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Environment Secretary urged to apologise for ‘misleading' Scottish water claims

Environment Secretary urged to apologise for ‘misleading' Scottish water claims

Mr Reed came under fire after claiming that under publicly-owned Scottish Water 'pollution levels in Scotland are worse than they are in England'.
The UK Government minister made the remarks to Channel 4 News as he dismissed calls for water services south of the border to be nationalised.
Gillian Martin, the Scottish Government Secretary for Climate Action and Energy, said she was 'extremely disappointed' that Mr Reed had made the 'inaccurate and misleading comments regarding performance in Scotland' as he sought to 'dismiss out of hand the value of public ownership of a key asset like water'.
She wrote to Mr Reed noting that Monday's report from the Independent Water Commission, led by Sir Jon Cunliffe, had found 66% of Scotland's water bodies to be of good ecological status, compared with 16.1% in England and 29.9% in Wales.
And while she accepted the figures for the different countries were 'not calculated on the same basis', Ms Martin stated: 'It is clear that Scotland has a higher performance.'
She insisted that 'much of the improvement' seen in water in Scotland was 'due to significant investment in the water industry to reduce pollution', which she said was driven by both Scottish Water and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).
My letter to UK Gov Minister Steve Reed asking him to retract his false statements about the condition of water in Scotland. IWC was able to report we're in a much better position than rUk with 87% 'high' or 'good' status. Public ownership works. https://t.co/q8HOkpKfld
— Gillian Martin (@GillianMSP) July 22, 2025
Ms Martin told the UK Environment Secretary: 'Your comments sought also to undermine the idea of public ownership in the minds of voters, yet this is clearly what the people of Scotland continue to want.
'Indeed, it is the very fact of that public ownership and control which has allowed us to keep water bills lower for people, compared to what people with privatised water supplies in England have to pay.'
Noting that Sepa had found 87% of the Scottish water environment to be of 'high' of 'good' quality – up from 82% in 2014 – she insisted this was 'in part, due to water being a publicly-owned asset, allowing for investment without shareholder returns or the pressure to make profits'.
The Scottish Government minister went on to tell Mr Reed: 'I am therefore asking that you acknowledge that your comments were inaccurate, that you apologise publicly for making them, and seek to correct them.'
Sir Jon's review of water services south of the border did not explore renationalising water companies – with the Government at Westminster opposed to this despite demands from campaigners for a return to public ownership in England.
Mr Reed however warned that nationalisation would cost £100 billion and would slow down efforts to cut pollution.
The UK Government has been contacted for comment.
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Sprawl or nothing: medium density advocates despair as Brisbane swings back to urban expansion
Sprawl or nothing: medium density advocates despair as Brisbane swings back to urban expansion

The Guardian

time9 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

Sprawl or nothing: medium density advocates despair as Brisbane swings back to urban expansion

