Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss compete for members’ support at latest Tory leadership hustings – UK politics live

The two candidates will face questions from Conservative members as the close of voting for the next PM nears

Labour has accused the government of allowing water companies to “cut corners”, after new figures showed 1,076 years’ worth of raw sewage has been dumped into UK waterways since 2016.

Here’s the report from PA Media:

Families across Britain are trying to enjoy the summertime. Whilst water companies are paying billions in dividends, the Tories have allowed them to cut corners and pump filthy raw sewage on to our playing fields and into our waters.

Labour will put a stop to this disgraceful practice by ensuring there can be enforcement of unlimited fines, holding water company bosses legally and financially accountable for their negligence, and by toughening up regulations that currently allow the system to be abused.

We are the first government to take action to tackle sewage overflows. We have been clear that water companies’ reliance on overflows is unacceptable and they must significantly reduce how much sewage they discharge as a priority.

This is on top of ambitious action we have already taken, including consulting on targets to improve water quality which will act as a powerful tool to deliver cleaner water, pushing all water companies to go further and faster to fix overflows.

Solar energy isn’t standing in the way of food production in the UK. Instead, solar panels generate cheap, clean energy that doesn’t depend on Russia, and provide income to farmers too.

A much better way of feeding people would be to stop using food crops to fuel cars. Biofuels for cars are a zombie policy. It’s now cheaper to decarbonise transport by getting more electric vehicles on the roads and freeing up land we’ve used for biofuels for food production instead.

Continue reading...

 ALL Credit of this post going to https://www.theguardian.com