an environment with people from other households and mix in an indoor environment for periods extended over a couple of hours or more.’

“And that is a completely opposite public health message.

“As a result of that, it’s quite likely that had an effect on transmission. In fact it’s very difficult to see how it wouldn’t have had an effect on transmission and that would have been the advice that was given, had we been asked beforehand.”

Asked whether Mr Sunak would have been aware of the risks, Sir Patrick said it had been discussed at Cabinet “our concern that people were piling on more and more things” that would drive up cases.

“So I think it would have been very obvious to anyone that this was likely to cause an issue that inevitably would cause an increase in transmission risk.

“And I think that would have been known by ministers, and if he was in the meetings, I can’t recall which meetings he was in, but I’d be very surprised if any minister didn’t understand that these openings carried risk.”

Mr Sunak also wanted the scientists to be “handled” in the run-up to his Eat Out To Help Out policy, the inquiry heard.

On 2 July 2020, Sir Patrick wrote in his diaries: “In economics meeting earlier in the day they didn’t realise CMO [Prof Whitty] was there and CX [Mr Sunak] said, ‘It is all about handling the scientists, not handling the virus’.

“They then got flustered when CMO chipped in later and they realised he had been there all along. PM [Mr Johnson] blustered and waffled for 5 mins to cover his embarrassment.”

Sir Patrick was scathing about the “pure dogma” that emerged from Mr Sunak’s Treasury during the pandemic.

In his diaries he wrote on 26 October 2021, when the government was discussing whether to impose a Plan B of some restrictions stopping short of lockdown as cases were rising again: “Economic predictions! HMT saying economy nearly back to normal + Plan B would cost £18bn. No evidence. No transparency. Pure dogma + wrong throughout.”

Sir Patrick told the inquiry: “I did think that there was a lack of transparency.

“And it was difficult to know exactly what modelling had been done and what input they’d been to various assertions and comments made, and that made it very difficult and of course, it wasn’t publicly available either.

“And that created, I think, an imbalance where the science advice was there for everybody to see.”

It was not only the Treasury but Downing Street who were pushing for a full relaxation of measures after lockdown, the inquiry heard.

Sir Patrick wrote in his diaries that No10 wanted the “science altered” in the run-up to restrictions being lifted in summer 2020. On 19 June he wrote: “No10 pushing hard on releasing measures – including clubs and bars.

“They are pushing very hard and want the science altered. We need to hold on to our hats. There will likely be a second peak.”