PUBLIC ownership campaigners are calling on Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds to “come clean” after it was revealed water firms were allowed to report their own pollution data without site visits.

Former Undertones frontman Feargal Sharkey will join campaigners featured in the Channel 4 docudrama Dirty Business in a demonstration today outside the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Their protest follows recent revelations that the Environmental Agency had been allowing private water companies to report data regarding their own pollution and downgrading thousands of incidents without the regulator visiting their sites.

Environmentalist Sir Feargal and Dirty Business campaigners Ash Smith and Peter Hammond will picket Defra in central London, asking the government to consider public ownership of these water companies.

The government had outlined a number of reasons why it favoured the current private model of ownership in its response to a petition for a referendum on public ownership with nearly 130,000 signatures, which will be debated in Parliament.

It “would take years and involve complex legal processes” to move water firms to public ownership, the government claimed, adding that this would also mean “diverting efforts from cleaning up rivers, lakes and seas.”

Campaigners are to deliver a letter addressed to the Environment Secretary arguing against the government’s reasons to keep water firms private.

In the letter, Windrush Against Sewage Pollution campaigner Ash Smith wrote: “It is deeply concerning to see inaction justified by arguments that do not withstand even the most rudimentary fact checks.

“Decisive action has been taken in the past in other sectors, and what can be more important than water, public health and national infrastructure?

“The government has shown it is not working from the evidence or applying the law designed to protect national interest and security; it is protecting the position of water company owners and creditors.”

We Own It lead campaigner Sophie Conquest added: “The undeniable conclusion when you look at the facts is that we can’t afford to continue with privatisation. 

“Water must come into public ownership, starting with special administration of the collapsing Thames Water.

“The privatisation of water is an ideological experiment which has failed abysmally.

“Enough is enough. We pay for the water sector. We deserve to know the truth about where that money is going, and exactly how we are being failed.”