Almost two decades ago, the Queensland historian Peter Spearritt issued a dire warning. If planning attitudes didn't change, Brisbane would become 'the 200 kilometre city' – a giant conurbation, solid suburbs from Noosa to the NSW border, causing traffic chaos and dooming millions to a worse standard of living. 'I don't think many people realised just how dramatic continuing suburban sprawl would be,' he says. Queensland's governments did put some legal limits on untrammelled expansion. But with the city facing an epic housing shortage, many planners are now concerned the new conservative state government will return to the city's historic sprawl-or-nothing approach. The government has started test drilling on a proposed underground freeway designed to permit new suburbs in farmland west of Caboolture. At $14bn, the four-lane north-west transport corridor would be the most expensive road project in the city's history. The first new suburb, Waraba, is set to boast 70,000 residents once complete. Spearritt, now an emeritus professor of urban history at the University of Queensland, says legal limitations on sprawl are crucial for a city with few geographical barriers – unlike Sydney, Brisbane doesn't have national parks on three of its four sides. 'There were no green space barriers, and that makes it much easier to just basically develop former agricultural land forever,' he says. Brisbane has always been an unusually car-dependent and low-density city, even by Australian standards. There's a simple reason for this: since 1885 Queensland has more or less banned townhouses and apartments. It worked. Just 11.3% of residents of the Brisbane local government area live in townhouses, which is even lower than the state average, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Ten times more people told the 2021 census they drove to work than took the bus or train. Locked out of the inner city, decades of newcomers have been forced into new communities in Logan, Ipswich, Moreton Bay and even further afield, swelling the populations of those outer areas by millions. In 2006 the state government stepped in, setting the first south-east Queensland regional plan. For the first time it established an 'urban footprint' – a limited area where development is permitted. 'It was a big political moment. I think it got fairly widespread support,' Spearritt says. 'Was Brisbane actually thinking about how it would shape itself for the future? And I guess that sort of approach has been completely swamped by the rhetoric about the housing crisis'. As expansion slowed, the pace of inner-city development did not speed up. As a result, house prices and rents have skyrocketed, as development approvals head in the opposite direction. Under Labor, the state government used the regional plan to set density targets for councils – effectively requiring 60% of new homes to be apartments and townhouses. Now the Liberal National party planning minister, Jarrod Bleijie, has signalled radical change to the unpopular rule. 'We are going to review every regional plan in Queensland and we are going to review them in consultation with local government,' he told parliament in March. 'The time for state government acting like Big Brother over local government is over.' Asked last month if he would ditch the targets, he confirmed that there would be a move back to sprawl. 'We need to look at the urban growth everywhere, across every regional plan, including the south-east Queensland regional plan,' he said. 'The problem with the current south-east Queensland regional plan, the density is upwards, but developers are finding it incredibly difficult to afford to build vertical towers at the moment and to find buyers for them. So it's no use putting in the regional plan to just go up, when the towers and housing is actually not being provided.' The government has also budgeted to spend $2bn subsidising council infrastructure to speed up development in new-build estates, including in regional Queensland. The Queensland Conservation Council (QCC) is one of many groups concerned that the city's urban footprint boundaries might be expanded. Jen Basham, the council's urban sustainability lead, says: 'Further urban sprawl is not a solution to the housing crisis – it's slower, more expensive and environmentally damaging.' A recent QCC report found that the city could more than accommodate all new growth within its current boundaries – and that doing so would cost the taxpayer less and result in better social outcomes. New suburbs tend to be more car-dependent because there are few alternatives, the report says. That means greater emissions and many hours trapped behind the wheel for the residents. Sprawl also tends to cost more – an estimated $75,000 per dwelling in Sydney, according to the NSW Productivity Commission – due to the need to construct new infrastructure such as schools and hospitals. Instead, the OCC report concludes, Queensland should look to the long-banned 'missing middle' housing typologies – townhouses and small apartments. Dorina Pojani, an associate professor of urban planning at the University of Queensland, says increasing density doesn't have to mean towers blocks. 'That's a failure of the imagination,' she says. 'What about the missing middle: row housing, 4-5 storey apartment complexes, co-housing, and so on? We need to move away from both the detached single-family and the tower typology. Zoning codes need be overhauled.' Travis Jordan, an organiser of the Yimby (yes in my back yard) group for greater Brisbane, says there is another factor in favour of reform. The single-family house with a picket fence on 400 sq m isn't for everyone, he says. Some people want to live within walking distance of work, shops, schools and friends – and the law shouldn't stop them. 'Priorities change. The things we wanted to stop 40 years ago might be things we want to encourage now, and the kinds of homes our parents wanted might not be the ones our kids want to grow up in.' Jordan says other Australian cities are making better choices. The NSW and Victorian state governments have rolled out new rules limiting the power of councils to halt more sustainable development. Globally the real leader is New Zealand, he says. Since 2016, cities including Auckland have eliminated bans on apartments and townhouses, a policy that now has national support. Research has found that as a result, there has been a huge spike in construction, and a resulting dip in rents. Jordan says it's time for Brisbane to follow their lead. 'For most of the last 20 years, 'tall versus sprawl' is all our planning schemes said you were allowed,' he says. 'Instead of saying that's too hard, the government should be standing up to the busybodies who want to tell everyone else what kind of homes they're allowed to build on their land.' But Brisbane city council, the hemisphere's largest and most powerful, flat out opposes missing middle development. It passed a new version of the century-old ban on townhouses in 2020. 'Spreading the density right across every suburb of Brisbane is not the right answer,' lord mayor Adrian Schrinner said at a candidates debate in the 2024 election. In 2015, Spearritt announced that his warning had already come true. Brisbane had fused 200km of unending city. Ten years later, he doesn't see much political will for reform. 'I think it's depressing that that there's not more interest in the quality of community life and the quality of the urban environment. It's almost as if people have sort of given up,' he says. 'Maybe it'll take another generation to realise – Jesus, this city is really getting awful.'

