• Ofwat on exec pay: Toothless regulator needs to ban bonuses
• Health Secretary must be accountable for mouth cancer link to lack of dental care
• Braverman article: Home Sec is running a leadership campaign, not her department

Ofwat on exec pay: Toothless regulator needs to ban bonuses

Responding to the latest announcement by the water industry regulator Ofwat, which rules out banning executive bonuses despite the sewage scandal, Liberal Democrat Environment spokesperson Tim Farron MP said:

The British public will be reading this and screaming at regulators to just get on with banning these insulting bonuses.

Every penny spent on exec bonuses is less money being used to upgrade creaking infrastructure. Enough is enough. Ban all water firm exec bonuses and ensure funds go straight into fixing leaking pipes.

Bonuses should be a reward for success, not environmental vandalism.

It is frankly a scandal that the Conservative government is just sitting on their hands. They are allowing a toothless regulator to let water firms get away with it. With not a single mention of sewage in the King’s Speech this week, it is obvious the Conservative party do not care about this issue.

Health Secretary must be accountable for mouth cancer link to lack of dental care

The Liberal Democrats are calling for the Health Secretary Steve Barclay to come to Parliament to explain the latest statistics showing the link between dentist shortages and mouth cancer.

This follows the BBC article published today that revealed there could be a link between the lack of access to dentists and late mouth cancer diagnosis according to the BBC and Oral Health Foundation, which is feared to be costing lives.

The article revealed that mouth cancer has killed more than 3,000 people in 2021, which is a 46% increase from a decade ago, latest figures obtained by the Oral Health Foundation show.

Commenting on the statistics, the Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care Spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said:

It’s a damning indictment that the crisis in accessing an NHS dentist is costing lives.

People should not have to make an impossible choice between paying hundreds of pounds for private care, or going without and risk having a life or death disease unchecked.

Under the Conservative government, scores of dentists have walked away from NHS work and now we can see the devastating consequences. The government has repeatedly promised to fix this access crisis and repeatedly failed to do so.

The Liberal Democrats are calling on the Health Secretary to come to Parliament and finally set out a plan to fix this broken system.

Braverman article: Home Sec is running a leadership campaign, not her department

Responding to Suella Braverman’s article in the Times in which the Home Secretary says that “there is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters”, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael MP said:

Suella Braverman is running a Conservative party leadership campaign, not the Home Office.

The Home Secretary’s desire to stoke divisions and ramp up tensions in this way is irresponsible and dangerous. Instead of working with the police, she is doing everything in her power to make their already challenging jobs harder.

This government by press release has made her the most disastrous and reckless Home Secretary of modern times.