Water company bosses could be banned from receiving bonuses and even sent to prison under new government legislation to combat pollution.
The proposed laws will apply in England and Wales and give increased powers to regulators to tackle companies who pollute and make it easier for them to be fined.
Environment Secretary Steve Reed said the measures would “end the disgraceful behaviour of water companies and their bosses”.
But some campaigners for cleaner waters have criticised the new legislation, with one telling BBC News it amounted only to “window dressing”.
Water companies have been widely criticised for giving multi-million pound pay packages to their executives while continuing to regularly spill sewage into lakes, rivers and the sea.
The new Water (Special Measures) Bill will see harsher penalties for law-breaking, with prison sentences of up to two years for executives who fail to cooperate or obstruct investigators.
The burden of proof in civil cases will be lowered so that the Environment Agency can more easily bring forward criminal charges against bosses.
Regulators will also be given the power to stop bonus payments to water bosses if they fail to meet high standards to protect the environment, their consumers and their company’s finances.
“Banning the payment of bonuses for bosses who are overseeing failure and making them personally criminally liable if they refuse to comply with investigations will focus them on cleaning up our rivers not lining their pockets,“ Mr Reed said.
Some campaigners for cleaner waters told the BBC they were disappointed.
Many pointed out that there is already widespread rule-breaking in the water industry and said the real issue was a failure of the water regulator, Ofwat, and the Environment Agency to enforce them properly.
Earlier this year a BBC investigation revealed that in 2022 every major English water company reported discharges of raw sewage when the weather was dry – a practice which is potentially illegal.
“If the secretary of state believes that the few one-off actions announced today, such as curtailing bosses’ bonuses however appealing they may sound are going to fix the underlying causes of our poisoned waterways, then he needs to think again,” Charles Watson of River Action said.
He told the BBC Today Programme: “Finally after years of denial over the whole scandal of the pollution of our rivers lakes and seas we’ve got a government of the day acknowledging the scale of the problem.
“But sadly what we’ve got today is basically a long list of measures that is going to cost the government nothing. They are not really going to fix anything because it’s the system that is broken.”
Regarding the threat of jail, Mr Watson said, reflecting on one of the proposed measures listed by the government: “It’s threatening to send them to prison if they obstruct an investigation into lawbreaking, so that’s pretty random. I don’t think anyone will be going to prison.”
The Conservatives said the proposed measures were “simply playing politics”.
“Labour are attempting to pass off measures implemented under the Conservatives – like banning bonuses for water company bosses whose companies who commit serious breaches – as their own,” said shadow environment minister Robbie Moore.
The Liberal Democrats said in a statement: “On the surface, this new bill simply doesn’t look up to scratch to tackling the sewage scandal that has plagued our nation’s rivers and waterways.
“Only a complete overhaul of this disgraced industry and a tough new regulator will end the sewage crisis.”
Decades of under-investment has left sewage infrastructure frequently unable to cope with the volume of rainwater and sewage, which then leads to spilling.
Last year the cumulative spills across England’s sewage network added up to 3.6 million hours. Only 14% of England’s rivers are assessed to have good ecological status.
Responding to the new legislation a spokesman for Water UK, which represents the water companies, said it agreed the system was “not working”.
They called on the regulator Ofwat to back its £105bn five-year investment plan for water and sewage infrastructure.
That will ultimately have to be paid for through higher customer bills, and negotiations are continuing with Ofwat as to how much companies will be allowed to put them up by.
The new legislation will also give the regulators the power to recover costs from water companies for enforcement action.
Ofwat will be required to set rules that ensure companies appoint directors and chief executives, and allow them to remain in post, only when they meet the highest standards of “fitness and propriety”.
The government says there will be more legislation in the future that will make more fundamental changes to the water industry, speed up infrastructure upgrades, deliver reliable water supply and better tackle pollution.