The nine health conditions most at risk of being hit by Universal Credit and PIP cuts
The nine health conditions most at risk of being hit by Universal Credit and PIP cuts

The Sun

time9 minutes ago

  • The Sun

The nine health conditions most at risk of being hit by Universal Credit and PIP cuts

SOME disabled Universal Credit claimants face cuts to their payments when new Government rules come in, campaigners have warned. Labour is planning to bring in major reforms to the benefits system that will see Universal Credit payments slashed for new claimants. 1 A bill intended to cut back on welfare spending was heavily watered down last month following a rebellion by backbench MPs. But some MPs and disability campaigners are still warning benefit claimants with serious, lifelong illnesses could see their out-of-work benefits halved under the reforms. They are worried people with degenerative conditions such as Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis (MS) could be affected, as well as those with serious mental health conditions such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The campaigners say people with these conditions could miss out on the Universal Credit health element, which is worth about £3,000 a year. MPs on the Work and Pensions Committee have called for the cut to be paused until an independent impact assessment on the changes can be carried out. Andy McDonald, Labour MP for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East, told The i newspaper that ministers should look again at the criteria for the higher rate of Universal Credit. "The bill creates a two-tier system which will result in people with identical conditions being treated entirely differently, based on an arbitrary cut-off point. "There is no justice or equity in that. It's simply not the right thing to do," he said. Ian Byrne, Labour MP for Liverpool West Derby, said it was "reckless to go ahead with the planned cuts" without an impact assessment. Meanwhile James Taylor, head of strategy at disability equality charity Scope, said: "We are concerned that the changes to the health component of Universal Credit will create a two-tier system where some disabled people receive more support than others. "We believe this approach is unfair and that it does not reflect the realities of disabled people's lives." What is Universal Credit and what changes are being made? Universal Credit is a monthly payment given out to those who are struggling to make ends meet. Changes to UC & PIP payments in full as Labour reveals bruising welfare bill concessions in bid to quell rebellion More than three million recipients of Universal Credit don't have to find work due to their poor health. A single person who is aged 25 or over can receive the basic level of Universal Credit, which comes in at £400.14 every month. But you can get a further £422.37 by claiming the incapacity top-up if you have a disability or long-term condition. This more than doubles the original payment. People who currently receive Universal Credit will be protected from changes to the Welfare Reform Bill. But new claimants will have their payment halved to £217.26. Only new claimants who meet a "severe conditions criteria" will get the full amount - so those with severe, lifelong conditions will remain protected. However, disability groups have warned that those with degenerative illnesses or fluctuating conditions, which can vary day to day, might still have their payments slashed. This is because the new criteria demands a health condition be constant. Which conditions could be affected? There is no full or official list of conditions that could be affected by the change as the "severe conditions" criteria hasn't yet been fully decided. But anti-poverty charity Z2K has said there are at least six health conditions it believes could be affected by the change. They are: Parkinson's Schizophrenia Multiple sclerosis Bipolar disorder Autism Dementia A select committee report on the matter also mentions ME, Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) and eating disorders. Its understood claimants will not be assessed on what their condition is but on how it impacts them. No conditions are excluded from the "severe conditions" criteria and it will be considered for all health conditions and disabilities. Ayla Ozmen, director of policy and campaigns at Z2K, told The Sun: "Disabled people with conditions like Parkinsons, schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis are at risk of losing out on over £200 per month as a result of cuts to the Universal Credit health element which have been approved by parliament. "Contrary to government claims, we fear that many of the disabled people affected will never be able to work because of their conditions. "We're calling on the government to clarify how it will ensure that disabled people with severe conditions will be protected under these plans." A Government spokesperson said: "Our welfare reforms will support those who can work into jobs and ensure there is always a safety net for those that need it. The impact assessment shows our reforms will lift 50,000 children out of poverty – and our additional employment support will lift even more families out of poverty. "The reforms will rebalance Universal Credit rates to reduce the perverse incentives that trap people out of work, alongside genuinely helping disabled people and those with long-term health conditions into good, secure work – backed by £3.8billion in employment support over this parliament. "We are also tackling poverty by extending free school meals to all households on Universal Credit, helping to address holiday hunger with our Crisis and Resilience Fund, supporting over a million households by introducing a Fair Repayment Rate on Universal Credit deductions, and delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation, as part of our Plan for Change." What other changes are being made? The Government had hoped to bring in even tougher measures to stop the increasing cost of welfare from spiralling out of control. It previously projected the number of working-age claimants of Personal Independence Payments (PIP) will rise from 2.7million in 2023-24 to 4.3million in 2029-30. Meanwhile the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimated the overall cost of the working-age benefit system would rise from £48.5billion last year to £75.7billion by 2030. As part of its Welform Reform Bill, the Government had planned to introduce stricter qualifying measures for those claiming PIP and freezing the extra health payments available to those on Universal Credit who are unable to work. An FOI carried out by advice website Benefits and Work showed a staggering 154,000 people with back pain as their main health issue were likely to lose their PIP under Labour's stricter rules. Some of the other conditions at risk included arthritis, chronic pain, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, anxiety and depression. But following the backlash from MPs, it's unclear so far how PIP could change as a review is now going to be carried out by disability minister Sir Stephen Timms. The paper, which will not be published until the end of next year, will set out recommendations for the Government.

How much more will it take for these so-called leaders to take action?
How much more will it take for these so-called leaders to take action?

The Herald Scotland

time22 minutes ago

  • The Herald Scotland

How much more will it take for these so-called leaders to take action?

This is forced starvation. The World Health Organisation reports that in this month 63 deaths were caused by malnutrition and that the position of [[Gaza]] is on a 'dangerous trajectory'. More than 100 non-Government organisations across the world have, rightly, called this mass starvation and pleaded for world-leaders to put pressure on Israel. Read More: How much more will it take for these so-called leaders to take action? Instead of the necessary and radical interventions we need – we are thrown a few crumbs to give the illusion of decisive action from Donald Trump and Sir Keir Starmer when they feel public opinion turning too far and too quickly. A few crumbs whilst Gaza starves. Donald Trump managed to call it 'real starvation' during another bumbling press conference. But what he failed to say was that this is a man-made horror that America and Israel are responsible for. The 'Gaza Humanitarian Foundation' is an American 'non-profit' working with the Israeli Government, and it has enabled aid to be used as a weapon of war. Israeli forces have killed almost 1000 people who were desperately queuing for aid and who assumed they are entering a safe zone. Many Gazans leave to search for food for their families who are waiting in make-shift shelters, but never return to them. The failed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation issued a 'women-only' aid pick-up invitation to desperate civilians this week, in an attempt to prevent scenes of chaos, and to manufacture the idea that chaos and deaths were being caused by Gazan men. But it did not stop the killing. Pepper spray and stun guns were used on the women queuing, some with their children. Multiple women were killed as security forces shot directly at them. Perhaps now will be the time when those individuals and groups who purport to care about women's lives across the world will raise their voices for the women of Gaza? Given some of their silence for 21 months, perhaps not. The chaos is not caused by desperate and starving civilians, it is caused by an aid agency that has never fully met the needs of the desperate and starving and a Government pursing any means available to them to erase the Palestinian people. Keir Starmer has called it 'unspeakable and indefensible' despite having repeatedly defended Israel's action; he stated that Israel had the right to stop Gazans having access to life-saving clean water in October 2023. Starmer has announced that 30 children in need of emergency care will be evacuated by the UK. The United Nations estimated that 33,000 children have been injured. The Prime Minister has also announced that the UK will be facilitating air drops of aid, which humanitarian charities have called a 'grotesque distraction' and a method that will do nothing to curb the growing levels of starvation. Israel has issued a 'pause' in high populated areas of Gaza for 10 hours a day since Sunday to allow air dropped aid to enter. But aid agencies have warned this will be a negligible amount gives the scale of starvation, especially whilst the hundreds of trucks needed for daily aid continue to be blocked at the border. In a moment that felt particularly cruel, Starmer announced that the UK will recognise Palestine as a state, unless [[Israel]] takes moves on a ceasefire; using statehood as a negotiation tool and a threat. Starmer said to Labour members in an email released last night 'I've always said that [[Palestine]] statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people' Really? Then why is that right based on conditions linked to its oppressor? If world leaders want to take decisive action, the answers have been in front of them since the start. End arms sales to Israel, recognise Palestine as an independent state, demand a permanent ceasefire, apply pressure on Israel through trade and economic sanctions. These are evidenced and proportionate responses that have been applied to other nations, why not now? During apartheid in South Africa, the UK repeatedly vetoed UN resolutions calling for immediate economic sanctions, it was not until the late 1980s that the UK and US passed laws in support of trade sanctions against South Africa. The UK and US appear to have learnt no lessons, and are repeating the same mistakes. Whilst they may be ignorant of their own histories, neither the UK nor the US can say that they were unaware of the realities on the ground in Gaza. Beyond the devastating pictures released daily, the language from Israeli officials has been clear in their intention from the start. In the International Court of Justice hearing on probable genocide by Israel, over 500 statements were entered into the record as evidence of 'intention' of genocide. These public statements were from Israeli officials and included Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, who stated that 'It's [Palestine] an entire nation out there that is responsible.' Netanyahu has himself said that the 'war' will continue until all of Gaza is under Israeli military control. The intention has been clear, and the perpetrators have been able to continue with impunity as a consequence of the cowardice of so-called 'world leaders.' As author Omar El Akkad said; "One day, when it's safe…when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this." Talat Yaqoob, is an independent consultant, researcher and campaigner, see

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